Foraging for edible plants and weeds, etc.

[Snip 13]

Couldn't find a thread about foraging so if I've searched like my behind then I apologise in advance

I've been planting, foraging and cooking with edible weeds for a few years now. Love the idea of finding your own food.

I'm no expert so I've been somewhat limited for choice.
If anyone gathers wild plants, herbs, weeds, fruits or anything else for that matter kindly post the names and pics (if you have) here. Would love to extend my knowledge.

I often gather purslane, chickweed, dandelions, amaranth, crab apples, nasturtiums and oxalis.

Recipes for how you use them would be appreciated too

 

[vitauta]

i think oxalis is another word for sorrel, which i like for making sorrel soup. hard to find around here, though. it has this bright/fresh/sour flavor and can be added to a simple vegetable soup. a sorrel soup with barley and leeks is nice and needs no meat to shine....

 

[Dawgluver]

Oxalis (aka wood sorrel) is shamrock-like:
It's a weed around here and spreads like crazy. It does have a nice, sour taste, but has oxalic acid, which can be poisonous in quantities.



Another sorrel looks more like lettuce:
Again, oxalic acid, so not too much!



Nettles are OK, you boil the heck out of them, and they taste somewhat like spinach. Wear gloves, they sting!

I love Hen of the Woods mushroom, which comes out in the fall, and grows at the bottom of oak and elm trees.

 

[taxlady]

When I lived in the country, I started foraging:
Wild strawberries (the absolute best) the plant looks like a regular strawberry plant, just smaller:

Alpine strawberries by tiny banquet committee, on Flickr

Dewberries, very nice berry which is obviously related to raspberries and black berries:

Morels, the best tasting mushroom I have ever eaten:

Milkweed, the buds were very tasty, so were the pods. I have read that you can eat other parts too
Plant and buds:

The flowers, but all the ones I ever saw had white flowers:

And the milkweed pods:

Wild mustard greens, the nicest tasting wild "greens" I found.

Choke cherries - weirdly astringent, but kinda nice. Bears eat a lot of them. They have a pit like a regular cherry and they grow on trees:

 

[taxlady]

More stuff I foraged:

Wild carrots (daucus carota), also called Queen Anne's Lace, not exciting, but not bad:

We tried roasting chickory root to add to coffee, but it wasn't nice:

We also collected some tasty 'shrooms that our Yugoslavian neighbours showed us. I have no idea what they are called. My neighbours called them "foxes". I don't even know what language they spoke.
I found other wild 'shrooms, but I never found any that were edible.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Asparagus, it's the only thing I know on sight and trust to eat.

 

[vitauta]

tl, your pictures of berries and talk of berries bring to mind summers of wild berry picking-and-eating of m childhood: sweet berries, sour berries, bitter ones too--all stealthily gathered and greedily gobbled. small strawberries bursting with sweetness, and dusky, golden-colored raspberries, were the indisputable headliners from a roster of big-time winning ones--in the magnificent berry kingdom of yore....

 

[vitauta]

watercress, delightfully peppery watercress, growing along the beds of meandering streams....

 

[Dawgluver]

We have lots of elderberries and mulberries around here. People do stuff with the blossoms and the berries, including fizzes and wine. Don't know if you get them where you are, Snip. Mucho milkweed pods. Burdock makes good tea, according to my SIL.

 

[forty_caliber]

Lambsquarter is a common spinach like wild green that grows all over North America.

I remember my grandmother gathering poke salad but never understood exactly when to harvest as it can be toxic at a certain point.

.40

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Lambsquarter is a common spinach like wild green that grows all over North America.

I remember my grandmother gathering poke salad but never understood exactly when to harvest as it can be toxic at a certain point.

.40

Same here, my Grandmother did all the foraging, but I was too young and she had no interest in teaching. I know how to cook it once i have it, but do not know what it looks like in the wild. I'd be scared of poisoning someone.

 

[taxlady]

I just looked up lambsquarters. According to Chenopodium berlandieri - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, was a fully domesticated pseudocereal crop in Eastern North America in prehistoric times. It's related to quinoa.

 

[Snip 13]

We have lots of elderberries and mulberries around here. People do stuff with the blossoms and the berries, including fizzes and wine. Don't know if you get them where you are, Snip. Mucho milkweed pods. Burdock makes good tea, according to my SIL.

Thank you for the info
We have mulberries and wild strawberries here. I'd forgotten they they can be foraged too They sell them at nurseries. I love making mulberry jam and my kids are always stained purple when mulberries are in season

 

[Snip 13]

Plants that contain oxalic acid can be cooked to remove most of it and eaten in slightly larger quantities.
Thank you all for the great info!

 

[Snip 13]

I love purslane, my favourite edible weed so far. It's full of nutrients and is easy to identify.
Our favourite way to eat it is in Purslane omelettes. Fry a cup of chopped leaves and stems with a bit of chopped onion and seasoning. Whisk 6 eggs and pour over. Cook till set. Portion and serve with nice tomato salad. I add some grated cheddar or gouda as well.
Purslane is low growing and has smooth shiny leaves. If you're worried that what you find is not purslane, the easiest way to check is by breaking a stem open. If it doesn't have a milky sap inside the stem you're good to go. Purslane doesn't have a hairy coating either but there are similar looking plants that do. Avoid these.

 

[taxlady]

I love purslane, my favourite edible weed so far. It's full of nutrients and is easy to identify.
Our favourite way to eat it is in Purslane omelettes. Fry a cup of chopped leaves and stems with a bit of chopped onion and seasoning. Whisk 6 eggs and pour over. Cook till set. Portion and serve with nice tomato salad. I add some grated cheddar or gouda as well.
Purslane is low growing and has smooth shiny leaves. If you're worried that what you find is not purslane, the easiest way to check is by breaking a stem open. If it doesn't have a milky sap inside the stem you're good to go. Purslane doesn't have a hairy coating either but there are similar looking plants that do. Avoid these.

I had no idea that was purslane. I'm pretty sure that's the weed in my backyard that's growing in a pot I never got around to planting. I never pulled out of the pot because I was deciding whether or not I wanted to keep it. It's kind neat looking.

 

[Snip 13]

I had no idea that was purslane. I'm pretty sure that's the weed in my backyard that's growing in a pot I never got around to planting. I never pulled out of the pot because I was deciding whether or not I wanted to keep it. It's kind neat looking.

The leaves and young stems are delicious raw in salads, they taste a bit like cucumber. They go well cooked with eggs, cheese, garlic or butter
Or even all 4

 

[Snip 13]

Mallow, another delicious weed. It tastes very mild and the young leaves are good in salad. The flowers are also edible. Mallow can be eaten cooked and it's a good thickener in soups and stew. It leaches a jelly like sap when cooked kind of like okra.

 

[Snip 13]

Amost forgot to mention the 2 most popular wild foods in South Africa
I forget they're wild sometimes lol!

The leaves from the moringa trea are eaten raw in salads and cooked like spinach. They taste lovely and have numerous health benefits.

Marula fruits from the marula trea are healthy and delicious and ofcourse used for making the popular Amarula

 

[larry_stewart]

There is a guy up here in the New York area that has weekend walks in some of the local parks ( including Central Park in NYC). who helps identify everything. He has a website

Foraging With the "Wildman"

He even has a cookbook, identification DVD and other things that he sells.
His website has a lot of info too.

We went on one of his walks, Things that come to mind for me are : Black walnuts, Hen of the Woods mushrooms, Autumn Olive Berries, sassafras leaves for tea, purslane, sumac, cat tails, sorrel . There were many others, i just forgot them, as it was several years ago.