If you’re reading this from my post, then our daughter Molly has successfully foraged and then baked a delicious mulberry pie for her dad on Father’s Day.
If you are reading this from another source, then please know we went out in a happy blaze of buttery crust and sugared berries.
Either way, our house smells divine.
A few months ago, Molly took up foraging because she loathes waste and she loves a good cooking challenge. Her first foraging experience led to a spruce tip alfredo sauce.
She also has made jam out of spruce cones; salad and soup with burdock stems; and tea from apple blossoms.
If you live in the Minneapolis area, you might spot her poking around feral trees and shrubs.
A few nights ago, she posted a request on her Instagram story. “If you live in the Twin Cities and you see a tree with these funky leaves and what looks like blackberries please let me know. I’m trying to make a mulberry pie.”
The post cracked me up, so I mentioned it to my husband Vince.
“Your daughter is foraging mulberries,” I said.
Not sold on the idea of making food from potentially noxious weeds, he quickly texted her a link to an Instacart order of blackberries.
“Does this have something to do with my mulberry foraging?” she texted back.
Then she fired off a botany lesson that let us know our Molly had landed in her element when she left us and moved west.
“And just so you know in North America there are no poisonous aggregate berries (the berries made up of lots of tiny berries ie blackberries/raspberries) so even if I was misidentifying them we’d all be safe, but mulberry leaves are super distinct and I had to identify them for my college botany class so I’m very confident they’re mulberries.”
The funniest part of the great mulberry experiment is that she was baking the pie for her dad, who remained skeptical of the project until she pulled that beautiful galette out of the oven.
I’m really hoping she does know her way around a mulberry bush because that kid certainly knows her way around a pie. It was so tasty we all seconds.
I hope I’m here tomorrow to tell you how good it was.
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