Foraging White Pine for Food

Earth Blessings everyone!

As the days become longer and warmer, I'm trying to be patient waiting for little sprouts to pop out of the ground.

Til then, I'll work with what I have! Which is PINE needles. We're fortunate enough to have a pine forest on our property, so I have an abundance of them.

We had just cleaned up a lot of the fallen branches the day before, so when I spotted a pretty big branch hanging out by my kids playset I knew it was freshly fallen. Try to gather fallen branches, as to not have to cut from the tree itself.

There are many different kinds of pines, conifers, evergreens! The one I picked from is a WHITE PINE. I can tell it's a White Pine because if I pick off one bunch, it has 5 needles. Most pines will have 2-6, White Pine will always have 5.

Spring and summer to me, means BBQ's and having the best pasta salad there! I love my oil and vinegar based pasta salads, so I knew we had to make a Vinaigrette with these needles.

TO MAKE:

Pull off bunches of needles from the base of their branch.

It's a 50/50 ratio of needles and Apple Cider Vinegar.

Fill your wide mouth jar with as many needles as you please

Pour enough vinegar to cover the needles, but not too much that they start to float.

Be sure to use a non metal lid, if you don't have one just place parchment paper between the jar and lid. The vinegar will eat away at the metal lid, that's why we do this.

Leave in a dark cupboard for 6 weeks and viola! The best vinaigrette you'll ever taste!!

Don't want to make a vinaigrette? No worries, Pine makes an amazing tea too! Just steep in hot water!

**Because of the high amounts of vitamin C in pine (which makes it a perfect remedy for the colder months) Women who are expecting/pregnant should be careful taking any of these remedies in high amounts.**

So easy, so good! I can't wait to hear how yours came out!!