Dried Apples

 I found a quick and easy way to make apple chips with my little not-so-perfect wild apples. No peeling, no coring, no pre-soaking;- just slice and remove the occasional bad spot.

They turned out very nice- had more texture than traditional peeled/cored apple chips, but it was worth it to me because I got more out of the apple and it took less time. I did take the time to remove hard center spots at either end of the apple though, as those could seriously chip a tooth.

Foraging 101 Finale: Frog Legs!!

To finish up my foraging series, I've arranged for my brothers to do a guest post on finding and processing bull frogs. All about preparing frog legs:

1. Catching. First you get a hook, and then you get a piece of tin foil and make the tin foil look like wings on the hook. Then you jiggle it in front of the bullfrog's face. It will bite the tin foil, and then you jerk it up and put it on land. Then you catch it and put it in a cooler.

2. Killing. The best way to kill it would probably be to get a knife and jab it in the head.

3. Preparation of Legs. You get a pair of hedge trimmers and make a cut to separate the legs from the body. Also cut the 'flippers' from the legs.

4. Skinning. Make a small notch in the skin at the top of the thigh. Then run the tip of your thumb between the meat and the skin, and peel off the skin.

5. Bagging. Put the clean legs in a ziplock bag. Press out all the air and zip up the bag. The legs can then be frozen or cooked fresh.

Happy frogging! Happy happy happy!
-Bethany

Foraging 101: Puffballs

Puffballs! So much fun to kick around and watch the 'smoke'. However, they're also good for eating.

We always find some puffballs in our pasture come autumn. They don't look like any other mushroom, and so are easily identified and distinguished from other mushrooms. Puffballs can be very small (I found one this year that was the size of a grape) to huge. Like as big as a basketball! The puffball pictured was a tad bit overripe (see how it cracked like an overripe tomato?) but still definitely good to eat. I like to pan-fry my puffballs in butter and add lots of salt and herbs, as they tend to be somewhat bland in flavor.

Happy Mushrooming!
-Bethany

Foraging 101: Sumac

Staghorn sumac is a classic foraged beverage staple. The Indians used it to make a type of "lemonade". The berries are a little messy to deal with- they are hard and fuzzy, not like most berries. They can be stripped off, dried (they seem dry to me right off the stem...?) and saved for later use. Sumac has a citrusy flavor that works great for drinks, plus it is high in vitamin C just like oranges.

I added some of my berries to kombucha during the 'tea' phase. One of my other goals with this plant is to do a soda- like lemonade, but bottled and carbonated. Too bad I lost my bottle brush, huh? Wonder where it ran off to...

Foraging 101: Dock

Dock is a common weed found in my area, both in pastures and roadsides. Leaves, roots, and seeds are edible. I just picked the seedy parts and let the roots and leaves be.

Dock is part of the buckwheat family, so the seeds make a great flour. Before you process though, be sure to get the bugs out. Leaving the seed stalks overnight should do the trick.

                                   

 

Foraging 101: Wild Apples

I'm not sure if you can really call apples "wild", because they aren't native, but they are something edible that grow along fence rows and roadsides so I'm including it in the foraging series. There is one tree alongside a field we rent that was FULL of apples this year! I took some brothers and sisters down to pick off our tree and we got about a bushel of pretty nice apples. Of course there were some wormy ones, but I suppose you get what you pay for.

You can do a lot with apples. I made cider with today's bushel. It took me an hour to prepare the apples, then I ran them through my new-used Breville juicer that I got at a garage sale. There are many ways to make cider; BF's family used a mop press this year (YouTube it! It's pretty cool).

My juice separated! It was really weird. This usually happens when I do juice, but should it happen with cider?? I'm not sure. I took some measurements and the sugar content was right around 13%. I watched a fascinating documentary one time on the history of apples with part of it being on cider making. In the old days each tree had a different flavor because they were all grown from seeds. There was no such thing as a true "Macintosh" or "Granny Smith". It was grafting (or cloning) that made it possible for apples to have consistent flavors. I also learned that a good eating apple might make a horrible cider apple, but a sour "bad" eating apple might make a fantastic fresh or hard cider, just as there are, for example, good pie apples.

So what are ya waiting for? Go find yourself a good apple tree and make something!

Foraging 101: Lambsquarter (Pigweed)

Lambsquarter is an annoying weed that pops up everywhere (at least in my neck of the woods). It grows to be gigantic- more like a small tree than a weed. They are very nutritious eaten as a green, cooked like spinach. In doing some research, I also learned that the seeds can be cooked as a cereal grain and are nutritionally similar to quinoa.

I foraged some lambsquarter and pulled off the grainy top parts to cook. They looked like this:

I was not totally successful in eliminating tiny stems and leaves, but for the most part it was just the seed "pods" (not sure what the official name is). Then I rinsed the grains and put them in my crockpot. I stirred in some fresh elderberries for flavor and set it on low overnight.

The result wasn't bad. It looked terrible (see the picture!) but the taste was bearable. I wasn't trying too hard to make it yummy though; no honey or brown sugar or anything like that for me. It did taste a little weedy and/or earthy, kind of like tea made from fresh medicinal herbs. Definitely not cream of wheat, but still edible in a pinch. Like, a really bad pinch.

More scrumptious (or not-so-scrumptious) wild eats to come!

Foraging 101: Jewelweed

While not commonly used as an edible plant, you can eat the seeds raw when they are fully ripe, as this detailed and humorous article states. You can also eat the young shoots, boiled after removing the leaves. Jewelweed is great for poison ivy (which I never get... darn it! I never get sick enough to use my herbs!) and it's got pretty orange flowers. This is an herb I only discovered a couple hears ago. Mine grows down the road by a creek bank, under a bridge. Careful- it's a fragile plant that withers pretty fast, and bring scissors or you'll end up pulling out the whole plant.

Foraging 101: Hickory Nuts

Hickory nuts are all over in my neck of the woods. You can easily tell hickory trees from other trees by their "peeling off" bark, flat-wide leaves, and big green nuts. Not to mention the cracked-open hulls strewn about the ground beneath the trees. When the nuts are ripe, the hulls open up like flowers and fall to the ground.

The nuts are easily cracked open with a hammer and very tasty. Great busy-work for little ones; my sister and I would spend hours cracking nuts out in the shop while my dad worked on farm machinery. Of course, the nuts were so good that we ate everything we cracked.

In addition to eating, the hulls can apparently be used for smoking, like the chips you buy. I have not tried this yet, as I don't have a smoker, but it's definitely on my ever-growing list of things to try.

Happy cracking!

-Bethany

Foraging 101: Elderberries

 I'm going to start out the foraging series with something easy to identify, useful, and good for you. Elderberries are very common around where I live, growing alongside the road and also along the fence rows where I forage.

One day I was visiting a friend who had just found "the mother load" of elderberries and was planning on making cough syrup with them. I had no idea that the berries were medicinal, though both my dad and BF remember their moms making jam (yeah... add enough sugar to anything and it's good). Come to find out, elderberries are great for the immune system, full of antioxidants (fights cancer) and, as my friend had mentioned, are great for coughs and colds. An extended list of benefits, as well as identification info can be found here.

[Edit: Don't eat the leaves or roots! They're poisonous. Also don't eat unripe fruit, as that can cause diarrhea and vomiting.]

Elderberries can be preserved a lot of ways- I have dried them and also made medicinal cough wine (yay! no heat to destroy benefits or sugar rotting teeth out!) and put them fresh in smoothies. Other people have made jam and/or syrup. This year's harvest all went into wine and fresh eating, but I did dry some last year for tea. It would be cool to add them to cheese, or maybe put into bread or granola like acai berries or something. Chocolate covered elderberries!

That's it for day one. Coming up: Hickory nuts!

Foraging 101; My Foraging Bag

When you go foraging, especially if you're on a bike, it's helpful to bring certain things along. Pictured, from left:

1. My bag. A leather purse/handbag that I picked out of a garage sale free box.

2. Books- the Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants. I don't actually take this one with me because it's too big and bulky, but it's an excellent resource for cooking instructions. You could get a newer version if you want- mine was 10 cents at a library sale.

Also the little book on trees- this is part of a series that my dad has been using for a long time. Again, any basic field guide will work.

And the two books I got with my hunter safety class- a tiny "wilderness survival" guide (with first aid!) and a wildlife booklet. I'm not that into wildlife yet, but maybe someday.

3. Gloves. Rubber-tipped for dealing with thorns and stinging nettle.

FOUR. Plastic bags. I usually take two or three- one for the "good" finds (like berries) and another for the common finds, like herbs, and another for beer cans. That's right, beer cans! If you play your cards right, one beer can will pay for a book on wild edibles. A few more will hack off some of you're grocery budget- maybe buy you a sweet potato or something. Glass bottles are great too (without cracks or nasty stuff inside)- use for bottling kombucha. Or if they are cracked... shooting targets!

5. Heavy duty scissors. Mine were meant for floral design, but work great for foraging. You'll want something sturdy enough to cut woody branches and stuff that doesn't just snap off.

6. Cell phone (optional). I just take mine just in case of emergency. With a smartphone one could identify wild edibles on the fly... even better!

And that's all folks! Everything you need to get started finding free food.

Foraging 101; Basic Rules of Engagement

So foraging is pretty simple. Basically you pretend you're an Indian and go hunting for nuts and berries. However, there are some rules that will make things a lot easier.

1. PLEASE please please know what you are picking and make sure it's not poisonous. I stick with plants that are easily recognizable, many of which I have been familiar with since childhood.

2. Don't go foraging where you're not wanted. I try to stay around our property/rented property and in more-or-less public ditches. I live in the country so this is not an issue and I find a ton of stuff. However, if you're going to be traipsing through someone's private woods, at least ask permission so they know what you're doing. And maybe avoid hunting season...

3. Don't get lost. Another reason why I like ditches and public roads.

One thing to keep in mind is that foraging can be done all year (I mean, native Americans did it, right?). Spring is better for foraging salad greens, while fall will get you a lot more nuts and berries. 

Those are the basic guidelines. Foraging trips usually lasts an hour or less; I don't go if it's raining or storming. It would be a good idea to wear pants to protect from thorns. I wear grubby tennis shoes because many times they come back with mud and burrs on them. For transportation I use a bike, and have all tools and supplies conveniently packed in my foraging bag, which we'll look into next time.

Announcing a new series: Foraging 101

I'm going to try something new here in my corner of the blog world and do a series.

Foraging 101 is going to be all about free food. This is something I've done in the past but find myself doing more now, especially since it's late summer/early fall. Foraging has many benefits- 1) you get free food, 2) you get exercise getting your free food, 3) your free food is probably healthier than store-bought, as it's not been sprayed with chemicals or cooked to death. I mean, it was the food of brave, mighty Indian warriors and their sturdy, hard-working squaws.


In the coming weeks I'll be highlighting some of the plants/fruits/nuts that I pick up while foraging, as well as how to eat them and some other tips and tricks I've learned.

Stay tuned!