Spring is fickle here in the Pacific Northwest. We get lured out of our cozy caves in late February with balmy, sunny days. We put seeds in the ground knowing that they will get knocked down by a cold snap that is just around the corner. We cross our fingers and hope for the best when the wild spring winds blow through the orchard and it is too cold for the bees to pollinate the crops. But some things are sure signs of spring, harbingers that the days are really growing longer, that things are turning from brown to green, and that we all renew.

One of my favorite TRUE signs of spring are nettles. They creep up when we are not looking, and then WHAM, there are so many that you have to bushwhack to walk the path back to your neighbors. They scare me a little, because a sting from them will stay with me for days (I am a wimp), and as my friend Bella put it "I always feel a little witchy" when picking and eating them. I have consumed them in many different ways: tea, pasta, lasagna, basically any recipe that calls for spinach. But to use nettles you have to go through a lot of work, unless you are my little buddy Orion who just eats them raw. I most like to make a soup out of nettles, because the prep work of washing, blanching, shocking and chopping dovetail nicely into hovering over a soup pot. I also love that after foraging you can sit down to a wonderful bowl of spring "tonic" in about an hour. So, if you have wondered if it is really spring yet, if you need a sure sign of things to come, please enjoy this:

Nettle Soup
(Adapted from Deborah Madison, goddess of all things veg)
10 to 12 ounces of nettle leaves (I usually gather about a pound or so of nettles and then use all the good leaves I can snip off)
3 Tbsp butter (if you happen to have some compound herb butter kicking around now is a good time to use it)
1/2 onion sliced or the equivalent amount of overwintered scallions/leeks/onions out of the garden
Couple Tbsp of chives or some of the green tops from those over wintered onions
One fist sized potato
3 cups sliced chard or spinach leaves (I use one bunch of chard from the produce department or forage the last greens from my winter garden)
6 cups stock (and here give yourself a break if all you only have cubes, it's okay, use it and maybe save some of the blanching water from the nettles for added veg flavor)
2 handfuls of rice (any white rice will do, but do not use brown)
1/2 cup of cream
Salt and pepper to taste

Bring a few quarts of water to a boil while you defrock your nettles from their stems. (I use kitchen scissors and full yellow dish gloves while doing this) Wash the resulting leaves first like you would lettuce, and then instead of spinning them dry just scoop them out and plunge them into the boiling water for two minutes. Drain the nettles (saving a bit of the water for the soup if you like) and rinse the nettles in cold water to stop them cooking. Roughly chop the leaves and set aside. Melt the butter in a wide soup pot and add the onions and chives or onion tops if you have them. Slice the potato and add it to the onion and saute them together until the onion is soft and the potatoes are beginning to soften. Add the chard or spinach leaves, give them a couple good stirs to wilt them and then add the stock and the handfuls of rice. Bring everything to a boil then reduce it to a simmer with the lid off for 10 minutes then add the nettles and cook for another 10 minutes or until the potatoes and rice are totally soft. Puree the soup either with a hand blender on the stove (my fave) or in batches in a blender with the usual precautions. Add the cream to the soup and taste for seasoning, try to not let the soup boil at this point because it is just so hard on the cream.

Now there, that wasn't hard was it? And now you have a fabulous bowl of spring green in front of you with plenty left over for tomorrow and or the freezer. Pat yourself on the back and go out tomorrow and pick more nettles.

Got any other ideas? Share them!