Pine or spruce Tip Nutritional Information?

MagnificentMihirung

Springtime in Cascadia and the Northwoods brings with it my favorite green next to chard: Pine and Spruce tips! They are tender and juicy and have this great citrus/rosemary flavor that works great fried up with potatoes and mushrooms, mixed into stir-fries with other greens, added into salads or soups, or just eaten raw by the handful while one walks through the woods.

They're also apparently crazy nutritious, according to the internet: "exceptionally high in Vitamin C, snf carotenoids"; "rich in minerals such as potassium and magnesium".

Since I'm already eating them by the fistful daily this time of year, it...feels like I really need to be logging them on the calorie counter. But I have no idea what their nutritional stats actually *are*, since none of these websites actually have anything like standardized nutritional information for them.

Does anyone know where I can find that kind of info, to add them into the food logging database? Or what might work as a solid nutritional analogue? For now I add them, when I add them, as either "garden sorrel" or "fresh rosemary" since those seem like they might be something like what I want, but that's a vague hazard of a guess at best.

Wiseandcurious

I don't really know but have you tried pine/spruce tip "honey"? I grew up with that stuff, it's amazing in tea and tastes good on pancakes too... Unfortunately my grandma never passed on the recipe I just remember it involves boiling the tips to a syrupy consistency. If anyone happens to have a recipe, please please pass it along!

Come to think of it, if they can be boiled to a syrup, they must have a lot more sugar than sorrel... Unless the sugar was added...

Sorry for hijacking the thread it's just that the title brought on an avalanche of memories.

MagnificentMihirung

That sounds delish! Here's a batch of recipes I just found, that include a basic form of sp[ruce tip syrup (it does indeed look like sugar is added):
http://medcookingalaska.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-harvest-spruce-tips-with-recipes.html

Not to thread-jack...my own thread...

angelexperiment

I have never heard of this! Sounds good but what part is it and where do you find it? Is it the new buds?

MagnificentMihirung

It's the soft green new buds! once they start turning dark or hard they get resinous, prickly, and bitter; while they're not bad for you at that point, the eating experience is not so great. You can, however, gather them by the bagful while they're still bright green and freeze them the way you would any other leafy green!

Just practice good stewardship: never take the terminal bud (the bit at the top of a tree that grows up to become the trunk), and except where you are actively trying to keep the tree branches from growing in a particular direction (this can be a delicious bit of pre-emptive pruning!), make sure to leave at least one bright green bud per branch and try to spread your harvest over as many trees as you can. And obviously, as with any wild harvesting, don't take anything from roadsides, the margins of farm fields, or anywhere else it will be exposed to pesticides, herbicides, or automobile pollution.

angelexperiment

Ok this is fun! Thank you