F132Baby Spruce pincones

For the most part I love to photograph animals and landscape but all things in nature intrigue me both to photograph and how I can use them as resources for myself and my family. I bought a book when I moved to Alaska called the "The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North" by Beverley Gray and have worked to try something new every year. This year I was excited to try out spruce tip jelly, which I have been told is a northern treat. Spruce tips are suppose to be high in Vitamin C and people make all kinds of dishes out of them.  I am not a fan of eating trees or the taste of pine but I decided to give it a try. So I did a little research to be able to differentiate between the pine trees, didn't want to end up with the wrong kind of tips, and started watching  the spruce trees in our area for signs of the spring growth. For anyone who hasn't done this before you wait for the bright, baby green sprouts to start to come off the end of the branches of the spruce trees. You want to pick them while they still have their brown skin on them before they pop them off and start expanding, this is when their flavor is the best.

F134Freshly picked Spruce tips

This year they didn't start appearing until the last few weeks of May. It is important to keep an eye on them as the time to harvest the best flavor is often just about a week's time span as they grow quickly. Something interesting to note is that as with any species of plant different types of spruce trees have different flavors. The type that is abundant in our area is the Sitka Spruce tree which gives tips that have a citrusy flavor.  After you harvest the tips you will need to follow the recipe which includes boiling them into a infusion, this is when the tips go from a pine taste to this sweet flavor that makes an amazing jelly.

FF121Spruce tip jelly!