This article has been a while in the making since grief and pain delayed its writing. If you’ve followed our stories or social channels over the years, you know how special Svetlana the duck was to us.
On Friday, October 26, 2018, Svetlana took her last breath. We petted her and rubbed her bill one last time. (She loved bill pets.)
We told her how much we loved her. How much we appreciated her life and the joy she gave us.
If you’ve got a pile of tangy, tart and delicious calamondin oranges (aka calamansi) at your disposal, find out how to put them to good use by making calamondin marmalade with baby ginger!
One of the reasons we love eating seasonally is because each season of the year brings new and different foods to look forward to – and to experiment with.
First year having a calamondin plant so thought I would try this recipe
Takes a bit of prep time but well worth the effort. I used an equal quantity of stem ginger in this recipe but might use a little more in the future
Glad you enjoyed this calamondin marmalade recipe, Eleanor! If you don’t mind, please also use the star ratings, so other people can more easily find the recipe. Thanks!
Could I use stem ginger and would be the quantity be the same
Hi Eleanor! Yes, you could substitute stem ginger in this recipe 1:1. Enjoy!
If not canned and sealed, how long will the marmalade last in the fridge?
I just found a loaded calamondin tree on an empty lot next door to a friend of my dad’s. He said pick as much as we would like! Hello recipe search 🙂 Yours was the first I saw and sounds yummy! Thanks for sharing <3
So sorry for our delayed response, Faith! We’ve had some pretty epic baby/parenting issues over the past 6+ weeks, so we’re way behind on everything. If not canned or sealed, you can probably get calamondin marmalade to last for several months in your fridge. It’s very acidic, so will last longer than most preserves. Lucky you having a free tree!
made a version of this today. given your problem of the ginger flavour being lost I put in about 3x the quantity of youngish root ginger. still difficult to discern the ginger. calamondin flavour too strong. added ginger when cooking the fruit and more just before set. maybe come through more with storage. thanks for the tips!
Thanks for the feedback, John. Ginger (both baby and mature) and calamondin are both pretty intense flavors, and everyone is going to have different flavor preferences. So this is a recipe people should plan to tweak a bit to make it to their own liking. Hope yours matures well in storage!
This ButcherBox review is 100% independent. We weren’t asked to write it and we’re not being paid to write it.
We originally wrote a version of this article for Edible Upcountry Magazine, and have recently updated it to make it even better for anyone interested in growing hardneck garlic.
Garlic: a white edible bulb commonly used to repel vampires or terminate a bad first date. What else is there to know about the stuff? A lot, actually.
Before my wife and I started turning our suburban yard into an edible food forest, we knew that we liked garlic, but our sentiments towards Allium sativum would be more aptly described as a modest crush than a mature romance — it certainly wasn’t love.
Our feelings changed rather dramatically once we tasted fresh heirloom garlic that a friend brought us from his brother’s organic farm in Virginia. At that moment, we realized that we’d never actually had “real” garlic before.
I’m in the same area as you and because of your articles I’m trying to grow alliums for the first time: potato onions and garlic. Do you use row covers to prevent pest damage on these alliums?
Hi Betty! We don’t use row cover when growing garlic or onions, and we (mostly) haven’t had pest problems with our alliums. Oe exception is black aphids that can build up on onion greens (and sometimes garlic greens) in the winter, but those can be blasted off with a water hose or killed with organic products like neem oil. Just because WE don’t use row cover for our alliums doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t. We’ve just taken a lazier approach with them because they’re quite cold-hardy and easy to grow here.
I missed harvesting the scapes at the right time. They’re now uncurled and sticking straight up and forming seedheads. I’m not interested in the seed. Just the bulbs underground. Should I cut off the seedheads now? Will my garlic be delayed in maturing, or decrease in quality since I left the scapes on?
Thanks
It sounds like your garlic plants are far enough along that it might not make much of a difference in bulb size whether you do or don’t remove your maturing scapes. If you’re not going to use them, it certainly can’t hurt to go ahead and remove them. One thing to note is that garlic bulbils are actually a really good edible part. At a certain point in development, you can pop/rub the individual bulbils off by hand and use them just as you would regular garlic cloves – almost identical in flavor but very interesting/unique texture, size, and shape.
Hello Aaron. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experience with organic farming. I grew up in the city all my life and now I want to try raising my own food. My wife and I agreed to get some raised beds for this purpose. The problem is that the soil in my backyard has high ratio of lead and arsenic (we got the soil tested in nearby universities). So, we want to buy organic soil (soil with little or no lead or arsenic).
Do you have any suggestions on where I can order this from? I looked at what Costco has but not sure about it.
Hi Cesar! Very sorry to hear about your contaminated soil. That’s tragic. Please don’t eat any plants whose roots may have made contact with the contaminated soil. In particular, plants like mustard greens can really pull a lot of lead into their cells (they’re actually used in bioremediation for that reason) and can then cause lead poisoning in people.
As far as soil for your raised beds, you basically just need good organic compost. Depending on how much you need, there’s probably a provider in your city that could drop a truck load off at your home much more affordably than you could buy it by the bag. However, if you’re only growing in a few small beds and/or you don’t have a local compost provider, it might make more sense to buy compost by the bag. A really good bag soil we’d recommend in that case is made by FoxFarm and can be purchased on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2GLwsAe
Thanks for your reply, Aaron. Actually, we do have raised beds but we have 5 of them. We will need 5 cubic yards of earth.
Looking at the FoxFarm product that you recommend, it is for “12 Dry Quarts”. Being there are 25.7 in a cubic foot, and there are 27 cubic feet in one cubic yard, it will be out of our budget. But, I will try some of that FoxFarm soil for smaller pots. I will continue to search for a provider in my home town. Thanks again.
Hi Aaron. It is taking a long time but our planter beds are constructed and we are getting the soil delivered within the week. We are very excited. I have a question regarding a “food grade sealant”, that I was considering, to fill in the spaces between the cedar wood boards of my planter boxes. There is a 1/4 inch gap between the boards, this is how they were constructed by the manufacturer, and we want to avoid soil from escaping. So, I want to cover those gaps. Someone I know suggested cardboard or this food grade sealant: https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Food-Grade-Silicone-Sealant/dp/B005XP5HO6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525731937&sr=8-1&keywords=food+grade+caulking. I plan to grown food in these planter boxes. Do you think this is safe to use?
Silicone *should* be fine, but as this Scientific American article attests, there’s not a huge amount of research on it yet: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talk-silicone-tally/. Cardboard also works, though some people warn about the glues used to hold the material together. (If you use cardboard, use brown, non-dyed cardboard.) Regardless, sounds like you’d be using so little of either material, that it’s not going to matter.
This simple tepache recipe uses pineapple skins that you might otherwise compost or throw in the trash. Best of all, it produces a delicious fermented probiotic beverage that tastes like pineapple kombucha.
We live at the base of the Appalachian Mountain in Ag Zone 7b. That means we get about four months of fairly cold weather and plenty of deep freezes.
Nevertheless, given our love of tropical fruits and obsession with gardening/farming, we’ve figured out how to grow things like citrus and bananas that would not normally grow in our climate zone.
Another tropical we’ve grown for the better part of a decade: pineapples.
It’s so rewarding to watch a pineapple top you planted and nurtured for two years produce its first fruit.
Once you’ve had a pineapple that’s fully ripened to golden perfection on the plant, it’s hard to go back to the grocery store version. With a perfectly ripe pineapple, the flavor is far sweeter, more nuanced, and more intense than the store bought alternative.
Excited to try the drink just canned a dozen “free” pineapples and am making two 1/2 gallon and 1 gallon of tepache guess I’ll have to share!
I was looking for haymakers Switzerland recipes when I saw this. Never heard of it so I clicked, and wow, what a treasure this page is! Gardening info on how to grow pineapples as well as a probiotic beverage recipe! We’ve been buying pineapples from the farmers market and I always feel bad composting the skins; just seems wasteful because of all the fruit attached. This is awesome. I have a half pineapple in my fridge right now and imma gonna go plant it and make this tepache. Five stars, great blog entry, it’s a treasure box of useful info.
Thanks so much! Yes, every pineapple can be a zero waste food that grows an infinite number of future pineapples. The skins can be used to make tepache, then composted. The tops can be used to grow more pineapples. Then the process repeats. Hope you enjoy your homemade tepache!
Waiting on my first batch.
One thing I noticed, this recipe compared to other tepache uses les of the fruit/skins. Some call for using ALL of the skins, not just a cup. Is that because their purpose is more the “Mexican beer” than a probiotic?
Hi Jennifer! Not sure what discrepancies might exist between our tepache recipe and others – or why. One thing: when you chop up the pineapple skins, it’s a lot smaller quantity to measure than it would be in large chunks. Obviously, the size of the pineapple will also determine the quantity of skin which is why we used exact measurements (cups) rather than telling people to use one pineapple skin. Any time we have skins from one of our ripe pineapples, this is our go-to recipe. Hope you enjoy it!
This simple, step-by-step guide will show you exactly how to grow shiitake mushrooms — a delicious gourmet mushroom with scientifically proven health benefits.
You may have noticed from our Instagram photos and other articles, that The Tyrant and I love mushrooms. That wasn’t always the case.
We used to think that mushrooms were just the bland white button variety (Agaricus bisporus) that we saw in the grocery store. The only other mushrooms we knew about were portobellos, which are actually just a more mature white button mushroom (yep, Agaricus bisporus too).
That all changed in 2010 when we got to know mycologist (mushroom scientist) Tradd Cotter. Since then, we’ve steadily grown in our knowledge of and passion for gourmet, medicinal mushrooms. Today, we grow our own mushrooms and wild-forage mushrooms as well.
As a result, we know that there are seemingly infinite varieties of delicious edible mushrooms that come in every imaginable size, shape, color, and flavor.
Gorgeous chanterelle and cinnabar mushrooms from a summer forage in the woods.
Some of our favorite mushrooms range in taste from the fruity & nutty chanterelles to maple syrup flavored parasols to savory & sublime morels.
And, just to give you a proper appreciation for the size that mushrooms can grow, the largest living organism on earth, is a 4 mile wide edible honey mushroom!
Fruiting Honey mushrooms in the woods behind our home.
Unless you live in the desert, chances are there are many edible mushroom varieties that grow wild in your yard or nearby woods.
Just as you shouldn’t get behind the wheel of a car without proper training/education, you should NEVER eat a mushroom (or anything else) that you’re not 100% sure you’ve correctly ID’d. Doing so could result in extreme illness or a slow and painful death.
Scared? Good!
Instead of letting your healthy fear of mushrooms keep you off of the mushroom “road” forever, why not just learn how to drive safely and then enjoy all the places these wonderful organisms will take you?
If you’re still not convinced that you should consider getting your “driver’s license” in mushrooms, you might be further swayed by knowing that many varieties of mushrooms have incredible medicinal benefits: they’re antiviral, antimicrobial, anticancer, antihyperglycemic, cardioprotective, and anti-inflammatory.
Want to keep reading? Good!
Many of our favorite gourmet mushrooms can’t be commercially cultivated since they are “mycorrhizal,” i.e. they form symbiotic relationships with the roots of plants.
Mycorrhizal mushrooms vastly expand the reach of a plant’s root system to help it draw in additional water and nutrients. In return, the plants provide the mushrooms with a constant source of carbohydrates via glucose and sucrose. It’s estimated that 95% of all plants are mycorrhizal.
So, when you’re walking through the woods and you see mushrooms, you’re seeing a very small portion of the actual organism — the visible fruiting body. Meanwhile, a massively complex, interconnected web of organisms are dancing invisibly underneath your feet.
A mushroom is to its fungal body what an apple is to a tree. Isn’t nature cool?
Not all mushrooms are mycorrhizal. Many of the best edible mushrooms in the world can easily be cultivated without needing living tree roots to associate with.
At Tyrant Farms, we’re currently growing oyster, shiitake, king stropharia, chicken of the woods, and blewit mushrooms, not to mention at least 15 native edible varieties we’ve enjoyed from our lawn and/or the woods behind our home that were here long before we were.
A delicious and very hard to find umbrella polypore.
This particular article is about a revered Asian delicacy with a wide range of medicinal properties to boot: the shiitake mushroom.
We’ve had some beautiful shiitake harvests over the years, and wow are they a delicious mushroom. As such, we wanted to let you know how to grow shiitake mushrooms, too!
Another cool DIY trick we’ll teach you below: you can supercharge your shiitake mushrooms with extra Vitamin D before eating them.
Keep reading to find out how!
A beautiful cluster of shiitake mushrooms from our logs. These are gill-side up and ready to be charged with Vitamin D in the sun.
The shiitake growing instructions below are very detailed, so they may look complicated at first glance. However, learning how to grow shiitake mushrooms is actually quite simple.
For reference, think about how complicated instructions for making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich look when you see them in writing. Same thing here, so don’t be intimidated!
Here’s the materials you’ll need to grow shiitake mushrooms in logs:
If you inoculate your shiitake logs in the middle of winter when it’s below freezing out, the spawn won’t be very active. The ideal time to inoculate shiitake logs is after freezing weather has passed in the spring.
You can continue to inoculate your shiitake logs throughout the warm months up until a couple months before your first freeze.
Once you’ve got your logs identified or cut, go ahead and order your shiitake mushroom plugs. Again, 100 shiitake plugs is enough to do two, 6″ diameter logs that are 3-4′ long. If you have more logs, order more shiitake plugs.
If you can’t use your shiitake plugs within a week of arrival, stick them in the fridge for up to 6 months.
Select two suitable living hardwood tree sections or tree branches that are 4-8 inches in diameter and 3-4 feet long. Oak is ideal, but other hardwoods are fine too.
100 mushroom plugs will adequately inoculate two logs with the above dimensions.
We used to recommend letting your logs “cure” for 2-4 weeks in a shaded, dry environment off of the dirt or forest floor (like a garage or shed floor). That’s because healthy, living trees have anti-fungal agents in their sap, so 2 weeks allows time for these compounds to dissipate.
However, our mycologist friend who originally made that recommendation to us years ago now says that he inoculates his logs immediately after cutting. Apparently, the mushroom spawn will “hang out and wait,” then start to inoculate the logs as soon as the wood’s anti-fungal compounds break down.
The longer you let your logs sit without inoculating them with your shiitake mushroom plugs, the more time you give fungal spores from other species to land on your logs and start to grow.
So don’t wait more than one month before inoculating your logs or your mushrooms will likely have increased competition.
Use a power drill with a 5/16″ drill bit attachment to drill offsetting, parallel rows of holes in each log. This should look like a diamond pattern.
Each hole should be about 1 1/4″ deep and no more than 3-4″ apart.
Ideally on a 3ft log, you should have 50 holes per log. On a 6ft. log, you should have 100 holes. We prefer the shorter 3ft logs because they’re much easier to carry and move.
Time for mushroom surgery! Wash your hands to make sure you’re not infecting your shiitake plugs with any competing fungi.
In a shaded area, separate your plugs into two piles of 50 plugs (assuming you’re using 3ft logs). Put the plugs on a clean surface, like a washed plate or a ziplock bag.
Put your logs on newspaper or plastic if you don’t want melted wax on the floor/ground. Insert your shiitake plugs into each hole. Immediately tap them in with your rubber mallet or hammer.
Make sure each shiitake plug is well set into the hole so that the surface of the plug is at or below the surface level of the log.
Don’t leave any drilled holes empty! If needed fill any empty holes with wax, or another species of mushroom will take hold there.
On a stove top, grill, or camp stove, heat your wax until fully melted.
Using a cheap paint brush, seal each cut end of the log completely with melted wax. Next, seal each hole thoroughly with wax so that each shiitake plug has its own tight little “house,” safe from other competing fungi that might come knocking.
Place your shiitake logs in a shady, moist location off of the ground but within reach of a garden hose. You don’t want too much sunlight to hit the logs, and you don’t want the logs touching the ground, which encourages other competing fungi to come aboard.
An old palette, bricks, or concrete blocks are good for this purpose. Ideally, you can also cover your logs with a breathable cloth (such as a shade cloth or weed blocker) to help keep out sun while allowing moisture to come through, Don’t use plastic since this will make your logs mold!
Once you have your logs stored, it’s time to think about their water needs…
To help remember to water your shiitake logs, we recommend setting up a recurring calendar event with an alert so that your technology can help you take care of your biology.
Under ideal conditions, your shiitake logs will be ready to fruit after 6 months, but it’s recommended that you wait at least 9-12 months before “initiating” them. “Initiating” them means forcing them to fruit and produce mushrooms.
It takes a lot of energy for the shiitake colony to produce mushrooms (like having a baby). Waiting to initiate them ensures that the colony is really strong.
Your logs will do a pretty good job of telling you when they’re ready: keep an eye on the cut ends of the logs that you sealed with wax, and if the surface area looks dark and mottled, then you know the colony has taken over the log and is ready to fruit.
Sometimes, under ideal conditions, your logs will go ahead and fruit on their own without your help.
Once you’ve determined that your shiitake logs are ready to be initiated, you’ll want to submerge them in water for 24 hours. You can use a bathtub, a pail, a contractor bag, a natural (clean) body of water, or whatever else you can come up with that’s big enough.
Ideally, you can use non-chlorinated water (rain, spring, boiled tap water, creek, etc), but we’ve found that water straight out of the hose will work fine if that’s your only option.
Since we originally wrote this article, we’ve built our own backyard duck pond for our egg-laying Welsh Harlequin ducks. As you can see here, our duck pond makes an ideal spot to soak/initiate our shiitake mushroom logs – although our ducks might disagree! We usually soak our shiitake logs overnight so our girls can enjoy log-free swimming during the day.
After 24 hours of soaking, place your logs back in a shady area and in an upright, vertical position. This insures that when mushrooms start forming, they don’t get dirty.
You’ll see “primordia” (baby mushrooms) form sometime between 2-14 days. Make sure the shiitake logs stay moist during this waiting period by watering them 1-2 times per day for about 5 minutes each time.
Soon, your whole log will be covered with beautiful shiitake mushrooms! There’s not a “right” size to eat them—you can pick them when they’re small or let them get huge.
We learned an incredibly cool, simple technique courtesy of famed mushroom expert, Paul Stamets, that literally allows you to harvest sunlight to produce Vitamin D.
Vitamin D3 is produced from animals and used in most D vitamin supplements. Vitamin D2 is the type of D vitamin found in mushrooms and plants.
As Stamets says, “Vitamin D is an essential vitamin that boosts the immune system and plays vital roles in human metabolism.”
Vitamin D is incredibly good for you, and you need it regularly to stay healthy, especially in the northern hemisphere or during the fall, winter, and early spring when there is less sunlight, preventing your body from producing its own Vitamin D.
How to grow shiitake mushrooms and turn them into Vitamin D powerhouses:
Once you’ve harvested your shiitake mushrooms, put them in a sunny location gill side up for 24-48 hours.
This has been proven to drastically boost the shiitake’s natural Vitamin D2 levels from around 100 IU/100 grams to nearly 46,000 IU/100 grams!
Now that you know how to grow shiitake mushrooms, we recommend you learn how to cook them! Not to worry.
There are infinite numbers of ways to cook your delicious and versatile shiitake mushroom. Just do a google search and start experimenting. We just made this easy shiitake mushroom green bean stir fry recipe courtesy of Jaden Hair over at Steamy Kitchen.
If you have too many shiitkae mushrooms to eat, don’t worry. Dry them and put them in an airtight container. Yes, the elevated Vitamin D levels will last for over one year – and you can also put dry shiitakes out in the sun gill-side up to charge back up!
We hope this How To Grow Shiitake Mushrooms Guide will inspire you to grow and enjoy your own shiitake mushrooms at home, year round!
Warning: Don’t ever eat anything that you can’t identify with 100% certainty. Also, it’s estimated that 1-2% of the population may experience an allergic reaction to mushrooms due to their body’s inability to digest them (they don’t have the necessary enzymes).
So, the first time you eat a shiitake or any other edible mushroom, just try a small amount. Wait 24-48 hours and if you haven’t experienced an allergic reaction, it’s safe to assume that your body is perfectly capable of digesting them.
Thanks for the detailed instructions. Approximately how much will each log produce? How long will they continue to produce?
When you put your mushrooms in the sun to harvest vitamin D, how long do you leave them out and do you need to be concerned about animals bothering them?
[…] way Feather Tresses ExtensionsA Review Of Solar Stirling PlantWho Says Calculators Can’t Be FunAn easy step-by-step DIY guide on how to grow shiitake mushrooms.Who Says Calculators Can’t Be FunAn easy step-by-step DIY guide on how to grow shiitake […]
[…] way Feather Tresses ExtensionsA Review Of Solar Stirling PlantWho Says Calculators Can’t Be FunAn easy step-by-step DIY guide on how to grow shiitake mushrooms.Who Says Calculators Can’t Be FunAn easy step-by-step DIY guide on how to grow shiitake […]
Red Shishito pepper soup is an easy and delicious way to use up a big harvest of ripe, red shishito peppers — or other varieties of thin-skinned, sweet red peppers.
If you’ve never grow shishito peppers before, you should remedy that predicament as soon as the next warm weather growing season heads your way.
Shishito peppers are a sweet-flavored Japanese heirloom. They offer a wrinkled texture and thin skin.
Great flavor, and I’m glad to use up all my red shishitos (I had four plants this year and couldn’t keep up!!). I highly recommend straining out the solids before serving; the seeds and tough skin were tough to get through after half a bowl, but once strained it was perfect. I also had to use a food processor, because when I tried my immersion blender the pan was too shallow and I painted my walls with soup haha. Thanks for the recipe!
Sorry about painting your walls, but glad you enjoyed the red shishito pepper soup! Thanks also for the straining tip in case other people want to go that route.
In this article, you’ll discover how to find, identify, grow, and cook chicken of the woods mushrooms.
Video below: a gorgeous chicken of the woods mushroom growing on an old oak tree in a residential neighborhood in Mt. Pleasant, SC. This is a Laetiporus sulphureus, a chicken of the woods subspecies that grows above ground on the sides of standing trees/stumps. As you’ll learn about in this article, other chicken subspecies grow out of underground tree roots.
*Note: Above video showing chicken of the woods mushrooms may not display or play if you run ad-blocking software – sorry! Temporarily disable and refresh to view.
Each summer in late July, we drive by one of our trusty chicken of the woods mushroom spots that has produced huge mushrooms at the same time each of the past 10+ summers.
Bingo! Peering at us from the base of a large, dying oak tree another large, orange/white-colored chicken of the woods will inevitably show up within the same general time period each summer.
In case you’ve never heard of them, chicken of the woods mushrooms are gourmet fungi with the same taste and texture as chicken. Yes, seriously!
I have just discovered a giant oak that I have been cutting on for firewood that is loaded w/ chicken of sea….Ive found them before but never like this…I estimate them to come in at aroound 30 lbs. I’m on my way to the woods …..thank you for your fine article and most helpful info….Norm
Wonderful! Hope you enjoy your chicken of the woods mushroom bonanza, Norm.
Would love to see pics of yours growing from plug spawn! From what I’m gathering they’re not too cooperative. When I do searches of other cultivated species like oysters or hen of the woods I can find endless pages with pics of them growing on multiple bags indoors or on neatly stacked logs outside, but I can’t find that with chicken of the woods.
Hi Lisa! We’re not growing chicken of the woods at the moment so I can’t share pics. We’ve been time-starved with an 18 month old toddler at home, COVID, etc, so our home mushroom cultivation has taken a temporary hiatus. However, next time we grow chicken of the woods, we’ll be sure to post some process photos. It’s also worth noting that if you spend a lot of time in the woods/hiking during the warm months, you’ll usually come across them somewhat regularly — and they’ll fruit at the same spot at roughly the same time year after year until the tree they’re eating is pretty far rotten. So even if you don’t cultivate them, you can usually find plenty to stock your freezer.
Amazing article but you should really not conceal the possibility for those mushrooms to grow on poisonous trees (yew, laburnum…). The mushrooms will also contain the poison from those trees and become very dangerous. ALWAYS check the tree species when you fnd this mushroom.
Thanks for your concern, Simon. I don’t think we concealed that issue. In the article, we stated the following: “Apparently, there are some chicken species that can even grow on eucalyptus and cedar. It’s not advisable to eat chickens growing on this type of wood since the fungi uptake compounds from those tree species that could cause you GI distress.” For clarity, I’ll update/edit to recommend not eating chicken of the woods on any tree species other than hardwoods.
That’s really cool but I’d hope you already knew they could tolorate them. I had a bite of a chicken of the woods my friend grew on I think straw and seed hulls or something like that, and while I liked it, a bit later in the night my lips puffed up pretty good. Very nearly went to the hospital to get an epi pen, but benadryl and a few more hours I was confidant it was going down on it’s own. Had I eaten a plate of them I would have been in for the ER room for sure though.
Yikes! Did you eat them raw or cooked? They should not be eaten raw. It’s pretty rare to have an allergic reaction to well-cooked mushrooms but it does happen. Regardless, glad you’re ok.
They were quite well cooked. Stir fried in some garlic butter and caramelized onions with a little green onion added at the end. yeah me too! I like living haha. too bad i thought they were pretty good. I had only had a couple bites because his initial yield was low. I think the next year he had a lot more growing with wood plugs in a log or something like that.
What you’re describing is a known effect from chicken of the woods! It’s not an allergy, it’s some kind of intolerance. That’s why good field guides are always saying to only try a few well-cooked bites of mushrooms if you’ve never eaten that kind before, then wait a day to make sure they agree with you.
Hello! We’ve just moved and found some chicken of the woods in our forest. If we want to harvest it but also make sure it’ll keep growing, do we need to leave some behind? Or will it come back next year (if the log has enough lignin left of course) if you cut off everything you can get to?
The part of the mushroom you see is the fruiting body of a much larger organism, similar to an apple on a tree. You can harvest the entire mushroom and not impact its ability to fruit again next year. As you mentioned, what will impact its fruiting potential is the amount of food the mushroom has left, so once it’s digested all the wood’s nutrients, the parent fungal organism will die.
Ah, okay, perfect. That’s kind of what I figured, but great to have confirmed, thank you!!
Your protein reference is not a great source as anybody can input information into my fitness pal. I’m personally trying to find a legitimate Source now but I thought you should know. It seems like it’s abnormally high in protein per this so I’d like to find a legitimate source.
Thank you. There’s not much out there on the net about their macronutrient content. We have a friend who is a mycologist, and will check to see if he knows the nutritional breakdown.
Fitness pal now lists the protein content as 1 gram…you should change your article or at least make note of the insufficient data, otherwise this is HIGHLY misleading.
P.s. love the recipe! and fried chicken of the woods 🙂
Thanks for the heads up! When we originally published this article, there was virtually no info out there on this topic. Thankfully, there’s been recent solid research published analyzing chicken of the woods from a nutritional standpoint. We just crunched the numbers from a 2017 research paper and used that info to update the article accordingly:
According to a 2017 analysis published in the journal Pharmacogn 100 gm (dry weight) of chicken of the woods has the following nutritional breakdown:
15 gm protein
70.9 gm carbohydrates
2.1 gm fat
5.8 gm ash (“ash” refers to the total quantity of vitamins and minerals in a food substance)
5.8 gm fiber
This was a great post. Thank you. It was very informative. I enjoyed reading it
Renny: Yes, you can grow Chicken of the Woods in your garden – we grow them in ours. You’ll need to order Chicken of the Woods “plugs” (they resemble miniature corks) that are inoculated with the mushroom. We got ours from Mushroom Mountain (http://www.mushroommountain.com/). Whoever you get them from should provide detailed instructions on how to grow them. With this type of mushroom, you basically drill plug-sized holes in a hardwood log that’s been cut within the past two weeks and put your mushroom plugs in the holes, cover them with melted wax and wait about 6+ months before you get your first fruiting. You’ll need to be a bit careful with Chicken of the Woods since it is a saprobic mushroom, meaning it quite literally “eats” trees, both living and dead. A healthy tree can fend them off, but if you have a treasured old tree near your garden that is a bit sick of has an open wound on it, the spores of the Chicken of the Woods will likely find it and start doing their work. If the mushroom was named based on its function in nature, it would probably be the “coyote of the woods” not the “chicken of the woods.” Hope that helps!
Yes, hickory nuts are edible and delicious — although hard to crack. In this article, we’ll share a simple and tasty hickory nut recipe that can be made without separating the hickory nut from the shell.
We have a number of large trees in our yard and border woods here at Tyrant Farms. As gardeners, we once viewed these trees with scorn since they block light and take nutrients from our annual food crops. However, as we became more adept foragers, we learned to see these native trees in a much different light…
For instance, we used to regard the huge white oak acorns that fall all over our back yard as annoyances. Now, we use our acorns to make delicious, nutritious acorn flour that we eat throughout the year.
Those giant sun-blocking tulip poplars? They’re the primary source of the majority of local honey in our area. Also, their root systems are symbiotically engaged with one of our favorite mushrooms: the tulip morel, which fruits for about one month per year in the early spring.
As it turns out, nearly every tree in our woods not only supports a huge variety of life (above and below ground), they either directly or indirectly provide an abundance of delicious edible food for us as well. Another tree that fits this description: hickories (Carya spp.).
Loaded! A giant hickory tree full of hickory nuts in our back yard.
It just so happens that we have a massive hickory tree that drops nuts the size of golf balls in some of our backyard garden beds. Thankfully, we’ve never been hit, but a few of those falling hickory nuts have smashed squash and melon plants.
At first, we didn’t know quite what to make of our hickory nuts… We’d peel off the thick green/brown husk, and the shell on the inside was thick and rock-hard.
An unopened hickory nut freshly fallen from a hickory tree in early fall.
Hickories are very closely related to pecans. In fact, pecans are a species of hickory.
Hickories are more distantly related to walnuts. However, relative to these other two nuts, hickory nuts shells are incredibly hard — and hard to crack open. (*There is some variability in shell hardness between different species of hickories.)
No matter how we’ve tried to crack our hickory nuts, the shells always shatter into small pieces, making the clean extraction of the nutmeat impossible. Normal nut crackers are of no use — a hammer is the only instrument we have that’s strong enough to crack a hickory nut.
The small hickory nut pieces inside a shattered shell provide a tantalizing taste of the goodness inside… Hickory nuts’ flavor profile is somewhere between a pecan and a black walnut.
A pile of cracked hickory nuts used to make this hickory nut ambrosia recipe, shells and all.
(*Note: Not all species of hickory trees make good edible nuts. As their name implies ‘bitternut’ hickories (Carya cordiformis) produce very bitter nuts that are not fit for consumption.)
Enter our friend, Mr. Evan Tishuk into our hickory nut story…
During a spring visit, Evan looked at our hickory tree and exclaimed, “Oh, wow, you have to let me know when your hickories are ripe! I have an old recipe for making a really good drink with hickory nuts.” He called the drink “hickory nut ambrosia.”
Yes, “ambrosia” refers to the go-to drink of the Greek gods. Our interest immediately piqued at Evan’s description. The Tyrant also liked the idea of summoning Zeus to show him a thing or two about being the boss of, well, everything.
With the onset of fall, our hickory nuts began to drop. The Tyrant and I collected some of the early nuts to have a go at making hickory nut ambrosia with some general guidance from Evan.
It’s fairly easy to pull off the outer husk on a hickory nut. However, due to the extremely hard yet brittle shell, it’s very difficult to access and cleanly remove the nut meat inside.
We’re very glad we did, because hickory nut ambrosia is one incredibly tasty, unique beverage that also happens to be super easy to make. Yes, you use both the hickory nut shell and nutmeat, no separation required!
The Tyrant and I now have yet another delicious treat to look forward to from our forest garden each fall. If you have access to good hickory nuts and a hammer, you will too!
(In case you were wondering, Zeus was a no-show, which we attribute to his fear of The Tyrant.)
Once the inside nut is removed, you can save the green or brown hickory husks for smoking meats or for composting.
There is a bit of a debate in the gardening community as to whether it’s a good idea to add hickory husks to your compost since they contain a small amount of juglone. Juglone is an organic compound (5 hydroxy-1, 4-napthoquinone) that can stunt or kill other plants.
Can you compost hickory nut hulls? While we save our hickory husks for smoked foods, our best guess is it’s perfectly fine to compost them as long as your compost isn’t just a giant pile of hickory nut husks and leaves. The concentration of juglone should be very small in your finished compost and would likely be broken down by microbes during the composting process.
However, Purdue University Extension notes that there are high concentrations of juglone in the nut husks of trees that produce juglone, particularly black walnuts. If you’re worried about juglone in your compost damaging your garden plants, just dump your hickory husks back under your hickory trees rather than putting them in your compost pile.
As mentioned previously, not all hickory trees (or hickory nuts) are created equally.
Certain types of pignut and bitternut hickories are bitter-flavored to the point of inedibility. We’re fortunate to have a very tasty variety of red hickory (Carya Ovalis), growing in our yard.
Here’s a helpful Hickory ID Guide from Vanderbilt University that can help you determine what type of hickory tree you have.
Are any hickory nuts poisonous? No hickory tree species in the US produce nuts poisonous to people. As mentioned above, some hickory subspecies produce nuts that taste bad, but they’re not poisonous.
“Good” hickory trees will produce nuts with have a pecan-black walnut flavor profile.
The smell of hickory nut ambrosia as it’s brewing on your stove does indeed seem divine, and the taste is every bit as good as its nose.
Taste tip: After you’ve cooked and sifted your hickory nut ambrosia, it’s especially delicious if the following ingredients are added before serving:
The recipe below is slightly amended from the original version our friend Evan gave us, and you can amend our version of the recipe to your own tastes as you see fit.
Warm hickory nut ambrosia with milk and maple syrup on a cold fall night.
A simple hickory nut recipe you can make without separating the nutmeat from the shell. You'll enjoy this seasonal drink each fall!
Using your hands or a dull knife, separate the outer husk from the inner shell (they should come off easily).
Cut off a square piece of thick cardboard from an old box (2×2 size should be fine), then grab a hammer, and a bowl. Bring these 3 items + your hickory nuts to a flat hard outdoor surface (a concrete driveway is ideal, especially if you want your neighbors to think you’re nuts, pun intended). Place one hickory nut at a time on the cardboard, then fold the cardboard over so that it covers the nut (like a hickory nut cardboard sandwich). Smash each nut into smallish pieces with a hammer (you don’t have to pulverize them, quartered pieces is plenty small). Once you get the hang of doing one nut at a time, you can graduate to doing a few at a time to speed things up.
Place the smashed hickory nut pieces—both the shell and nut pieces together—into your bowl (both the nutmeat and the shell go into your ambrosia). You’ll occasionally get a bad nut that is black inside, so make sure to look at each cracked nut before you add it to your “good nut” bowl. You might even find a small white worm (weevil) that you’ll probably want to remove as well.
Take your bowl of hickory nuts and shell pieces and pour them into a measuring bowl. Whatever the quantity of your hickory nut pieces, you’ll need to have about 3 times more water than nuts in your simmering pot. So if you have 1 cup of hickory pieces, you’ll add 3 cups of water.
Simmer your hickory nuts in a covered pot, stirring vigorously once every 10 minutes or so to help break apart the nuts and unlock more flavor. “Simmering” = a low-medium temperature setting on your stove that brings the mixture to just below boiling. After about 30+ minutes, remove the lid and simmer the hickories for 10-15 more minutes to help the flavors concentrate as the water evaporates. *We’ve removed the lid and simmered them for up to 2 additional hours and have found the ambrosia to be even richer/more flavorful than the 45 minute version. If you have the time, we suggest cooking longer for a more concentrated flavor.
You’ll notice that a lot of the nut pieces will separate from the shell when you’re simmering your hickories. So, once you’re all done simmering your hickories (after 40-45 minutes), skim these little nuggets of goodness off of the surface with a spoon or ladle. Most of the flavor will already be drained out of these hickory nuggets, but they’re still good to add to oatmeal, pumpkin bread, or any number of other recipes. Now, pour your entire pot (hickory nuts, shells, and ambrosia) through a pasta colander, strainer, or cheese cloth.
Before serving, add milk and maple syrup, then stir to incorporate. Or let each person add milk and maple syrup to their cups according to their taste preferences.
We hope you enjoy hickory nut ambrosia with friends or family on a cool fall or winter night!
This is a delightful seasonal recipe that we look forward to each fall and we hope you will too.
I’ve found that if you boil the solids longer than 3 hours it gets increasingly bitter. The sweet spot seems to be between 2-3 hours.
Glad you enjoyed your hickory nut ambrosia, Richard, and thanks for the tip on duration sweet spot!
[…] Hickory Nut Ambrosia Recipe […]
[…] 1/2 cup water (or hickory ambrosia) […]
This is the story of the Quacker Box, the first duck house at Tyrant Farms. If you’re trying to figure out how to build a duck house for your backyard flock, you need to read this article!
During the first week of September, many people around the world (or at least in our household) celebrate “Semana del Tirano.” In case you don’t know, Semana del Tirano is the birthweek festival honoring the beautiful, revered, and very tiny benevolent tyrant, Susan von Frank (the namesake of Tyrant Farms).
Susan let me know during the months leading up to her festival that she “had very big plans for me” during Semana del Tirano. She loves milking every drop of indulgence out of her birthweek that she can, and I admittedly derive a great deal of pleasure from pampering her.
Our birthday and holiday gifts to each other tend to be a shared experience (like a trip) or co-creating something that we need and will use for a long time (like a new fruit tree in the garden).
As you probably know, if it weren’t for deadlines and “last minutes,” 99% of everything would never get done. We knew that building a duck house was a big project, so we’d been putting it off…
We needed a deadline, so we made the birthweek of The Tyrant the deadline for when we’d have our first duck house built.
The Quacker Box started off as a two story monstrosity that was supposed to house our new kittens on the top level and our yet-to-be-acquired egg laying ducks on the bottom level. (Somebody recently abandoned two kittens in our yard, that we decided to adopt.)
In case you don’t know, many breeds of ducks lay large, delicious, nutrient-dense eggs. Ducks can also lay more eggs (and larger eggs) than chickens. (See our article ducks vs chickens for an in-depth comparison of the two species.)
The year was 2012, and backyard ducks were relatively unheard of at that time. So there weren’t many good ideas to be found on the internet about how to build a duck house for a backyard flock.
That meant we were going to have to design a duck house from scratch. Thankfully, The Tyrant is a design whiz, so we were able to quickly whip up CAD designs for a duck house that would accommodate our ducks on the bottom and our cats on the top.
Our Phase I duck house kitten house castle thingie plan that we rendered in CAD. (By “we” I mean Susan, and by “Susan” I mean The Tyrant.)
After getting the materials necessary for our initial cat & duck house design, we started construction early on a Saturday morning. After nearly two full days of work, a lot of bickering, re-CADing, and the ingestion of more alcohol than we typically consume, we had constructed the shell of the beast.
It was so heavy that we could barely lift it, but we eventually managed to get it in place between two lettuce beds next to our house in the back yard. Then disaster struck.
As we removed the sawdust on the chop saw, we noticed that it was set a few degrees off from 90 degrees. Yes, ladies and gents, this means that we’d created our very own Leaning Duck Tower of Pisa in our back yard. We finished off the night with a spattering of profanity and a few more glasses of wine.
Bob and Oscar von Kitten (unimpressed) inspecting the Phase 1 kitten-duck house.
The failed Phase 1 duck house stayed there, untouched, for the next 6 weeks while we tried to ignore it. As Semana del Tirano approached, a new motivating wind blew into our sails. Thus began the planning of the Phase 2 duck house…
Our morale was further boosted when we looked out the window during a bad rainstorm and noticed that the white clematis flowers on our fence were blooming in the shape of a duck. Quackleus, God of Ducks, was clearly giving us a sign of approval.
It’s a sign! We need to build a new duck house.
No two story, leaning, monstrosity would be built this time. We’d keep things simple: a very basic 3-walled structure, a simple shed roof and a run.
Yeah. Simple and easy.
The simple, humble beginnings of the Phase II Duck House, aka the “Quacker Box.”
We deconstructed the Phase 1 beast, and hauled its skeleton into our garage to make sure the wood would stay dry throughout construction. For a few nights in a row, we’d head to the garage until 2-3am to work on Phase 2 construction.
After a lot of bickering, pad sketching, and (of course) wine drinking, the Quacker Box emerged just in time for the conclusion of Susan’s birthday festivities. Somehow, between concept and completion, the Quacker Box received a considerable design/build upgrade package.
The Tyrant joyfully approved of the final craftsman style Quacker Box (pictures and detailed duck house plans below).
The new Quacker Box duck house features:
click the picture above to open a larger version of the image
click the image to view a printable pdf (opens in a new window)
click the image to view a printable pdf (opens in a new window)
*As you can see in the image notes, the floor of our duck house has hardware cloth underneath it. However, we put pine shavings on top of the hardware cloth to prevent duck foot injuries. Prolonged exposure to concrete or wire can cause foot damage.
Each night before we put our ducks up, we cover any poopy areas with a bit more pine shavings. Eventually, once the pine shavings get about 1′ deep, we dig them out and add them to compost, put them around our fruit trees, etc.
Once we had our duck house all ready to go, it was time to get actual ducks!
What breed of duck did we choose? We got Welsh Harlequin ducks from Metzer Farms. Welsh Harlequins are a very social, friendly breed that are also good egg layers.
Do you have your duck house ready to go? If so, here are next steps and articles you should read:
… and even more duck articles from Tyrant Farms!
We hope this article helps you build a safe, secure, and attractive duck house for your future flock!
Hey! We wanted to let you know that after 10+ years with our original two Quacker Boxes, we decided to upgrade to the duck coop of our dreams, affectionately named Waddle Inn.
Waddle Inn, our new duck coop.
Want to come over to see a video tour, design tips, and step-by-step construction photos of the Waddle Inn duck coop? Hope to see you there!
Your duck house looking amazing! Is there a door to close up the opening between the house and run, or is this always open? Thanks for the info.
Thanks for the duck house compliment! No, there isn’t a door between the laying area/coop and the open run area. The ducks go in and out as they please. However, no matter how cold or windy it is outside at night, they still prefer to be out in the open area for whatever reason. They do typically use the protected area to make a communal nest which they all lay eggs in, which makes egg collection easy in the morning.
I may need to become a Tyrant so I can get a duck house on Victoria Day!! I noticed at the beginning of your post you were including an area for your kitty cats. But when you finished, I didn’t see a kitty area. So where do your little 4 pawed creatures reside?
That initial plan was abandoned and we ultimately ended up with the Quacker Box duck coop you see in the final images. One of our cats disappeared about 4 years ago (coyotes?) so we only have one now. Due to the destruction cats cause to wildlife, we’d prefer not to have any cats. However, since we decided to keep the kittens when someone dropped them off on our doorstep years ago, Bob the cat is ours until the day he crosses over to the great milk bowl.
looks like you need to build a Catio next 😉 saves the wildlife and kitties are happy outside too! Thanks for sharing your design. I”m excited to get some ducks!
Ha! Thanks, Vitalia. Best of luck as you get going with your ducks.
HI, how large (just general measurements) would you make the coop for 6 ducks? What size are you thinking for your larger flock? Also, I’m curious how often you move it since you put wheels on it. Thanks again!
Hi Liane! Sorry for our slow response. The general rule is 2-6 square feet of space per duck inside their coop/duck house, with some variance based on breed size. You could get away with 2-3′ per duck for Welsh Harlequins or Runners, but that would be too small for larger breeds like Pekins or Silver Appleyards. So for 6 small-medium sized ducks, you’d want a coop that had a MINIMUM interior square footage of 12′. Ideally, it could be more spacious.
As far as moving our duck coops: even though they’re both mobile, we don’t move them at all anymore. That’s partly because our backyard is packed full of perennial plants so there’s nowhere else to move them, and also because our ducks associate that spot as their home for the night and we don’t want to change things up on them. Having a mobile coop does make cleaning and repairs easier, but it’s not essential.
We coop 5 ducks in there at night right now, but it would ideally be a little larger for that many ducks. We’re building a new coop for a larger flock soon. You can use this basic design and just scale it up depending on how many ducks you need to coop.
Due to the sheer number of large perennial fruit and nut trees in our back yard, our duck coops don’t move anymore because we’d have to cut down trees to move them. However, when they did move, we used wheels we got from Lowes which basically had small, sturdy ~10″ axels built into them. We drilled a hole through the foundation corners of our duck houses and pushed the individual wheel axels through, then added nuts & bolts to the other side to hold them in place while moving the duck coops. Does that make sense and answer your question?
I have two Pekin ducks that spend their day on the pond but do not want to come into their quack house. How do you make them want to spend the night in their coop?
Hi Rob! Somewhat depends on how tame they are and what your relationship is with them. Ducks herd really well with sticks if they’re accustomed to you being around them – it seems to be somewhat hard-wired into the brains of domesticated ducks. Any time we want to get our ducks to go in a certain direction, we just use a long thin stick to herd them that direction. You could set up temporary fencing that funneled them into their duck house at first. However, if your ducks don’t let you anywhere near them, this approach might not work. Treats help too – putting a bowl of water with greens in it + bowl of food in the coop will get them to start making a positive association with it.
More than anything, it’s important to realize that ducks like a routine. It might be hard getting them to go into their coop at night at first, but once that’s what they’re accustomed to doing, it will be a piece of cake. After 7 years, we *still* have to heard our ducks in at night (unlike chickens which put themselves up), probably because the nightly routine they’re used to is their humans telling them when it’s time for bed, otherwise they stay out drinking [water] and partying. And probably because they also enjoy seeing us have to work for it. 😛
Hi! Have the plans been made available for download/purchase?
Hi Noah! Unfortunately, we never converted the duck house to a plan that people could use as a blueprint and materials list. Hopefully, there’s enough info in the article to make it somewhat easy for you to replicate if you’d like. Feel free to ask us any specific questions as you get going if we can be of help.
We just got our 1st ducklings and I LOVE the design of your Quacker Box. I’m going to try and get my husband to build one just like it—I hope you don’t mind us emailing you if we have questions about your design. Thanks for the great pictures.
I love your design I’m looking to make something similar for my ducks.
How long is the quacker box? 9 feet?
Thank you.
We just got the photos properly inserted back into the blog post. Sorry about that! The only CAD we currently have is the original version of the house that we ended up taking apart (see image about half way up in the post). We actually ended improvising most of the final house and never got it into CAD. It’s been on our ever-growing to-do list for over a year now, but we’ve just never gotten around to it. Take a look at the bottom image (with multiple angles of the house) and see if that helps you? If you have any questions about the design/construction, we’d certainly be happy to help you. Email: aaron at tyrantfarms dot com. Thanks!
Thank you so much! I am so glad I found you guys! I’m currently working on a project for my local town farm to get 4 Welsh Harlequins, I actually have 6 at home. It won’t be until spring though, and I can’t wait to see your next update on your ducks! One question though: Can this comfortably fit all four of your ducks? Thanks!
-Charlie
[…] Quacker Box is glad to finally have inhabitants. We’re still a few months off from eggs, but we’re […]
LOVELY IDEA, SO GLAD YOU DID ALL THE DESIGN WORK FOR ME, CAN’T TELL YOU HOW MUCH IT IS APPRECIATED, IT’S JUST WHAT I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR. GOING TO PRINT THIS & HAVE MY GRANDSON BUILD ME ONE. Ducks will be good for my garden. Thought about chickens first, but will eat eggs either way. Thanks so much for this.
Bonnie: You’re quite welcome! Please send us a photo of your duck house and ducks when you’re done or share it on our facebook page! https://www.facebook.com/TyrantFarms
Find out how to make pawpaw passionfruit sorbet using two delicious fruits native to North America: Asimina triloba and Passiflora incarnata.
We’ll get to the details of this amazing pawpaw passionfruit sorbet recipe in a moment, but first we’d like to share some thoughts…
One of the many reasons we love gardening and foraging is because of the new culinary adventures it affords us. In our garden and surrounding forests, each month and season brings forth new and interesting foods, most of which we’d never be able to find at grocery stores.
Chicken of the woods, indigo milk caps, and king stropharia mushrooms; hickory nuts and acorn flour; heirloom watermelons; ground cherries and garden huckleberries; unusual varieties of citrus... By growing and foraging many of the foods we eat, we get exercise, ecological education, and meals unrivaled by any local restaurant.
Two other delicious and native seasonal treats we look forward to in late summer each year: pawpaws and passionfruit.
About a decade ago, one of our friends told us about a native fruit that looked like a mango and tasted like mango-banana-cream. It was supposedly called a “pawpaw” and it was the largest native edible fruit in North America.
What? How could this be true? Surely, we’d have known about this magical fruit or encountered it on a hike. It must be a folk legend, like Big Foot or Lizard Man.
As it turns out, the legend is in fact real. Pawpaws (Asimina triloba) exist, they can be the size of mangoes, and their taste is amazing. What do pawpaws taste like? Mango banana custard – yes, the legend had that part right too.
Once we knew what pawpaw trees looked like, we realized we had in fact seen them in the wild. The trees are abundant in the low lying flood plains at our favorite morel mushroom foraging spots, and we see them blooming in March when we’re out foraging morels.
We don’t go back to those spots in late summer when pawpaws are actually producing fruit since morels are long-since gone. However, now that we know pawpaws grow there, well…
Pawpaw development by month in our area. Left: flowers form in March. Center: fruit set happens in April with each flower potentially producing a cluster of fruit. Right: a cluster of unripe but nicely developing fruit in early June.
After tasting our first pawpaws years back, we decided we had to incorporate these native wonders into our forest garden. We now have about ten pawpaw trees growing.
Perfectly ripened pawpaws just collected from the ground under our trees – the fruit falls off the tree when ripe (or comes off with a gentle shake). They also have a wonderful, sweet fragrance when ripe.
The skin of pawpaw fruit is slightly bitter and much thinner than mango skin. To remove the fresh fruit, cut it in half and use the skin as a bowl, scooping out the soft flesh by the spoonful. The large seeds are very easy to separate from the flesh. (Use those seeds to grow more pawpaw trees!)
To take a deeper dive into growing and processing pawpaw fruit, be sure to also read:
Other than eating pawpaws fresh, you cam make them into breads, puddings, popsicles, adult beverages, smoothies… experiment as you see fit.
We recently had friends over for dinner and made our pawpaws into an unforgettable summer dessert: pawpaw passionfruit sorbet. We also have an abundance of delicious native passionfruit (Passiflora incarnata) growing in our forest garden, and their fruit begins ripening in late summer at the same time as pawpaws.
We thought the tangy flavor of passionfruit would round out the sweet custardy flavor of pawpaws, thus this pawpaw passionfruit sorbet recipe was born!
Mmm! The tangy deliciousness of our native passionfruit makes an excellent addition to pawpaw sorbet.
We also picked a fresh variegated lemon from one of our citrus trees and made a simple syrup from our makrut lime leaves to add more citrusy punch, but you don’t have to have fresh lemons of makrut lime leaves to make this recipe. We’ll provide common alternatives in the recipe below.
We grow citrus trees in pots since it can’t survive in our Ag zone unprotected in the winter. Makrut lime leaves are a popular flavoring in various Asian cuisines and the fruit has the most intense flavor of any citrus we’ve ever tried.
The final sorbet was quite a hit and demands for public publication soon followed. We dare not let our friends (or you) down, so here’s our pawpaw passionfruit sorbet recipe for all to enjoy!
Pawpaw passionfruit sorbet is a delicious seasonal dessert made from native fruit: pawpaws (Asimina triloba) and passionfruit (Passiflora incarnata).
Separate seeds and remove flesh from enough pawpaws to make 1 cup of fruit pulp. Put pulp in fridge to chill.
Remove outer skin from ripe passionfruit and place seeds in saucepan with 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup cane sugar. Cook on medium low heat (not boiling) for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, strain seeds, and place in fridge or ice bath until chilled. *Also note that if your pawpaw pulp is chunky, you can pour your finished passionfruit mixture into the pawpaw pulp and blend it with an emersion blender or food processor before chilling it in the fridge.
To make the makrut lime leaf simple syrup: dice three fresh leaves from a makrut lime tree (also called "kefir" limes, but that's a culturally offensive term). Place in saucepan with 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup cane sugar. Cook on medium low heat for about 15 minutes (not boiling), stirring occasionally, Remove from heat, strain leaves, and place in fridge or ice bath until chilled. If you don't have makrut lime leaves, use a heaping teaspoon of lemon zest to make a simple syrup with 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup cane sugar.
Once all ingredients are chilled, stir together in mixing bowl (or stir them all together before chilling). Use food processor or emersion blender to get smooth, uniform consistency.
Add ingredients to Cuisinart sorbet/ice cream maker, and let the sorbet come together for 20-30 minutes, or until ideal sorbet consistency achieved. (Exact time may vary by volume made and type of sorbet maker used.) Serve immediately once the desired consistency has been reached, or store in freezer and serve whenever you're ready.
We hope you love this seasonal sorbet recipe made from native fruit as much as we do!
KIGI,
We know what you’re thinking: “ground cherry preserves? I eat ALL my ground cherries the second they drop on the ground!”
In case you’ve never heard of them, these are ground cherries (Physalis pruinosa). These little physalis fruits made us fall in love with heirloom seeds year ago. Their husks turn brown and they fall to the ground when ripe. The husks are pulled back in this image, and should be removed entirely before eating.
This recipe for ground cherries preserves is delicious! I especially like that the recipe size can be changed, depending on the quantity of ground cherries available. I did downsize the recipe because we did not have 5 lbs 6 oz of ground cherries. I think there might be a glitch in this feature, because whenI used this feature to reduce the quantity of 1/2 cups – each quantity of ground cherries has 6 oz. in it. For example to make seven 1/2 cups, the quantity of ground cherries listed is “4.38 lbs 6 oz fresh ground cherries.” Four 1/2 cups calls for 2.5 lbs 6 oz fresh ground cherries. Also as the recipe size is adjusted the quantity of water in the ingredient list changes HOWEVER step #1 of the recipe instructs “..then add 1/2 cup water…” It should instead say ‘then add water’ and the appropriate amount of water can be added from the ingredient list, depending on the quantity of preserves made. These recipe fixes may increase reader’s success with these preserves.
Thanks again for a very flavorful recipe! I will definitely make this again.
Thanks MJ, and glad you loved these ground preserves as much as we do! Thanks also for the tips on reducing the recipe amounts.
love the recipe, I hadn’t considered brandy and vanilla.
I do have to mention that the unripe green berries (and husks) contain solanine and other solanidine alkaloids, which cab be lethal – be sure to only eat the ripe ones!
Thanks, Steve! Yes, the flavors of brandy and vanilla seem to pair perfectly with cooked ground cherries. Glad you enjoyed this recipe! And, no, people definitely should not eat unripe green ground cherries. Thankfully, they don’t taste good at that point anyway so there’s not much incentive.
what kind of pectin did you use…theres powdered, liquid, etc.
Sorry for any confusion, Nancy. We used pectin powder.
I used to live with an elderly lady who canned ground cherries (which I just love) but they would stay whole, tDo you have any advice on how to can cherries and keep the whole? I would really appreciate it!
That’s really interesting! Not sure how you can cook (or even ferment) ground cherries or any other fruit without the fruit popping and the juices coming out. When you say the fruit was whole, do you mean it was chunky like a preserve or do you mean it was 100% intact?
Sadly this didn’t set at all for me.
I feel like I wasted 5.6 pounds of fruit.
Oh, no! So sorry to hear this Colleen. Can you help us figure out what went wrong to avoid any future negative outcomes? Couple questions:
1) Did you cook the ingredients down for an hour as the instructions suggest? That really cooks out a lot of the water and thickens up the preserves even without the pectin and sugar added.
2) Did you add the pectin then boil then add the sugar? Sometimes people add the sugar before the pectin or add them at the same time, which can cause it not to set properly. We’ve tried to really clarify that point in the instructions.
Lastly, if your preserves are too runny for your preferences, don’t give up! When we’ve accidentally made runny preserves or jams in the past, we’ve been able to “save” them using this method: https://foodinjars.com/blog/canning-101-how-to-save-runny-jam/.
Hi! Could you substitute the sugar for honey. We follow a paleo diet so we don’t use sugar. Thanks!
Hi Ruth! We’ve never made preserves with honey so can’t say for certain. I will say that from what I’ve read in various research, there’s virtually no difference with how your body processes honey vs cane sugar. Neither is terribly good for you, so should be used in small amounts. Raw honey does have some unique health benefits, but cooking could diminish/degrade those. One possibility is to go sugar or honey-free and just add something like stevia instead, but you’d need to cook the ingredients way down to thicken them or use some other setting agent that doesn’t require sugar to work.
Hi Sarah! They’re Physalis pruinosa. They are a native plant, but we’ve never actually seen them growing in the wild where we live in Upstate South Carolina. There are plenty of native night shades that are poisonous, so do be very careful with what you eat and make 100% certain you’ve properly ID’d it.
Ever wonder what percent of a tomato is water? So have we!
As we’ve written about before in this recipe, we dehydrate lots of tomatoes each summer to use as sun-dried tomatoes throughout the year. Our favorite way to use dried tomatoes is on homemade wood-fired pizzas in our cob oven.
For some odd reason, our parents have the impression that we like good food. We have no idea why. 🙂
Thus, whenever a birthday or holiday rolls around, the majority of the presents we get are edible. For instance, at Christmas, we were gifted a 5 pound bag of organic Royal White quinoa from Food to Live By. We liked it so much, we’ve since bought several more bags.
This green tomato marmalade recipe is one of the most delicious summer recipes we make. The result is thick, sweet and smoky preserves that are versatile – and absolutely AMAZING served as an appetizer atop a creamy cheese (like brie) and crackers.
Mmm! Green tomato marmalade atop manchego cheese and crackers.
Everybody knows that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. But what do you do when life gives you unripe, green tomatoes?
This marmalade is so delicious! I made some last season. I have a bag of frozen whole green tomatoes – do you think these would work in the recipe? They will likely release their water once thawed.
Thanks Sandy! As for whether or not frozen green tomatoes would work in this green tomato marmalade, our guess is yes… But maybe not quite as well as unfrozen green tomatoes? If you try, do you mind checking back in to let us know how yours turns out? Thank you!
Hello!
I made the jam with my frozen tomatoes over the weekend and it turned out good. But, had I never made it last season and tasted how delicious the original was, I would never know what I was missing. The original recipe had a better color and consistency using fresh green tomatoes. I’ll always use the fresh tomatoes going forward. Thanks for your feedback and for developing such an amazing jam recipe!
Thanks for your feedback, Sandy! Thanks also for letting us (and other readers) know that using frozen green tomatoes doesn’t produce quite as good a final marmalade/jam as using fresh green tomatoes. Next year, we hope you make a batch as good as you remember using fresh green tomatoes!
Greeting from Australia. First time tomato grower and this looks like a great idea for my excess green tomatoes for a bulk batch Christmas gift. Quick clarification …do you include the orange peel or just the fruit/pulp..or both?
Hi Clem! Sorry for any confusion. In the recipe card instructions, we state “keep skin remove seeds sliced as thinly as possible, ideally with a mandolin.” By “skin” we mean peel. So other than removing the seeds, you’ll be using the whole orange, peels and all. Enjoy!
I stumbled across your recipe searching for ways to use green tomatoes. I was intrigued so ran with it. I’m so happy I did. This is Amazing! It’s a simple recipe with minimal hands on work. It’s sweet, tangy, smokey with a touch of spiciness due to an ingredient change. I only had hot smoked paprika so used one tablespoon then used ancho Chile powder for the second tablespoon. I also substituted spiced rum for the brandy as I didn’t have brandy on hand.
Thank you for taking the time to develop the recipe and for sharing. This will be made every year!
Wonderful, thanks Tawnia! Glad you’re enjoying green tomato marmalade as much as we do. Thanks also for the ingredient substitution tips in case other people want to make a spicy version.
We cook our green tomato marmalade down for a long time until it’s super concentrated and thick.
Sorry, Lorna. This is a recipe we make almost every year and it’s always a big hit with our family and friends. As mentioned in the article, the key to the recipe turning out well (and not watery) is to cook it waaaay down — probably by about 75% volume — for several hours. Then it’s very thick and the flavors are incredibly concentrated. Perhaps you could try putting yours back on the stove to reduce it down further?
This recipe is going to be a new favorite, it’s unique and delicious! I was excited to find a new way to use up my excess green tomatoes, and the flavor combination really intrigued me. It used a lot of them up, plus it was an easy recipe. I got 13 jelly jars full and plan on giving some as gifts. It’s a keeper!!
Thanks and glad you loved our green tomato marmalade recipe, Julie! Hope your family and gift recipients love it, too. 🙂
I’m not a bourbon or brandy drinker. Can you give a suggestion on a Brand name to use? Also, do you core your tomatoes? I am getting ready to pick everything left in my garden, and know that I will be making at least one batch of this recipe.
Hi Ann! You don’t have to get anything too fancy for this recipe. A basic brandy like Paul Masson will be fine. Yes, you’ll want to remove any tough or woody parts of the tomato before making this recipe. Best of luck and please let us know how your green tomato marmalade turns out!
I made a triple batch of this the other night. I didn’t have the organic cane sugar so I used brown sugar instead, but oh my! I liked the taste before it was done, but today I made a regular old grilled cheese sandwich on sourdough bread with it and it was excellent. I’m anxious to try a few other cheeses in a sandwich too. I have a ton of green tomatoes left and I will definitely be making more of this to use myself and to share with family as gifts.
Wonderful! Glad your green tomato marmalade turned out well, Ann. Thanks also for sharing your version with brown sugar. Yes, this recipe makes great gifts – we get requests every year! Don’t share it with too many people or you might have to make an even bigger batch next year. 😛
Is this recipe developed for pint or 1/2 pint canning? In the pictures you have it in pints, and the amount made is in pints, but the directions say 1/2 pint in the end. If it’s safe, I’d like to can it in pints.
Hi Madeline! Sorry for any confusion. We actually used a combination of half pint and pint jars. Given that the ingredients are all high acid (tomatoes, oranges, lemon juice, citric acid), this is about as safe as canning recipes come. Caveat: we don’t have lab equipment in our kitchen necessary to test pH and internal canning temps, and there’s always a safety risk involved when using a water bath vs a pressure canner. That said, you could use either half pint or pint jars for this recipe. If using larger jars, go a little longer on your water bath (assuming you’re not using a pressure canner), say ~20 minutes rather than 15 minutes. Another option if you’re doing a small batch: refrigerate rather than canning it. Or you could always freeze it in straight-sided jars (NOT shouldered jars). Hope this helps and also hope you love this recipe as much as we do. 🙂
This will be my third year turning my green tomatoes into your marmalade. It was a popular option offered by the grilled cheese station at our son’s wedding reception this summer.
Wonderful to hear, thanks Lisa! Glad to hear you also discovered the pairing of green tomato marmalade with grilled cheese – one of our faves as well. 🙂
This looks fabulous. I can’t wait to make it. Thank you especially for listing produce by weight. That is most helpful. Cheers!
Hi Angela! We used brandy – sorry about the confusion as we just noticed the recipe card ingredient said bourbon. But to be fair, either would work.
22 Comments
ieva
August 20, 2024 at 1:50 pmthank you for sharing.. I was researching about duck egg production because im considering to have ducks and I end up here.. what a touching story. svetlana is a legend. this is my new favorite story on the internet, incredible.
Aaron von Frank
August 20, 2024 at 3:15 pmThank you for your kind words! Ducks are special animals.
Ally
July 11, 2023 at 2:57 amThis brought tears to my eyes. My duck, Quinn, passed away two days ago and I found your article because I googled, “why do I miss my duck so much?”
Thank you for writing this and helping me cope with the very real grief that comes with a loss like this. You have reminded me to remember the small sweet things about Quinn and to keep moving forward. Best wishes to you all <3
Aaron von Frank
July 11, 2023 at 10:38 amSo sorry, Ally. You’re in the early, worst part of the grieving process, and it’s going to be difficult. And that’s ok and normal. You’ll come out the other side, and — as you said — you’ll always have the “small sweet things about Quinn” to carry with you. Best wishes to you as well. <3
RACHEL HAGERTY
January 9, 2022 at 5:40 pmWow, this is a beautiful and heartbreaking story all in one. So very sorry for your loss. Svetlana sounds like a very special spirit, who – through your writings, videos and photographs – has managed to touch the lives of people who never had the pleasure of meeting her in person (myself included). Thank you for sharing your story.
Aaron von Frank
January 10, 2022 at 9:44 pmThank you for your kind words, Rachel. She was a special one – we still talk about and miss her daily. Glad to know that her story touched you. 🙂
Lindy van der Meulen
September 27, 2021 at 1:05 pmDear Susan and Aaron, I read your whole story about Svetlana this afternoon September 27th 2021, so some years have passed by for you both since Svetlana had to go to Duck Foraging Grounds elsewhere. I feel sad too for your loss and I think this tribute you have written for Svetlana is very beautiful and does justice to your love. It is a whispered Thank You to her that she shared her life and love with you both, that in itself is a miracle.
The reason I started specifically reading your Duck stories on the Tyrant Farm blog last night was because today I was scheduled to collect 6 runner duck ducklings.4 of them are now 4 and a half weeks old and 2 are 2 and a half weeks old. They have been brooded out by a chicken. The older 4 recognised the peeps coming from under their surrogate Mum and snuggled under her feathers with the new babies, so they consider themselves one group.
I have them here in our garden in a duck house and pen/run that my husband has built for them. We live in North East Netherlands and this coming week the night temperatures will be around 51-52⁰F. Do you think they can stay outside in their coop or should we be considering other options?
Thank you for the beautiful tutorial on lifting, holding, cuddling and stroking ducks. I have given all 6 of our new duckies some of all of that treatment today already and I will continue to do so with thanks to you young Tyrants. It would be wonderful if their characters develop in any way similar to your Svetlana. Much love for all of you, Lindy born November 1953.
Aaron von Frank
September 27, 2021 at 4:21 pmHi Lindy! Thanks so much for your kind words. Svetlana was a special duck and we miss her greatly – as does Jackson, her best friend/partner, who is still with us.
51-52⁰F would probably be fine for 4.5 week old +ducklings if they huddle together. Probably not so for 2 week old ducklings, unless there was a momma duck to keep them all warm. To be safe, we’d advise finding an alternative arrangement that allows them to safely stay warm at night when temps dip below 60⁰F until they have their “teenage” feathers at around 8 weeks old, at which point they can endure much colder temperatures. That means either bringing them into a temporary indoor enclosure or providing an outdoor brooder lamp that is securely set up so that it can’t fall or become a fire hazard.
Hope this helps and isn’t too much of a pain for you and your husband. Also, congratulations on (soon) being owned by ducks!
Jay
March 3, 2021 at 4:27 pmWe have had George our duck that we saved over 10 years ago. Today we had him put to sleep (hence I came across your blog looking for some comfort online as I’m just… there’s no words)
Same with George – he was a pure house duck, had baths, trips away with us, made us laugh, loved cuddles and no one really understands. He’s not a dog or cat.. so it’s hard for anyone who doesn’t have that connection.
Your story just highlighted all I’m feeling right now and I can’t wait for this grief to pass. Miss him so much and send all my love to you guys as well.
Jay & Jayson
Aaron von Frank
March 4, 2021 at 8:04 amJay and Jayson – we’re so sorry for you. It sounds like George the duck had a wonderful and long life, thanks to your care. Yes, we know what you’re going through. Time will help, and you have ten years of wonderful duck memories to cherish. Love to you.
George
February 17, 2021 at 7:03 amMy condolences for Svetlana. So other duck owners experience deep sorrow for losing a beloved bird too. It gives a bit of relief that I am not alone.
I love the wild duck’s logic. “A monster is someone who didn’t bring me food.” They are extraordinary beings.
danielle brandt
January 12, 2021 at 1:49 pmim soo sorry i recently got 2 new ducks i dont really know much about ducks and I would be heartbroken to lose daffy or daisy
Aaron von Frank
January 12, 2021 at 5:49 pmThank you, Danielle. We still talk about Svetlana daily and miss her dearly. We wish she’d been around for our son to get to know. Best of luck to you, Daffy, and Daisy. 🙂
Kaylee
October 28, 2020 at 11:37 amI am sooooo sorry. I am crying right now. This is soo sad.
Aaron von Frank
November 4, 2020 at 7:19 amThanks, Kaylee. Svetlana was a special duck. We’ll always love and miss her.
Teesha
February 26, 2019 at 8:25 pmWow, that made me cry buckets, and pray that we don’t have to go through that anytime soon with our Male Muscovy house duck Zeb.
He has slept with my husband and I on the bed every night of his 6 years of life. We lost his sister Nilly at only 6 months from a genetic disorder which was very traumatic too.
I hope that you all have a better 2019 and know that Svetlana will be in your hearts forever as Nilly is in ours. Hugs, Teesha
Aaron von Frank
February 26, 2019 at 8:40 pmThank you for the kind words, Teesha. Thanks also for being a loving parent to Zeb. He sounds like he lucked into a good home. 🙂
Eeta Lane
February 2, 2019 at 8:38 pmI just lost my duck named Lily, I was her only companion. Lately we got her a drake, she died after lying her first fertilized egg. Now while holding her egg and writing her story online, I was looking for help to hatch, that’s when I landed at Svetlana story. It brought me to tears, I haven’t stopped crying for Lily yet and now Svetlena. I feel your pain and I’m sorry for your loss.
Could you guide me how to hatch this egg. Now I have a female duck and a drake, this female duck is motherly and is capable of hatching eggs. I only have one egg from Lily, am I supposed to separate the drake and duck and then set a nestindoors? Any suggestion would be of great help. Thank you
Douglas R
January 17, 2019 at 2:44 pmTouching tribute. I’m sorry for your loss. I look forward to your health article since I plan to have ducks of my own soon.
Aaron von Frank
January 17, 2019 at 4:25 pmThank you, Douglas. We’ll try to get that out in the next couple of months. Unfortunately, it’s tough writing these types of articles right now because it brings up a lot of painful memories.
Robin Willoughby
January 17, 2019 at 2:44 pmAs I sit here crying…I am overwhelmed with the joy you take in your ducks. The eggs are just happy by-products!
And as a pet owner who has lost many dogs in my life, I can only guess at your sorrow. And I am so so sorry for your loss. May you find near as much happiness with Pippa!
Aaron von Frank
January 17, 2019 at 4:25 pmMuch appreciated, Robin.