wild edible plants thread

[gogofast]

wild edibles thread

anyone else enjoy picking edible plants, flowers, and fungi from the forest?

my favorite is the pine mushroom - followed by fiddle-heads, dandelions, and various berries. not much to do during cold season, but there're still some oyster mushrooms and lingzhi/reishi mushrooms that i use to make tea. i found a large cluster of oyster in the middle of snow the other day while hiking.

pine mushrooms are best grilled with meat - seasoned only with salt. kabob made with wild game meat, pine mushroom, and green onion will probably beat pretty much anything else i've eaten in my life. fiddleheads, i usually dry them first, boil them in water, and then season them with salt, pepper, and oil.

i've been doing some reading on edible thistles and looking forward to harvesting some next year.

please share what plants and other wild edibles you enjoy, and how you prepare them.

 

[onepixel]

I love pine mushrooms! My brother-in-law and his wife picked a pile of them recently in Oregon. I have to pay $50+ a pound for fresh ones. I buy a couple every season to make a Japanese rice dish.

I haven't picked/had fiddle heads since I was in junior high. Good stuff!

 

[gogofast]

I love pine mushrooms! My brother-in-law and his wife picked a pile of them recently in Oregon. I have to pay $50+ a pound for fresh ones. I buy a couple every season to make a Japanese rice dish.

I haven't picked/had fiddle heads since I was in junior high. Good stuff!

we haven't had a good pine mushroom season up here in the cascades for a long time. there was one crazy good season 6 or 7 years ago - when we harvested them by garbage-bagful. ever since then, i've only seen a dozen or two in total. this year, we had a lot of rain followed by a week of very mild temperature, which is usually a good sign, but didn't find any.

 

[onepixel]

I remember a friend coming back from U of W during our college days with a shopping bag full of dried psilocybin he picked on the campus.

 

[mfrench]

southern California chaparral - Rhus Integrafolia "Lemonade Berry":

Winter, january flowering:

Summer berries:, just prior to mid-summer dormancy:

The native people made a lemonade-like drink from the berries.
I planted a shrub line of them in a dry area where nothing else would grow. They hooked and grew prolifically. Sarge would pick and eat the berries, and get all lemon pucker-faced from them, but liked them.

 

[RichPA]

Wild watercress salad, dressed very lightly, is a real treat.

 

[onepixel]

I used to walk the dogs along the railroad tracks. I used to pick blackberries and prickly pears. Some of the thorns on a prickly pear is near microscopic and almost glass like. Stuff was near impossible to remove.

 

[Urchinn]

Oyster mushrooms!

 

[jimfet]

Persimmons, blackberries, blueberries, grapes, huckelberries, plums.

 

[Bogframe]

Not much around here, but when I was a kid in Maine, my grandmother was a top notch mushroomer. She could smell a chanterelle a mile away. We also had blackberries, blueberries and my grandmother made rose petal jelly from the wild roses.

 

[markd51]

Uncles, and great uncles used to pick dandelions all the time. Great in a salad. Gotta get em young, and where no dogs-etc are going pee pee on them.

And the other, Cardone. We of course as kids called them "Gardoons".

Very good, sort of like an artichoke taste.

In the link, they mention a recipe. Our family's was similar, but we'd roll in flour first, then egg, then bread crumbs and romano cheese. After frying, then another simple sprinkle of grated romano on top. Mark
http://www.oceanmist.com/products/cardone/cardoneprep.aspx

 

[onepixel]

When I was in the 6th grade I read in a outdoor survival guide that you could eat the roots from cattails.

Tastes like s@&#!

 

[jim t]

I went to a lecture last summer on mushrooms. When I take my dog for walks I have seen some different mushrooms since it started raining . I havent found any choice delicious yet, black morels, chantelles, king boletes or matsutakes.

 

[spaceman]

I remember a friend coming back from U of W during our college days with a shopping bag full of dried psilocybin he picked on the campus.

Probably down by the Arboretum. But there's a LOT of coastline by the UW, and all kinds of things grow really well. I could probably live on the berries alone, if I had to. There's a type of fruit that grows on trees around here, that I've been meaning to identify. :scratch2: It's yellow-orange-ish, with many points, almost like a prickly pear, but not even close to that sharp. The fruit turns red when it ripens, which is right about now, because I just saw them again a few days ago, going down to Recycled Cycles. I've thought about trying one, a few times, but then I wonder if they're poisonous, & chicken out, LOL.

 

[KrisM]

Not much around here, but when I was a kid in Maine, my grandmother was a top notch mushroomer. She could smell a chanterelle a mile away. We also had blackberries, blueberries and my grandmother made rose petal jelly from the wild roses.

Has the lovely Blanche told you about the blueberries in Northern Ontario? If I could bring one food thing from my childhood out here, it would probably be them. I don't think they would grow here, though.

 

[Robinhawaii]

There's a type of fruit that grows on trees around here, that I've been meaning to identify. :scratch2: It's yellow-orange-ish, with many points, almost like a prickly pear, but not even close to that sharp. The fruit turns red when it ripens, which is right about now, because I just saw them again a few days ago, going down to Recycled Cycles. I've thought about trying one, a few times, but then I wonder if they're poisonous, & chicken out, LOL.

Pacific madrone. Some types are called the Strawberry Tree. It will not hurt to eat, but many are bland.

Take care,

Rob

 

[gogofast]

my grandmother made rose petal jelly from the wild roses.

rose petal jelly sounds interesting. i'm gonna research that...

Persimmons, blackberries, blueberries, grapes, huckelberries, plums.

wild persimmons? where do you live? garden of Eden? i pay $2 each for them when they're in season around here - though the sweet flat kind is cheaper at costco.

Wild watercress salad, dressed very lightly, is a real treat.

that sounds delicious. we used to grow watercress around a small creek back when i was a kid. they are very refreshing make fish soup very tasty as well.

 

[gogofast]

Pacific madrone. Some types are called the Strawberry Tree. It will not hurt to eat, but many are bland.

Take care,

Rob

when you pick them red ripe, they can be sweet. i've seen people dry those, grind them to powder, and use 'em like sugar. i haven't try 'em though.

 

[Montycat]

I've picked wild garlic in Quebec and upstate New York, various mushrooms (not just the fun kind ) in New Brunswick and BC, had cat tail shoots in Ontario (not that bad), made rose hip tea in Saskatchewan. That's just to name a few things that come to mind right away.

One of the best was when I had to put my tent up just off a highway in Northern Ontario and I felt obliged to eat all the blueberries that my tent would have crushed. It was pretty filling!

 

[spaceman]

Pacific madrone. Some types are called the Strawberry Tree. It will not hurt to eat, but many are bland.

Take care,

Rob

Aha, thanks for that info. :thmbsp: I might very well try one today, or very soon at least, whenever I get down that way again. :yes: Strawberry tree fits it well, the fruit definitely has a strawberry-ish coloring, inside. :yes: