Anchor brewing company made a spruce beer in 1991. Here’s a picture of a bottle I still have
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Reminds me - Ft George brews one, as well.
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When my son-in-law was Executive Chef at Tamarack Lodge at Mammoth, he was known for a conifer dessert:
The Lakefront Restaurant is steps from the lobby. It’s expensive, but it was so good we ate here twice. Everything on the menu was special, whether it was soup made of celery root and pickled pink rose apple or the New Zealand elk strip loin with black peppercorn sauce. For dessert, do not pass up the Sierra Bounty. Chef Patrick Jacobus concocts this gelato out of juniper brittle, white sage, elderberries, and red and white currants. It is served on — I know it sounds crazy —the bark of a Jeffrey pine.
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This is about the only thing I ever ate myself and recall anyone else using in Sweden. Quite tasty and healthy.
The exception is bark, which in difficult times (I guess from several type of trees) has been used to make flour!
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Indeed, phloem (the inner part of tree bark) is edible, although not particularly nutritional!
Since we’ve had our fair share of food shortages, basically every Finn knows the term pettuleipä (pettu = flour made from phloem, leipä = bread), even if very few people have tasted it. It was made in times when there was not enough flour to go around, so part of the flour was replaced with pettu. It was edible, but since yeast cannot break down the sugars in pettu, the bread would not leaven properly; and since pettu doesn’t contain any gluten, it would not rise. Furthermore, pettu would add a bitter taste and an unappetizing, greenish-gray color to the bread. Doesn’t sound particularly appetizing!
Anyways, the last time pettuleipä was a big hit around there was in the early 20th century when Finland gained independence from Russia and decided to celebrate it with a civil war. There were relatively few people who had the time to farm cereals when they were supposed to be killing each other, so we had a pretty bad food shortage here and people had to resort to eating trees, ie. pettu.
Part-time Nordic historian out.
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