Does anyone forage? Wild food favorites
Does anyone forage? I like the idea of foraging more than I actually do it. Partly laziness or lack of knowledge - partly the discovery that there are really good reasons that some foods aren’t sold at Hannafords. They may be edible but ehhhh… I am including garden perennials in my foraging.
I had a stir fry of daylily shoots a few nights ago. Quite delicious, easily available and one of the first greens of the season. I also like dandelion greens for the same reason. Fiddlehead season season is just beginning. I like then but I haven’t foraged them. I would love to find a place to harvest Ramps or wild onions. They are worth the muddy shoes. I also like milkweed shoots and buds later in the season - a childhood favorite.
Inspired by Darch I harvested hosta shoots last year. They were very good. My hostas have gotten pretty big. I did some dividing last year. So I have even more. Not the fancy ones.
Mushrooms are the obvious foraged food. I only harvest them with a few trusted friends. I haven’t dived into really learning about then. I have harvested honey mushrooms, aborted entolomas and oysters. A friend who is an amazing forager has gifted me chicken of the woods, hen of the woods, matsuke, black trumpets - fresh and dried.
I spend a lot of time picking wild blueberries which are delicious, prolific and a PIA to pick. I love adding them to winter breakfasts. Also blackberries. Fewer of the teeny tiny local strawberries.
A few years ago I shelled good quantity of black walnuts. They have a really good flavor but are a lot of work. I mean a lot. I read about black walnut syrup this spring but I didn’t wade through the late snowfall to try it. I would love to set up to make small quantities of syrup - maple, walnut or birch. I am usually enjoy getting outside in early spring. I have picked the local wild hazelnuts and beechnuts but only a few at a time. Never attempted the process of making acorns edible. I read about eating maple samaras but haven’t tried it yet. Sounds very time consuming.
Happy spring to everyone!
Foraging great niece for attention. Bumper crops of pine cones this year.
Inspired by Darch I harvested hosta shoots last year.
Every Spring he posts something with forsythia on it and I end up plucking one, tasting it, and remembering why I don’t eat them! I’ve been curious about the hosta, but I don’t have a ton and most of what I do have is out front. Dogs seem to gravitate towards them for some reason so I’m not anxious to eat those!
So I guess my answer is no. But like you I like the idea of it, and if I knew of ramps or fiddleheads or berries growing in the wild I’d probably take advantage once in a while. The recent hospice pie thread had me thinking about that.
The pine cone forager is adorable!
I've always gathered wild foods, long before it was called 'foraging'. Blackberries, elderberries, elderflowers, wild plums, sloes, abandoned apples, wild garlic, nettles, the odd mushroom or nut. Hostas are too precious to eat and I don't grow day lilies.
Windfall apples.
Elderflower cordial
Sloe gin
Chestnut risotto
Chestnut parfait
Feral damsons
Pheasant. Fell out of the sky on a country walk. I think it was shot some distance away and just made it to the woods whereupon it gave up the ghost right at my feet.
I'm sure you don't mean sucking the nectar out of honeysuckle, which is a favorite Spring treat from childhood. Other than wild blackberries in Oregon, I don't think I've ever properly foraged, and those, which growing wild, did belong to the ranch owners. Everything within 10 miles of me, even if it looks wild, has some amount of cultivation going, and most of the native plants require knowledge and processing to eat, being that this is swampy desert. The local staple was acorns from the foothills, whose trees, at least. are now protected. It's fun reading about what you're scrounging and eating!
How lovely that you forage all those wild things agmss15. The only thing I forage these days is dandelion leaf. When driving in the way”outback’ countryside it is possible to pick native foods (bush tucker) and I have done so but years ago. . Same with mushrooms, used to love going mushrooming, only being brave enough to pick one kind, the common field mushroom and even then used to be nervous about it.
We foraged for plums and windfall apples when I was a child. I live in a highly urbanized environment now, so the only foraging I do is picking lemons off my tree.
For wild foraging, I pick as many blueberries as I have energy for, that's about it. A friend knows how to find masses of morels and she gives me some for which I'm grateful - I grew up picking them with my family in Michigan.
Foraging from my garden: I've been growing nettles in an out of the way place and last year my husband made nettle soup that was delicious (they also host our earliest butterfly, Milton's tortoiseshell). I've made mead from my sweet cecily (myrrhis odorata) but not much of the anise flavor came through but it was very good and clear. And raspberries grow well - I just eat tons of them straight and also make jam. I've made pesto out of all sorts of prolific weedy things, dandelions, chickweed, nasturtiums, lambs quarters (red and green) and arugula for example - one benefit of a weedy garden :)
Perennial herbs are a favorite, lovage and sorrel come to mind and I'd take any tips on others that would survive a zone 4 winter (sure wish I had better luck with culinary herbs, I love tarragon for example - it survives but only barely)
Oh, chives do well, and I have a patch of rangy mint that I dry for tea.
That's what comes to mind - nice thread, thanks!
I have foraged watercress from Malibu Creek, and there is also wild anise growing there, but I have not picked it. I put the watercress in my pond in Venice, along with some tadpoles that we caught in the creek, and those turned into tree frogs, which were extremely loud. The neighbor thought we had gotten a dog.
I find it much more convenient to just plant what I want to harvest, and that has included nasturtiums, which I can also find in the wild.
I used to have a weedy garden that produced lettuces, cherry tomatoes, chives, parsley, cilantro, arugula, lemongrass, etc that all reseeded themselves, when I lived in Venice, but since then, I've tried to keep things more under control and in pots. We do have a large rosemary bush, but mint and oregano have not done as well. I used to have lots of tarragon in Venice, and I got rid of it because I can't stand the taste of it. I also do not like sorrel, and so I only planted that once. I've picked dandelion greens for salads also.
I wish I could forage for morel mushrooms!
I posted similar maybe a year ago. I tend to lean on the side of caution. We tap our maples every year. I think it is 40 gallons makes a quart?...we have a dozen taps and can get at least twenty gallons in 24 hours as long as the night temps are below freeing at night and the day-time are well above...50ºF +.
We tapped our birch but it was nasty bitter.
This year i cooked down 20 gallons but not fully to syrup. Maple water. In juice jars in the freezer. I'll add rhubarb juice and ginger and lemon when the rhubarb explodes. 2 gallons half cooked down maple in the barn fridge. (maple needs refrigeration)
Seems to be a big thing to bottle maple water like coconut water the past few years.
I don't think of garden foraging the same as wild foraging.
But i did just harvest a dozen garlic spring bulbs. I planted way too close together in a panic last fall. (in a rain storm)
Amazing Young spring bulbs like spring onions.
Lots of spring flowers...forsythia, meh. Rose hips in the fall. Wild thyme and chives.
I took a weekend mushroom foraging seminar with an english friend 25 years ago. One day in-house, then a hike next day. (We shared a mountain summer house together). He did white paper overnight, yada yada. Cooked mushrooms with eggs one morning and got so sick...shaking for hours. Freaked me out. Refused to go to the hospital.
A talented young actor on a hike died from foraging. Too far away from medical help.
If safe foraging has an actual flavor addition to a meal i might bite. But some/most are just a floral/green/vegetal visual. Not much flavor.
The usual blackberries growing wild along the side of the road. When I was young we would pick blueberries that grew wild on our 40 acres. I am too scared to pick mushrooms.
I do forage but mostly stick to my own property. Food I forage: Hickory nuts, blueberries, raspberries, alpine strawberries, milkweed, feral apples, blackberries, watercress, ramps, fiddleheads, teaberries, and their leaves and wild asparagus. I used to go mushroom hunting with a woman from town but she has passed on and I am too scared to try it on my own.
I like to go to friends' houses and forage through their pantry. You never know what you're gonna find, but you know that unless the expiration date is more than a year old, it's going to be safe to eat. Wild mushrooms? Not a chance!
When I was growing up, my family went mushroom foraging. You really need to know the types as there are some poisonous ones that look very close --- a picture is not enough to know the subtle differences, and smell really helps. (In France, I've read you can take your finds into a local pharmacy for identification). At the same time, we would get wild huckleberries, which apparently now tougher to find in more accessible places. We would get the more common blackberries and salmonberries that grew on relative's properties, where we knew there was no spaying (my sister still has a bunch). The same was true of fiddleheads, which aren't too bad. I had to look up hosta eating (don't touch my garden, though the wild things also love them) and daylillies (apparently, some varieties can cause gastro issues --- I'll pass).
Closest I have come to foraging is pilfering the wild scuppernong vines that grow on our property. SO loves them and before discovering the wild ones, I had already ordered and planted a scuppernong vine for him. They are not really my cup of tea. I prefer to grow and control our produce myself, or as much of it as I can. I grow lettuce, onions, tomato, cucumbers, bell peppers, grapes, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, apples, peaches, plums, pluots, broccoli, cabbage, collards, sometimes potatoes, an assortment of herbs that I LOVE having handy, and I just planted a mulberry bush this year. I love mushrooms, but would never trust myself to pick wild ones to eat.
Oh yes, foraging is a happy spring time endeavor. As you know, hosta is one of my favorite early free gift from Mother Nature, earlier than asparagus.
It's my unscientific believe that after millions years of evolution, the human body really needs a great variety of nutrition, much more than the super markets can offer. I can't tell you all the other I enjoy. It's too long.
One way I enjoy hosta is to blanch them with a black cover. I will get these fancy spears that are tender and tasty. Interestingly like some of your gardens, my hosta patches are invaded by ground elder weeds. By blanching the hostas, I also get these long crispy looking ground elder sprouts. As you may know, ground elders are very edible also.
dcarch
Oh yes, I forage regularly. Before my garden is ready I can usually forage the lamb's quarter and purslane, both tasty and healthy. They grow so well that I hoe out a LOT more than I could possibly eat.
Right now morels are just starting here, I'll look for some this weekend if the weather stays nice, although I'm not crazy about them. Mother used to love them, so I picked for her. I sometimes find Hen of the Woods too, and even tried puffballs, but wasn't crazy for them either. A neighbor actually got certified by the state to forage mushrooms, and he finds a lot which he puts on pizza. Sometimes he shares, the pizza not the mushrooms, LOL. Dandelions have already started to bloom, so the greens are getting bitter, they are nicer when they are smaller. Later I'll pick the wild blackberries and probaby sumac berries for drying and making sumac powder.
I did make jelly from autumn olive one year and it was.....OK. It tasted like cranberry, a little but it took me 4 hours to pick enough little berries for that batch of jelly. Elderberries will get made into elderberry syrup, good for the immune system. We used to make chokecherry syrup for pancakes too, and Grandpa tapped the maples for syrup, but I haven't done that for several years now.
Annie