Wild food - what we find in nature

[spork]

Whether you're a hunter or gatherer...

One of my annual family summer vacations was wading and exploring a river upstream. In one hand, I held a long-handled net; in the other, a raw potato. I'd chew the potato looking for likely rocky pockets, spit the spuds into the riverbank's calmer cuts. And wait for freshwater shrimp to emerge. Slowly, I positioned the net behind the greedy crustaceans, because they locomote backwards, and twitched the net to watch them jettison in alarm into it, and into a bag attached to my belt.

At the far end of the river, we bought fresh charcoal (wood, not pre-fab nuggets), and cooked our family's collective catch on a beach.

Mushrooms, onions, fish and game, share with us your experiences with wild food.

 

[larry_stewart]

Mine isnt as exciting as yours, but we have a guy here who gives tours each weekend about the wild foods available in this region. Usually its a 3 hour walk/ hike. Each week is a different location with a different landscape ( beach, woods, fields...). Each season and each location provide different sources of food, so no walk/ hike is the same. Ive been introduced to different kinds of edible mushrooms, berries, sea weeds, fruit, herbs, nuts ... Its actually kind of neat to see how they did it years ago, before there were whole foods or cosco's around the block. Since I dont have the experience or know-how, I rely on some one who does. Below is a link.

Foraging With the "Wildman"

 

[GrillingFool]

On my daily dogs walk on a local greenway path by a creek I have identified a few seasonal snacks....

Wild onions; what I call sourweed but is a sorrel (great on salads!); Jerusalem artichokes;
MULBERRIES!!!!!! (in season now); Wisteria; honeysuckle. If I were desparate, I
could catch me a few mercury-laden fish, turtles or Nutria too!

 

[Constance]

The morel season is over, as is the polk, but we have blackberries and elderberries coming on soon. Dandelion greens are getting tough by now, but purslane can be picked all summer. Mulberries are common in this area, but the birds get most of them. In the fall, there will be hen & chickens mushrooms, persimmons, hickory nuts and black walnuts. There are several other edible wild mushrooms around here...puffballs, for instance...but I don't know that much about them, and a mistake there can be deadly.

 

[Chief Longwind Of The North]

The morel season is over, as is the polk, but we have blackberries and elderberries coming on soon. Dandelion greens are getting tough by now, but purslane can be picked all summer. Mulberries are common in this area, but the birds get most of them. In the fall, there will be hen & chickens mushrooms, persimmons, hickory nuts and black walnuts. There are several other edible wild mushrooms around here...puffballs, for instance...but I don't know that much about them, and a mistake there can be deadly.

The puffball family is safe. However, the aminita (death cap) is one of the deadliest mushrooms around. In there immature stage, before they develop mush of a stem, they can be mistaken for some kinds of puffballs. When you pick pufballs, you must make sure that there is no stem, not even the hint of one. Also, puffballs are rather bland, though they take on the flavors of some foods they can be cooked with. They have to be piccked before they start turning the inside into spores. When cut, they are creamy white, or pure white and meaty inside. They start turning green when inside when they start producing spores.

Seeeeeya; Goodweed of the North

 

[stikinecook]

I commercially fish on the stikine river, so there is no shortage of salmon here. Blueberries grow along the river banks- we tend to pick those for waffles from time to time. Moose meat is always a must- no beef around here! I grew up picking Pine mushrooms, Bouletes(spelling?) , Chantrells, hedgehogs, Cauliflower, Lobster mushrooms, etc, etc so mushrooms is one of my favorite ingredients for anything!

 

[buckytom]

i used to love to use my canoe to collect wild blueberries that grow around the lakes in harriman state park, n.y..

they are so lush in some years that you can harvest the blueberries by bending the bush over the canoe and beating it with your paddle.

the inside of the canoe gets a bit stained, as well as your hands, feet, and mouth by the end of the day.

also, near a few of the lakes and just off some of my favourite trails i've found peach trees (not exactly native), wild raspberry and blackberry thickets, and huge climbs of concord grapes.

i've heard there's a lot of fiddleheads in places, but i've only seen one or two in all of my hikes there.

 

[stikinecook]

Fiddleheads are amazing.. I actually had some this fall that my dad picked...!!