North Country Forager Feast: Applewood Grilled Wild Salmon, Fuit Salad, Wakame Seaweed Salad, and Grilled Figs

"Naw that's country!"-Alex doing his best hillbilly impression.

On our recent hook and line angling kayak trip, I also gathered up some sea water.

boiled it down...

and made some nice sea salt.

We picked rosemary, chives, basil, oregano and sage from my Mom's garden and made up a batch of forager's best herb salt.

Alex and I gathered up a little elderberry for a nice sauce and some blooms for garnish...

and got the apple wood fire going from scraps from our orchard.

After a bit of target practice, my Mom sliced the first figs from our tree, grilled them with blue cheese and garnished with balsamic vinegar for an exquisite appetizer.

Once we had a decent bed of coals, we placed a batch of garlic bread on the grill (garlic was from my Brother's girlfriend's awesome garden, butter was homemade)...

and then we threw the king salmon my Dad had caught a few days before on the grill as well.

I sent Hunter and Alex out to the orchard to get a few organic heirloom Gravenstein apples and some blackberries for the fruit salad while I sliced up our recently foraged peaches and plums.

Then we reconstituted the Wakame seaweed I had got freediving the day before and whipped up a traditional Asian seaweed salad with some of the shredded carrot from Karen's garden.

My Dad cooked down the elderberries and after dusting the fish with our forager's herb salt, we garnished with elder sauce and elder flowers.

The feast paired well with Dad's homebrew, but we were running low so we spent the last hours of the evening brewing another 10 gallon batch.

Foraging is one step better than shopping locally and eating organically, as each bite of every meal is connected to the joy and adventure that surrounded its acquisition from the Earth and sea where it thrives naturally.

Keep the old ways alive!