Foraging Report 06/16/2010

The normally scheduled reports and foraging forays will be interrupted by World Cup Soccer this month. Robert was willing to sacrifice a day of games to go to a letterboxing gather this Sunday, Where the Wild Things Are, put on by MMACJ. Gillian and I stayed behind at the pavilion, exchanging stamps and playing with lots of kids. Robert went off hiking with Choi and one of The Travellers 4, and he gave them an earful on the edibles they passed on the trails while finding letterboxes. I met some crazy ladies from Maine, littlmoon and GollyGee, Gillian ate far too many marshmallows, and we all went home tired. For potluck, I made some crostini with ramps pesto and some mini pollen biscuits with cream cheese and roasted onion and ramp jam.

The mulberries in our area ripened, and Robert went out early in the morning to fight with the birds. He picked enough to make 8 pint jars of jelly, and I made some mulberry filled cookies. I got the recipes from a new book we bought, "Wild Seasons: Gathering and Cooking Wild Plants of the Great Plains" by Kay Young. It is a nice book with some stories about what people have been doing with wild edibles for many generations, along with some really good recipes. We don't live in the great plains, but most of the edibles discussed in the book are available here in Connecticut. Some books we buy seem like they are geared towards specific areas of the USA or even other countries, but we recognize most plants talked about in other books.

We took another quick drive out to Harkness Park to check on those lindens, but still no flowers! We are also watching a white mulberry tree there, and I suppose it will have ripe fruit within the week. On the way out, we noticed the cattails were full of pollen, so we donned some big boots and collected another cup or so. We also collected some male flower spikes, since that chowder I made last week was so tasty and Gillian just loves eating the spikes boiled like corn.

We added to the winter tisane supplies with some more pineapple weed and some elderflowers that are drying on a sheetpan. Robert picked a sackful of orach greens, and cooked them up like creamed spinach, declaring them better than spinach.