Harvesting Stinging Nettles

We're in a little nettle patch and we're going to be harvesting nettles today, and we're going to go back to the classroom space and make some really yummy pesto. As you connect more and more with our plant relatives, there's just so much to learn. They have this really lovely way of coming into your life and teaching you lessons that maybe you didn't even know that you needed to learn at the time. So I'm going to show you, we're going to look right here. Hey, these are stinging nettles, and they're called stinging nettles because they do actually sting you.

I do not recommend that anybody harvest without gloves. So nettles is one of those first greens that comes out, and it's so rich and full of minerals. So this is the right time of year to harvest nettles for food or for tea. So we're in like April, May, And you'll see as it goes on later in the year, they'll get bigger and they'll have seeds on them. And once they go to seeds, that's beyond the time when you want to harvest them for food or for medicine.

And so I'm just going to take— you'll see there's like the little bud in the middle and then the two top pieces. So I'm just going to pinch that off and that's what we're going to harvest. And we're going to take this back and we're going to make it into some really yummy pesto. Da willa walshum, am willa walum. Waiwa!

So we're going to make some nettle pesto. This is one of those recipes that is up to you to make. I'm going to put pine nuts in there. Some people use walnuts or pecans. Some people have nut allergies and don't put any nuts in there.

Parmesan cheese. I really like a lot of garlic. Basil. So the water is just now boiling, so what I'm going to do is I am going to put our nettles in there for 1 minute. And while I'm doing that, I'm going to get an ice bath ready because you're not trying to cook the nettles, and so the ice bath afterwards stops the cooking process.

And then I'll go ahead and just dump them in the strainer again.

All right, we'll let those drain out for a second. Come over, and this package is about a cup of pine nuts, and that's about what I would use for this amount. Put our garlic and lots of lemon juice. I'm gonna go ahead while those are still doing their thing and pick the basil off of the stems here and squeeze that out so our pesto is not all watery. And you can see how it's, like I said, similar to spinach, how it kind of wilts down like— mm-hmm.

Okay, so we've got just some Costco extra virgin olive oil. And I'm going to turn this on and add the olive oil in as I am blending it, so it's going to get loud for a second. My apologies.

Okay.

Oh my goodness, that smells so yummy. Now I'm hungry. It must be lunchtime. Well, it's been a real pleasure to share a little bit of what I know about nettles with you all today, and I'm sorry that you couldn't all be here to taste the nettle pesto, but I really hope that at some point in time you'll have a chance to get out and harvest and try one of our delicious local fresh spring greens. Kinaakchii shindeokshin hao'a.