Foraging With Your Kids

Yummy Wild Carrots!

Gillian tasting maple sap

Given the opportunity, kids love to be out in the woods or in a field, searching for bugs and sticks, flowers and rocks. Showing them that you can eat some of those plants should not be scary, but fun. With a little caution, and plenty of encouragement, the kids will be able to positively identify many common and safe wild edibles. With simple explanations and repetition, children will absorb information without realizing they are learning something, they will just think that eating stuff outside is cool. Eating wild foods like greens and roots is another slightly sneaky way to get your kids to eat their vegetables, too! Give each child their own basket or cloth sack, let the older kids carry a knife, bring a magnifier, and let them collect some wild foods.

Wildman and Gillian

Gillian has always come out foraging with us. When she was small, we had her in the hiking backpack. Now she is seven years old and while she may sometimes be cranky about walking, she still comes with us every time. She can identify many wild edibles with confidence, and has several favorites like wintergreen leaves, dandelion flowers, lemony wood sorrel, cattail shoots, and every berry available. For five years now, we have taken tours with Wildman Steve Brill, and his daughter Violet often accompanies him. She is just a little bit older than Gillian, and that girl really knows her stuff! Wildman is working on a foraging book aimed at parents and kids, possibly an app too.

Black raspberries

Some of the best edibles to teach are the obvious ones without poisonous look-alikes. Berries like blackberries and wineberries are widespread and sweet, great first edibles. There are many different species, like dewberries, Himalayan blackberries, black raspberries, and more regional ones like salmonberries and loganberries. All are edible and tasty to different degrees. While most berry canes have thorns, picking them is generally easy and large quantities can be harvested. Freshly picked blackberries on a bowl of breakfast oatmeal taste way better than any store bought ones. Autumn olives are another berry that offer a taste combination kids love--sweet and sour. Their puckery flavor is a favorite flavor of all kids and most adults we show it to, and they are very abundant in Connecticut. They can be eaten raw, or cooked into a thick sauce and spooned over ice cream, or pureed and dried into fruit leather. Their silvery-speckled appearance is hard to mistake for any other berry.

Autumn olive berries

Gillian with some cattail-on-the-cob

Cattails are another good edible for kids, since the taste is mild and there is always the potential of getting muddy and wet. Gillian loves to eat the heart of the cattail shoots in the spring. It is tender and tastes a lot like raw cucumber, and relatively easy to gather even for a kid. Once you find a stand of cattails about 2' high, you pull apart the outer leaves, grasp the few leaves in the center, and give them a tug. The "heart" will pop out, and the bottom 4" or so is white and the part you want to eat raw. Another great part of the cattail comes later in spring, when the flower stalks come up. They will still be sheathed in one leaf, but are easy to cut from the plant. We then pull the leaf off, check for bugs, and boil up the flower spike and eat it like corn on the cob. The male portion of the flower is the upper section and has much more pulp than the female portion on the bottom of the flower spike, and can be used in a pancake batter and soup. Sometimes for the kids, it is the mature "hotdog" that is seen in summer and fall that is the favorite. While not edible, the mature hotdog is made up of the seeds, and it makes awesome tinder for camping.

Edible flowers are another fun food for kids. Popping off the big, yellow heads of dandelions and munching on the flower petals is great fun, and the kids can't seem to get enough. Violets are pretty and edible, and the taste is very mild. Lilacs are more fragrant, but almost flavorless, it is the thrill of eating a flower that will keep children happy. Black locust flowers are actually tasty, with a flavor and crunch similar to raw peas. Adding colorful edible flowers to a salad will instantly make it more appealing to any kid. We like to make jewel colored jellies from the fragrant flowers.

Sulphur shelf

Gillian is also really good at spotting mushrooms, probably due to her closeness to the forest floor. All mushrooms should be cooked before consuming them, so she knows to never put any mushroom in her mouth. She has a favorite wild mushroom (sulphur shelf) to eat, and can identify several other species already. We used to have a monetary incentive of a quarter for every mushroom she spots, and while it helped fill our basket, it also quickly emptied our pockets. We still try to make mushroom hunting fun by bringing a magnifying glass with us to examine some of the fungi we find. Get your kids outside, and show them a few cool mushrooms, even if they are not edible. Join a local mycological society to really get a great education and to alleviate your fears about poisonous mushrooms.

Gillian's puffball

Cinnabar Chanterelle Recipe - Chanterelle Corn Chowder

The end of summer is drawing near, but the bounty of the season is all around. The local farm share we receive has been packed with tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers. The orchards are advertising pick-your-own peaches and early apples. Autumn olive berries (Eleagnus umbellata) are ripening early and spicebush berries (Lindera benzoin) are turning red. And the mushrooms! The fungi! It was a dry July and early August, but recent rains have soaked the ground and we are picking cinnabar chanterelles (Cantherellus cinnabrinus), black trumpets (Craterellus fallax), and bicolor boletes (Boletus bicolor) by the bag. The cinnabar chanterelles are extra large this year, and we decided to cook up some corn chowder with them and some of the new potatoes from the farm. The chanterelles add a subtle pepper taste to the soup, and amazing texture and color. While some folks might think this recipe makes 6 servings, in our house it was gone after one meal. If you use vegetable broth, this is a vegan recipe.


Chanterelle Corn Chowder                 makes about 6 servings

6 Tbsp oil
1/2 c. chopped onion
3c. loosely packed chanterelles, cleaned
5 Tbsp flour
4 c. hot chicken or vegetable broth
1 c. diced potato
2 c. raw corn kernels (about 2 ears)
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp chopped scallions
fried chanterelles for garnish

1. Over medium heat in a large saucepot, heat the oil and onion and sautee for 30 seconds. Add the chanterelles and cook 2 minutes, stirring often. The chanterelles will break up a bit.
2. Sprinkle the flour over the onion/chanterelle mix in the pot, and use a wire whisk to stir until the flour is lightly toasted, about 1 minute. This will look like a lumpy mess, breaking up the chanterelles more.
3. While whisking, add the hot broth to the pot. Add the diced potatoes and corn. Turn the heat to high and bring the soup to a boil, stirring often as it thickens. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook 8-10 minutes until the potatoes are tender. If the soup is too thick, add more broth.

4. Season with the salt and chopped scallions. To garnish the soup, I dredged some chanterelles in corn flour and fried then until crisp, and added them to the top.

A big pile of cleaned cinnabar chanterelles

Daylily Recipe - Bajan Daylily Pie

While on vacation a few years ago in Barbados, we ate some local street food that was being served from a cart near our hotel. Actually, we ate it 3 nights in a row it was so good. Bajan Macaroni Pie is a macaroni and cheese concoction, slightly spicy and rich. This recipe is based on that dish, adding lots of unopened, fresh daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) buds to the mix for a fantastic baked pasta dish.


Bajan Daylily Pie                             makes 9" x 13" casserole dish

4 c. unopened daylily buds
8 oz. long tube shaped pasta (perciatelli works well), cooked
12 oz. shredded sharp cheddar cheese
2 c. milk
2 eggs
7 Tbsp ketchup
1 Tbsp garlic powder
1 Tbsp garlic mustard-mustard, or dijon mustard
2 tsp. ground white pepper
2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 c. chopped scallions
1 c. additional shredded cheddar cheese for the top
1/2 c. bread crumbs


1. Heat the oven to 375º F. Lightly grease a 9" x 13" pan.
2. Remove the tough stem ends from the daylily buds, and give them a quick 3 minute boil. Drain, and add to a large bowl with the cooked pasta and shredded cheddar cheese, tossing them together. Add to the casserole pan.
3. In a bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs, and add the ketchup, mustard and spices. Pour this mixture over the pasta and daylily buds. Add the additional cup of shredded cheese to the top, and sprinkle the bread crumbs over the cheese.
4. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the top is browned and the eggs have set. Cool slightly before serving.

Daylily Identified

Identifying and eating daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) has been on our plants-to-eat list for a long time. It is a plant with several useful parts and is available through two seasons, so it would take us awhile to observe, experiment, photograph, and learn. It seemed that by the time we should be searching for shoots in the spring, we were always too late to taste and photograph them, and had to put this plant off until next year. Finally, 2012 is our daylily year. While there are many varieties of cultivated and hybridized daylilies, we are only eating the wild orange daylily. Daylilies are common and widespread throughout North America, from Canada through Florida and to the Pacific Northwest. Originally from Asia and Europe, they are considered naturalized in most areas, and invasive in some. They spread readily through underground rhizomes and can often take over areas they grow in. They can tolerate just about any soil and light conditions, making them a successful garden plant, roadside colonizer, and an opportunistic plant of disturbed areas. Some people have digestive problems eating daylilies, so this is a good plant to go slow with, eating small quantities at first.

Mid-March was when we took a very early-spring tour with Wildman Steve Brill, and he showed us the shoots of the daylily. The light green shoots are one of the first wild vegetables you can gather that early in the season, and they can be gathered in abundance to use raw in salads, boiled in soups, or cooked in a vegetable sir fry. The shoots appear like stacked, curved swords growing from the basal rosette, and each emerging leaf has parallel veins. They are best picked when they are smaller than 6" or so, otherwise they are too fibrous and tough. The texture is crunchy and succulent, and the flavor is mildly onion-y. I personally did not like the taste, and the shoots left an acrid taste in my mouth, but Robert and Gillian both enjoyed the shoots.

Tubers still attached to the shoots

Digging up the small shoots in the early spring also yields a clump of edible tubers. The tuber clumps are best gathered in the early spring or late fall when the tubers are very firm. In the summertime, the tubers will get spongy and are not very good to eat. While cleaning a bunch of dirty tubers is time consuming, peeling them is even more so. We scrub them very well with a stiff vegetable brush to remove the dirt and don't bother with the peel, as it is not tough. Snipped from the clump, the tubers can be boiled like new potatoes, and they have a slightly sweet and nutty taste. We also lightly boiled some and pickled them with malt vinegar. Our favorite use was to shred a bunch of scrubbed tubers in the food processor, and use them in a cake like carrots, where they took on a toasted coconut-like flavor. We also fried up the shredded tubers as hash browns for breakfast.

Flowerbuds ready to be steamed

In the early summer, flower stalks will emerge from the center of each clump of long leaves, growing up to 3 feet tall. Daylilies get their common name from the fact that each flower will open in the morning and wilt at the end of the day, hence only blooming for one day. Often on each flower stalk, only one or two flowers will be open at a time, while some buds get ready to open and other wilted flowers remain on the stalk. This way, a large stand of daylilies appears to bloom for weeks on end. On each leafless stalk will be 6-15 short-stemmed flower buds.  The unopened buds are green, blushing orange the day before they open. The unopened buds can be eaten cooked as a vegetable, tasting like green beans. We gathered a bunch of them and steamed them about 5 minutes before adding them to other recipes like casseroles and baked pasta dishes. Unfortunately, I did not follow the common advice about eating small quantities of a new food, and we gorged ourselves on the unopened buds because they were so delicious. Robert did not experience any problems, but I was terribly ill with gastric problems for about 12 hours. Next time I'll have to take it slower!

The orange flower of the daylily is edible raw in salads, or nice battered and fried. The flavor is slightly sweet. Even the day-old wilted flowers are edible, and we had been buying them for years at the Asian grocery in packages to add to hot and sour soup. When adding the flowers fresh or dried to soups, I remove the bottom green part, as it can be tough and bitter. The dried flowers add a nice texture and slightly thicken soups. The flowers and flower buds are a good source of beta-carotene and iron, and have several medicinal uses in traditional Asian medicine. Overall, the daylily is an abundant and useful plant to know.

Partridge Berry Identified

These berries were still on the plant in the spring, even as it is getting ready to flower for the season

Often called partridge berry, squaw berry, or two-eyed berry, Mitchella repens is a common, native plant in North America. It ranges from eastern Canada to Florida, and as far west as Texas. It prefers moist woods, and we find it often in conifer-filled forests of pine and hemlock, often blanketing the forest floor with its creeping stems.

Partridge berry is a very small, woody-stemmed shrub, with about 6"-12" long stems. The woody branches produce opposite pairs of small, dark green, ovate leaves, about 1/2" long, with white or yellow mid-ribs. At the nodes where the leaves grow from the stem, the plant may produce additional roots where it contacts the ground, helping the plant spread into great mats. It is easily propagated by cuttings, and makes a handsome ground cover in shady areas.

Photographing the flower was a bit of a challenge for us, since we always seemed to miss that short time in the late spring when the blooms are out. The flower is unusual in that they are produced in pairs, fused at the base, sharing a common calyx. The trumpet-shaped, white flowers are covered with fine hairs, and each flower has four petals, one pistil, and four stamens. Before they bloom, the bud has a pink hue.

Unripe berry

The pair of flowers will produce one berry with two "eyes" on the underside. The berries ripen from green to bright red in July, and can persist on the plant through the winter and into the spring when the plant starts blooming again. There are several small seeds inside. While pretty and technically edible, the berries are mostly flavorless and a bit dry. They are great for kids to find and eat, and could go into a mixed wild foods salad. This is more of a survival food, as the berries last on the plant for so long, and can even be found under the snow. They are a good food source for many wild birds and small rodents in the forest.

Berry underside, with the two "eyes" visible

Why We Joined the Local Mycological Group

"Can I eat it?" Honeys, puffballs, parasols, chickens, winecaps, and pear-shaped puffballs, all edible.

While we have foraged wild edible plants for about 7 years now, our mushroom experiences had been limited, somewhat hesitant and filled with fear. Some mushrooms can kill you, no joking. We would fantasize about finding the ones labelled "choice edible" in the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, but were filled with doubt when it came down to correctly identifying any mushroom we found. Sometimes part of the description matched what we found, but not 100%. Sometimes we found stuff not in the book at all, or we just didn't know where to look. Our best score was trading Russ Cohen some wild fruit jellies for a hen-of-the-woods mushroom after he led a walk, and the taste and texture of that mushroom haunted us for more than a year, as we wondered how, when and where to ever find another. Joining the Connecticut Valley Mycological Society has changed that.

Fried "Chicken" Mushroom and
Onion Strings

Hen-of-the-woods, Chestnut, and
Butternut Squash soup

We are not scholars, we hunt for the cooking pot, so we are known as mycophagists. While the more learned biologists might scorn us for our primary interests of eating a mushroom rather than looking at its spores under a microscope or doing a DNA sequence, we want to know the answer to the most basic and persevering question of "Can I eat it?". Joining the local mushroom club will get that question answered, along with the all-important  "Is this poisonous?", "When and where can I find this mushroom?", "Does this taste good?", and "How can I cook this?".

Black Trumpets, Craterellus fallax

Gillian and her Puffball,
Calvatia  cyathiformis

It was at the Coventry Regional Farmer's Market  about one year ago that we ran into the club, on a day when the market was featuring mushrooms.Some vendors had mushroom-related wares, but we were interested in the promised display of Connecticut fungi and the ability of meeting local experts and enthusiastic amateurs. The array of different fungi on display was unimaginable, and we got the time and place of their next meeting to attend a trial foray. We joined up immediately, and while the first few forays were a bit overwhelming (CVMS identifies ALL of the fungi found on a foray, not just the edibles), some of the information we were learning was staying with us. Amazing! is just about all we could say about the fungi being found, displayed, and identified every week. Stinky mushrooms, mushrooms with teeth, mushrooms with pores instead of gills, red ones, orange ones,  and blue ones, crusts growing on trees, and mushrooms you could draw pictures on. Robert was photographing some gorgeous specimens, I was cooking up some yummy recipes, and Gillian was using her senses finding fungi. We attended every weekly foray for the rest of the season.

Summer oysters

Foray display

We renewed our membership for 2012, and I was "volunteered/recomended" for a position as the Membership Secretary for CVMS. I thought I would share some of the club literature and the benefits of membership, as we find it invaluable for education. It is the people in CVMS who make it the club what it is, including the local experts, the kind educators, the funny characters and the warm personalities. We are a group of people interested in the world around us!

Connecticut Valley Mycological Society, INC. (CVMS) was founded in 1975. It is a "Mushroom Club". . . A club for those interested in mushrooms as food, a club for those interested in mushrooms for study, and a club for those who are interested in mushrooms as an art form. Whatever your interest might be, CVMS, with its many members with diverse interests, can help you increase your understanding and knowledge in your special avocation.

LEARN more about mushrooms, where to find them, their diversity of color and form.

COLLECT mushrooms throughout the year under the guidance and supervision of competent amateur mycologists at regular field trips and forays.

IDENTIFY mushrooms by using field guide books or by taking notes at the regular forays where all collections are identified. If you find some mushrooms while foraging on your own, bring them to one of the scheduled forays and you will receive assistance in identifying them.

EXCHANGE recipes, ideas, and information.

RECEIVE our newsletter, the "Spore Print" regularly for information both entertaining and educational.

ENJOY the beauty of Connecticut State Parks. After a few months, you'll find that you can identify not only mushrooms, but mosses, ferns, trees, weeds, lichens, and many other forms of life. . . this is because of the broad interests of many of our members.

PHOTOGRAPH the beautiful and unusual mushrooms of Connecticut. Share them with other members during our indoor winter meeting.

BENEFIT from the "Workshops", lectures, field identification sessions, and the experience of our members.

BECOME aware of the delights and dangers of eating wild mushrooms.

DISPENSE of "old wive's tales". Discover how to safely collect mushrooms for the table.

WHATEVER your interest, let it mature and develop. Mycology is a strange science, the more you learn, the more you become aware of the questions you never thought to ask. Knowledge only seems to whet your thirst for more.

JOIN in the many activities of the club . . . workshops, forays, annual regional conferences, banquets, picnics, and fellowship! Get a Member Handbook. Enjoy the Spore Print news letter every quarter. But first,  you must be a member! Contact me, Karen Monger to receive an application at kraczewskiATcomcastDOTnet

Would You, Could You Forage for Profit?

Handful of free, organic, seasonal, and delicious huckleberries

Wild food foraging seems to be growing in popularity. Blogs are popping up all over, wild food discussion groups abound on facebook, new books on finding, identifying and cooking wild food are being published, dinners at restaurants are being promoted, and more people than ever are teaching. Money is being charged and earned, making what used to be a form of survival into a profit-earning job. Is this a good thing, or bad thing? Do we forage wild food for profit?

Japanese knotweed, violet, and dandelion jelly

Currently, we blog about wild food. I do have a few small ads on the blog, but I have yet to receive a check for any generated income. We have our own facebook page, where I can give current updates and add some fun photos, and a YouTube channel with videos we have made about wild food and featuring some wild food educators. We take tons of photos of wild foods, and are willing to share them without payment, we just ask for photo credit and a link back to the blog. We develop recipes and post them for free, hoping someone else may be inspired to taste wild foods. On one special occasion, we foraged food for a dinner at a restaurant in Providence that was hosting Hank Shaw, a wild foods author. In exchange, we enjoyed that fantastically prepared wild food meal and had a lovely evening out. We do make lots of wild fruit and berry preserves that we sell, but many of those also get gifted or swapped for other foods or services. We place an educational display about wild food at our local library in the autumn, and it is up for one month in the lobby. Although the library administrators have asked us to do a program to accompany the display, we have declined (stage fright!). We get asked all the time if we give classes, but I personally feel we are not at that level of education and experience. So, no profit for us.

Gillian holding Laetiporus
cincinnatus, dinner time!

If we are not making money foraging, why are we doing it? We started with a general interest in the plants around us when we were hiking in the woods. Wondering if they were edible comes from being able to identify and eat common berries like huckleberries and blackberries, and looking at the other plants we could not yet identify. We started buying books and looked for teachers, and we traveled to see Wildman Steve Brill, Blanche Derby, and Russ Cohen give talks and walks. Our interest was mostly for fun, but now we actually end up saving money on food costs. Making dinner with wild food can be challenging, but the benefits include a tasty and unusual meal. Robert enjoys the survival possibilities of eating wild food, along with the seasonal, organic and health aspects. Gillian, being a naturally inquisitive and curious child, truly enjoys the sweet berries, the minty wintergreen leaves, and the peppery greens. Our interests have also grown to include fungi, and we actively participate in the local mycological club. For now, we are willing to walk with friends and show them some edibles, but it is done in a fun manner, and we are not "teaching". Being outside and feeling comfortable with our surroundings is immensely satisfying, and spotting something free and edible is a bonus. We are still foraging without deadlines, schedules, and obligations, and I think I like it this way!