Wild foods?

[sumi]

Does anyone here harvest wild foods, like mushrooms, edible "wild" plants, etc? If you do please share what you harvest, where you find it, how you use it in meals, etc?

 

[Hinotori]

I pick thimbleberry, salal, and serviceberry each year.

I also pick blackberries. Most of what we have on them is the non-native invasive himalayan blackberry and cut leaf blackberry. I do pick native trailing blackberry and encourage it to spread. It has rather tasty berries on it.

This year I plan on picking oregon grape and making some jam from it. If the pacific crab apple tree produces enough, I'll be able to make some jelly from it this year.

Sometimes I pick the stinging nettles and cook them up or go pick cattails to snack on the stems.

 

[Britesea]

I usually pick crabapples for jelly, applesauce and cordials; native wild plums for drying, jam, wine; chokecherries for jelly; elderberries for baking, tinctures, and wine sometimes; wild rose petals for rose petal jelly and rose hips for tea and jam, nettles for tea and greens, and few miscellaneous herbs like shepherd's purse and plantain and comfrey. Most of these I find in the empty fields around our house or down close to the river.
I would like to harvest cattails if I ever have the time, and I noticed a blackberry just getting started near the river not too far from us. I'd like to make sure of the identity before I harvest but I think I've got lambs quarters and purslane here as well.

 

[Denim Deb]

If you're not sure, post some pics of it.

 

[baymule]

I let the dandelions run rampant in the garden and make tea and jelly from the blooms. Made a batch of wine and got another batch bubbling now. It's pretty good!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

WEll, whenever you're ready to do a "tasting" just lemme know! I'm a pretty experienced wine drinker, lol!

 

[mrscoyote]

I'm a dummy, I have no idea what to forage around here beside the local grapes. We do have cat tails and bamboo. Guess I should try those.

 

[sumi]

@Britesea I'd love to spent a day in your kitchen and learn from you. I was looking at some rose hips today and thinking...
@baymule That wine looks very nice!
@mrscoyote Me too! I'm amazed how much food is out there and I walk past and over it not knowing...

I'd love to go mushrooming with an expert one day. I've tried using books as reference when I pick wild mushrooms, but I'm too scared to eat them, just in case. I have yet to try nettles, though we have more than enough of them growing here. I hear they are delicious.

 

[Britesea]

I remember reading how the Native Americans would shake their heads in disbelief when they found white men dying of scurvy in the shade of a pine tree...

 

[Denim Deb]

I read part of a story several years back about a couple that got lost and got stuck in the snow on a road they shouldn't have been on. It was over a mountain pass, and was closed for the winter. They died from starvation and weren't found for months. The area the car was in was covered w/pine trees. I'll admit that that upset me since almost every part of the tree is edible. If they had just know that, they may have lived.