In article , Boron Elgar
wrote:
On Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:07:55 -0500, James Adams wrote:
Do any of you have recommendations for books on foraging and harvesting
wild foods? There are many available. I don't know where to start and
am on a very tight budget.
I hope this is not off topic, and if so, could you please direct me to
the proper group(s)?
Thank you.
Jimmy Adams
Hit the library and get the classic "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" by
Euell Gibbons.
Boron
He also wrote STALKING THE HEALTHFUL HERBS and STALKING THE BLUE-EYED
SCALLOP. Euell's writings on this topic are fun breezy writings as he's
quite the story teller. But he takes such little account of regional
differences in species and harvest periods that he's useless as a
PRACTICAL guide if you live outside his range of expertise. Little applies
to the Pacific Northwest where I live; much more useful in the American
southwest or California which he knew best. He lived briefly here in
Washington, but the books just rarely take this area into account.
A lot of cool information can be found in the WIILD FOOD ADVENTURER
NEWSLETTER and if you're crazy for the topic a hundred dollars will get
all the back issues, focus on North American gathering from the wild.
Start he
http://www.wildfoodadventures.com
I used to do a LOT of gathering and discovered it could even be done inner
city. Nowadays with so much development there are not so many empty lots,
but 10 to 20 years ago in any given few blocks of a major city (in my
case, Seattle) would find abandoned fruit trees on lots where houses
disappeared; various berries and roots on lots that were never developed;
and even abandoned gardens where the hardiest edibles, like fennel celery
for example, were rampant.
There are also many fruits that few people harvest but if you're into
canning, great stuff, including around here cotoneaster berries, crab
apples, elderberry, mountain ash berries, and hawthorne berries, among
others, many of these to be harvested after first frost for maximum
sweetness of bitter berries but they can also be picked earlier and
"frosted off" in the freezer. These sorts of berries have to be cooked,
sieved, and sweetened (can be sweetened with apple juice, pears, or just
with sweeter berries mixed in, no need for processed sugar). There's
little competition for these & they make superb jellies and syrups and can
be gathered by the bucketload usually quite close to home.
One summer I got it in my head I wanted to make my own herbal teas and I
gathered leaves from various wild berry bushes, dried them, all very tidy
and attractive with each leaf variety kept separate. Made okay tea but
they all tasted exactly a like, so silly I kept them separate and labeled.
I never again focused a lot of attention on berry leaf teas but if you go
gathering and just can't find much you can always come home with berry
leaves to dry, and dandylion leaves as a rich spinach. Early this year I
gathered a lot of dandylion flower-buds to stir-fry.
In many parts of the States, there are mushroom clubs, or Mycological
Societies, and one of their main thangs is orchestrating field trips for
novice shroom collectors. It's a great way to not only learn for sure
what's safe, but to learn the best hunting weeks. Our local group is the
Puget Sound Mycological Society. Try MykoWeb.com to see what's close to
your region.
I've never found a decent guide to my region's food gathering and the best
information has come from native plant society members or my own trial and
error. If not for a native plants fanatic I wouldn't've known I could
harvest salmonberry sprouts in spring, the salmonberries are SO numerous
within a block of my house, and it's hard to get a lot of the berries
because they fruit thinly and fall the stems quickly. But it's quick and
easy to fill a little bucket with sprouts to peal and use in sundry
vegetable dishes, or even raw, taste like extra sweet celery.
There's a wild blueberry that grows all over Kitsap county and can be the
dominant shrub in clear-cuts. Locally they're called "prairie berries"
though there's no prairie here, but they do like big cleared areas. I've
tried to transplant them into my yard but so far haven't got one to
"take," as they hate being transplanted. But in the clear-cut areas a
short drive away, the fruits can be THICK on the one to two foot tall
shrubs. Given the price of blueberries, these are really worth gathering.
Evergreen huckleberries are also ultra-common everywhere in Kitsap, the
fruits only half the size of the prairie berries, but by looking around a
bit can usually find bushes with huckleberries twice the size of the
majority, easier to fill a bucket. The deciduous red huckleberries are
always smaller though, harder to gather a substantial number. Most people
don't realize the salal berries are edible if cooked, sieved, sweetened;
another harvest for which there seems to be no competition and a big
bucket quickly filled.
Locally many people think the red elderberries are poisonous (they might
be while they're green) so no competition for those either, except from
deer and bears. The invasive blackberries, well, of course, they're big,
sweet, and impossible to ignore.
I do less canning than formerly but I'll put free gathered berries in
airtight smallish ziplock bags stacked up in the freezer, then whizz them
up a portion at a time with ice, add maybe a banana or some yogurt (this
month, with watermelon), makes incredible freezy-drinks. So even without
canning, you can't gather too much.
Formerly I gathered such things not just for fun but from poverty and
found myself eating damned well without cash. Now it's more for fun only,
but with recent increases in the price of groceries, I found myself even
harvesting our garden's tiny service berries (last month) though for an
hour's picking I probably got only two mixed fruit drinks out of it. Oh!
Oh! I have to go and make a freezy-drink right now! Rasberries and
cantaloupe await me.
-paghat the ratgirl
--
visit my temperate gardening website:
http://www.paghat.com
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http://www.weirdwildrealm.com