The warm temperature do have one good thing, that all the wild herbs are still around. But it still feels like changing the menu to the more hearty stews, soups and dishes.

last wild herb salad with edible flowers...

Königsberger Klopse. Here with herb-tossed potatoes and sautéed salsify, our Gemran winter asparagus.

And of course, all the wonderful apples! did you know that Germany alone is the home of 2000 different kinds of apples, but we only find about 6-8 in the supermarkets and farmers markets.  Absurd, isn't it?  Anyway, time for strudel!

My favorite? Yes, surely one of the great seasonal recipes! Homemade sausages with seasonal mushrooms (Chanterelles and Porcinis). We made the sausages with beef, garlic, a parsely root, 5 different herbs and a bell pepper.  Yum!

Damson plum cake, chanterelles and porcini mushrooms, fresh dates and figs from Turkey, Savoy cabbage, grapes in colors and flavors and elderberries!

Early fall salad: first apples (Boskop, Gravensteiner), red beets, celeriac root and stalks, walnuts, figs and nasturtium leaves, wild sage flowers...

I can eat this every day! Zwetschgen (Damson plums) on a thin tart crust with whipped cream.

Kohlrouladen with sautéed mushrooms, stir fried red beet leaves and elderberry juice. What a delight!

cooked in a vegetable broth and filled with fresh chanterelles, chard, garlic and beef. An absolute delight. here with some homemade Berliner Weisse - non alcoholic beer that's sweetened with raspberry or wood-ruff syrup.

Market tour, cooking class and lunch for group of 8 from unity 3.  We chopped herbs for Frankford Green Sauce, pulled fava beans, made vegan pesto and made 2 different berry cakes.  Edible flowers wanted to decor everything and were eaten by the hand full.

chopping herbs for Frankford Green Sauce

here with asparagus, potatoes and hard boiled eggs

...and elderberry flower pancakes are simply a delight. here with currant frozen cream yogurt.

First try...will let you know if it worked.

It's from the land! I had painted my wall in this amazing blue and placed all these wonderful mushroom creatures in front of it. And I can't wait to cook them tonight.  The white one is a Hericium erinaceus, or Pom-Pom Mushroom, then Pleurotus citrinopileatus, the golden and red oyster mushrooms and  a black porcini mushroom, and the regular oyster mushrooms.

Kohlroulade (Cabbage rolls) on mashed potato/celeriac root with parsley and a lamb's lettuce salad with juicy pear.

Here with seasonal porcini mushrooms and celeriac-potato mash. Super delicious.

going to the market had the effect of reducing my foggy jetlag brain, bringing me right back into the here and now!

Laszlo went home to Hungary and brought back home made sweet paprika.  Couldn't resist that.  Neither these wonderful large cipolini onions from Italy, which he said make the most delicious onion jam. I'm going for it.

Could not pass the bright red glowing lingonberries, nor those cranberries, both from poland. So busy tonight preserving them.

And last the wild herb salad.  Something I missed in California.

What we consider to be a nasty weed, that grows in every corner of urban or wild spaces and stings us on top it, is the stinging nettle. The leaves and stems are covered with hollow stinging hairs called trichomes. They act like hypodermic needles, injecting histamine and other chemicals producing a stinging sensation when we touch them. 

They have a flavor a bit to spinach and are rich in vitamin A and C, Iron, potassium, magnesium and calcium.  So voilà! Everything we need in a weed! 

Now they are in bloom and full of seeds! The seeds have protein too and taste nutty.  You can throw them into a salad or simply caramelize them quickly in a fraying pan with a bit of sugar or honey.  Simply wonderful!

(ha!, I have been eating lots of them in the last couple of weeks and recently had my blood checked.  The doctor asked my why my blood is so iron rich, if I'm eating a lot of meat these days?)

Summer salad with wild herb salad, cornflower leaves, black currants, caramalised nettle seeds and cucumber.

We started out with a clear vegetable summer soup, simple boiling the stock vegetables and straining them. The color come from a heirloom carot and some fresh parsley roots gave a wonderful taste.  A batavia salad with caramelized nettles was a highlight. I picked the nettles the day before. There are everywhere now full with seeds. They grow higher then myself (so there is no way that dog or man can do their business on them). The main course were nettle barley burgers on a fresh herb pesto and cod. And since it's berry season, how can we not make a berry tart, with berries piled high and cassis infused whipped cream.

Very proud of my students! this time from New Mexico, Mexico City, Norway and Düsseldorf.

Clear and so yummy potatoe soup. Traditional German but made completely different. Here with herb pesto and borage flower and leaves.

Yes ! We took on the sausage making.  It's a bit tricky, but so delicious, especially on this fresh fava bean, fresh bortolli bean and fresh pea pot-pourrie.

And last, but not least, the strawberry-quark-cream ice cream on fruit in season compote, sprinkled with white chocolate. Yum!

I ordered locally made goat cheeses, asia salat, but what I'm most excited about is a jar of black walnuts.  As I'm awaiting mid/end June for the fruit to appear on the trees and pick them all green and un-ripe to make black walnuts myself.  It'd be good to try them again to learn about the perfect consistency and taste.  Last year I picked them too late and a thin layer of shell was already built.  And that just doesn't work, because it feels like you eat an egg with eggshell in it. 

Tragopogon porrifolius

is cultivated for its ornamental flower, and here in Germany, mostly for its edible root, and herbal properties. It also grows wild and is  known as
purple or common salsify
oyster plant
vegetable oyster
Jerusalem star
goatsbeard or simply
salsify.
It tastes wonderfully buttery with a combined sweet and tartness. Here with red beets and black caraway seeds, seared in a bit of olive oil.

Class with four wonderful Israeli women, who were so curious about the produce and the misconception about 'German' food. I got to introduce them to 'Bärlauch', = wild garlic leaves, which we turned into a delicious wild pesto, using the momentum for the last week it's around. White asparagus greeted us here and there, but I held study telling them the season has not really yet begun. But then I'm thinking: a season begins when a produce is harvested from the fields, no? And I think this first asparagus is from the fields.  So, next time, it will be official for sure.

I had the opportunity to purchase a piece of a free range, organic farm raised pig the night before the class. It was a pleasing experience to cook pork, which I rarely eat, knowing that it came from this amazing farm near Berlin.

We did create a purple colored carrot soup - all from scratch and based on a vegetable stock.  We had red carrots and they turned our soup into this outrageous color.