Taste of Place - Article & Recipe
a resource for summer
This article was my first-ever published piece of writing! Commissioned by the wise and talented Rebecca Desnos for her beautiful magazine Plants Are Magic (no longer in print), it was such an honor to share my love for foraged huckleberries with Desnos and her audience. I am pleased to share the article here, along with an original corresponding recipe I developed for huckleberry-oat scones!
This piece is reprinted here from “Plants Are Magic” magazine with permission from the publisher.
Taste of Place
Regarding the Humble Huckleberry
In the heavy solstice-days of August and September, when the huckleberry bushes are laden with fruit, the first morning at the cabin always finds me awake early and out with a chipped-enamel bowl in one hand and my favorite mug full of tea in the other.
This is not the hand-over-fist harvesting I will be partaking of later in the day, filling every available container with berries for later use. I am making scones, and I will only need about a cup’s worth, plus a little extra for nibbling. The morning air is crisp and salty. There is a bare breeze sending the sun rays dancing through the fir, the oak, the madrona. If the tide is low, the scent is shipwreck-briny and the air is full of clam-gossip. If the tide is high, the beach is a tumult of rhythmic whispers as the tiny waves reach and recede, reach and recede against the pebbles. There is a coastal quiet, broken only by the flap and clatter of the gulls busy at their breakfasts, flying up and dropping shellfish onto the rocks below to crack them open.
In my twenty-odd years as a forager, wildcrafter, herbalist, and general student of creation, the huckleberry looms large in my memory and my affections. It is, perhaps, the quintessential Pacific Northwest edible, and I am of deep Pacific Northwest rootstock. Our friendship was and is a bit of a geographical inevitability. Perhaps even a spiritual one, depending on your point of view.
My closest friend in this delicious family of fruiting shrubs is the evergreen huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum. It is a beautiful branching bush with emerald-green, gently serrated almond-shaped leaves, and in the summer and early fall the greenery is punctuated by thousands and thousands of small, firm berries, so deeply purple they can appear black. These berries, at their best, boast an exquisite flavor, a balance of sweet and sour and musky spice which makes them extraordinarily versatile. But like most wild edibles, their flavor is entirely dependent on where they are harvested; once found, a good patch of huckleberries is a treasure, indeed.
When my grandparents built their cabin in the 1970s along the wooded shoreline in a mostly-forgotten peninsular corner of Washington State, they dotted the property with native evergreen huckleberry bushes. Through the action of haphazard harvesters and the work of the songbirds and squirrels, huckle seeds spread like a story and now the property is huckleberry heaven, starting only steps from the front door and stretching up the trail, around the bunkhouse--known affectionately by the family as “Huckleberry Hut”--and out into the paths through the woods. Summertime harvest is a dizzying affair; the bushes are weighed down with the little black jewels and filling a bowl, saucepan, or colander takes only one focused hour or less, if you don’t get huckle-hypnosis and keel over before then.
Once you have your harvest, the uses for the huckleberry are varied and colorful and limited only by the forager’s imagination. I myself have made syrups, teas, and tinctures from both the berries and the leaves in my herbalism studies, for the huckle is a particularly healthful plant in many, many ways that this short tribute simply does not have the purview for.
But even with all of the study I have done and continue to do on the medicinal benefits of this berry, I still believe that the best uses for the huckle are culinary, for it is absolutely my favorite berry to eat. Huckleberries can be used in pretty much any way that you wish. Their small size makes them excellent for use in baked goods of all stripes, especially pancakes, muffins, breads, and cakes. They mix well with porridge and cereal, and scatter well over yogurt or pudding. Huckleberry ice cream is a particular treat, and huckleberry jam can be legendary, as long as the tartness of the berries is allowed to shine through.
Of course, the question lurking behind any discussion of wild foods is always going to be, Why? Why wild foods? Why harvest? Why, when there is so much abundance and choice to be found in the cultivated garden, the farm, or, if you prefer, the local supermarket?
Is it because they taste good? That’s a nice reason, but not enough. Is it because they are healthful? That’s also a good reason, but incomplete. Is it because they give us a sense of the moral high-ground when we eat them? My goodness, I should hope not!
My answer has been and always will be this: I eat wild foods because they are here. Not just that they exist, but that they exist right here, where I am. They are rooted in the same soil that I am. They are turning the same rain, the same sun, the same air into nutrition for themselves as I am. Localism, as a practice, is the slow and thorough building of deep affection through the gentle tide of familiarity. When we eat something that grows beside us, we get a deeper sense of place, a deeper taste of place, and what grows within us is wisdom, relationship, and a thrill of what it means to truly belong.
Standing in my slippers in the cold morning sunshine, reaching up and into the branches to grasp a handful of black huckles, taking care not to squish them as I pass them from branch to bowl, I belong. Bringing the bowl of precious, glittering gems into the cabin’s creaky kitchen, preheating the oven, preparing the scone batter, reveling in the peace, I belong. Mixing, baking, buttering, eating, savoring, I belong.
If we are what we eat, if we are what we taste, then the huckles and me, we belong.
Huckleberry & Oat Scones
On the first morning of every visit to the cabin I wake up early to make these muffin-like scones, which are only mildly sweet and perfect for breakfast or an afternoon treat with coffee or tea. If huckleberries are not available, small blueberries can be substituted to great effect.
Reprint Note: Desnos is vegan, so when I sent her this recipe she asked if she could try it with different types of milk and sweeteners. She discovered that it worked very well even when switching out the various ingredients for substitutions, so I invite you to play with the flour, milk, and sweetener until you find a mix that works for you! For reference, I developed the recipe using oat flour, dairy milk, and honey.
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Recipe makes about 12 scones
Ingredients:
2 cups flour of your choice
1/4 cup rolled oats
1 cup milk of your choice
1/2 cup huckleberries (small blueberries also work!)
2 tbsp sweetener of your choice
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
a pinch of nutmeg
a pinch of sea saltPreheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit (190 degrees Celsius).
Stir dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
Add milk and sweetener and mix well.
Fold in berries. Add more milk if batter gets too sticky to work with.
Grease a 12-cup muffin tin. Spoon batter into tin, filling each cup about halfway.
Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until the scones are firm to the touch and brown at the edges.
Serve warm with jam and enjoy!
This is lovely!! Thank you for sharing. I’m eager to try this recipe!