Preserving Wild Harvests - Jelly and Jam

Roma food mill

Sometimes the abundance of a seasonal harvest of wild foods overwhelms us, and we are not able to eat all we gather at once. To preserve the harvest, we use several methods of keeping wild food to use at later dates. Preserving our wild harvests in jars can be accomplished in a sweet way, such as jam, jelly, and fruit in simple syrup. You'll need a few specialized items for processing and canning, like jars with proper lids and a funnel to fill the jars. I prefer my jams seed-free, so we purchased a food mill a few years ago that has a screen to remove even the seeds from a strawberry.  For canning, I just use a large stock pot to sterilize my jars in boiling water, and then to process them in the same simmering water on top of a rack so the filled jars don't rattle around.  I always use pectin when making my jellies and jams because we spend a lot of time finding, picking, cleaning, and processing wild fruits and foods, and I really want my jams to be successful  Doing a set-test by drizzling a bit of the jam or jelly onto a chilled plate and checking the "set" has saved me from some potential failures, since sometimes a longer boil than one minute is required to get my jam or jelly to set. I am able to find used jars and bands on Freecycle and at tag sales at great prices, and just have to purchase the sealing lids since they can only be used once. Jewel-toned jellies and sweet, pulpy jams make nice gifts, and I sometimes swap them at food swaps.

Jam and jellies are differentiated by the clarity of the product based on the amount of pulp used. Jam is usually cloudy and thick, filled with pulp and fruit skins for texture. Jelly tends to be clear, or colored but still translucent. Both can be used on sandwiches, stirred into breakfast oatmeal, as a layer in a yogurt parfait, or as a component in a dessert.

Wineberry jam

Wild blueberry jam on scones

Mulberry jam

Jams are made from the pureed pulp of fruit, either raw or cooked lightly to homogenize the puree. Fruit like grapes, beach plums and wild black cherries are obvious candidates for making jam, along with the plentiful berry harvests we are able to make in the summertime. We are lucky to live in southern New England, where we have hot, humid summers that are great for diverse berry harvests, even if some of those berries are invasive species. Mulberries are found in in three varieties, red (which usually ripens to black), black, and white mulberries (which will ripen to purple). We usually make jam from the red or black mulberries, since they taste better than the insipid and overly sweet white mulberries. Picking enough wild blueberries to make some jam takes a long time, since the wild berries are so much smaller than their cultivated cousins. Wineberries make a delicious, tart, deep ruby-red jam, and sometimes we are able to harvest them at the same time as the Himalayan blackberries to make a wineberry-blackberry blend. Autumn Olives can be made into either a thick, pulpy jam that tends to spoil easily, or a clear, tart jelly. 

Autumn olive jelly, not totally clear, but not pulpy

Commercial onion jam, wild ramps jam

We do make one savory jam from ramps. Years ago, I tasted a savory roasted garlic and onion jam made by Stonewall Kitchens. I wanted to re-create it using wild ramps bulbs in place of the onions. It goes really well with fatty, salty foods like brie cheese, roast beef, or bread and cornichons. This jam is one of the few recipes we are willing to dig ramps bulbs for, because digging the bulbs is unsustainable and kills the plant. We only dig what we need, and even then, no more than 10% of any patch.

Beautiful violet jelly

Delicate black locust jelly

Dandelion jelly

Japanese knotweed jelly

Many of the clear jellies we make are flower based. The flowers are gathered and have boiling water poured over them to make an infusion. The flowers are then removed by straining the infusion through a fine-meshed jelly bag to make a clear, fragrant liquid that becomes the base of the jelly. Some of our spring ephemeral flowers that make fragrant jellies are black locust and lilac, both of which are delicately colored and scented. Dandelion flowers are time intensive to clean, but make a jelly reminiscent of honey, floral and golden. Violet jelly is dramatically colored, but only lightly floral. Japanese knotweed shoots and Rugosa rosehips can be made into a pretty and distinct jellies using the same method of making an infusion and extracting the clear juice from the wild food.

Sometimes our variety list will include about 15 different types of jams and jellies. Robert put up a shelf in the pantry to hold just some of our inventory, sized perfectly to keep the 8 oz. jars. The abundance of wild fruit and berries that we find help us to keep our pantry fully stocked through the cold winters with tastes of summer.

Preserving Wild Harvests - Dehydrating and Drying

Sometimes the abundance of a seasonal harvest of wild foods overwhelms us, and we are not able to eat all we gather at once. To preserve the harvest, we use several methods of keeping wild food to use at later dates. Using a basic dehydrator or just air drying are two more methods of preserving our foraged bounty to use all year long, filling the pantry with many jars of goodies. We own two dehydrators, one is an older, basic Ronco circular heat-based dryer you used to see advertised late at night, and the other is a small Excalibur, using heat and a fan to dry food. For some bulkier items, we just leave the food in a large, closed paper bag in a dark place for a few days to dry. We have successfully dried and saved roots, seeds, herbs for tisane, greens, mushrooms, and made some yummy fruit leather from our wild food harvests.

Sassafras roots

Filé powder

Dried dandelion roots

Sassafras roots can be dug during three of the four seasons here in southern New England, and they dry well to keep during the winter. We don't go out for them often, but when we come across a particularly dense stand of small saplings, we gather a large quantity for drying. Robert washes the roots and then uses a knife to shave off slices of the bark and to cut the root into small pieces. He then leaves them in a dark place to dry for a few days, and keeps the dried sassafras roots in a jar. The pieces get boiled to make a strong decoction for making beer or a sassafras drink. The leaves of the sassafras trees can be dehydrated and powdered to make the seasoning for gumbo, filé powder. Other roots we dig and dry are dandelion and chicory. The roots get washed and gently roasted in the oven to dry, then powdered in a spice grinder to use as a slightly bitter coffee substitute. We keep the dried and ground root powder in air-tight jars.

Pineapple weed

Rugosa rose hips

Wintergreen leaves

Linden tisane

An infusion of an herb in hot water is often referred to as herbal tea, but more correctly, it is a tisane. There are a few herbs we gather for hot and chilled tisanes, and they can be dried using the dehydrator, or less succulent herbs dry well in a dark paper bag. We gather the flower bracts of linden trees in spring, red clover heads and pineapple weed in summer, the red hips of Rugosa roses and leaves of bay laurel in the fall, and wintergreen leaves in early winter. The rosehips are cut in half to remove the seeds and irritating hairs, and dried in the dehydrator since they can be very fleshy and need to be dried before they start molding.

Dried bicolor boletes, black trumpets, maitake, and honey mushrooms

There are several mushrooms that we hunt that dry well, like bicolor boletes, maitake, honey mushrooms, black trumpets, and the elusive morels. I use the dehydrator for the mushrooms, often slicing them and drying them in a single layer. The black trumpets are so thin that they can be dried whole. Once dried, many of the mushrooms can be powdered and added to dishes as an umami boost like a seasoning. I usually re-hydrate the maitake in hot water and use the strongly flavored water to make a wild mushroom gravy.The dehydrated mushrooms can be added to soups and stews, or to the boiling water used for cooking grains like rice or quinoa.

Sumac berries

Garlic mustard seeds

The dehydrator works great for seeds and strongly flavored greens, like garlic mustard seeds and ramps greens. We use the dehydrator for the ramps greens, otherwise they may get moldy before they dry completely. The dried seeds and greens can be used whole, or powdered and used as spices. Pollen from cattails and pines need a quick drying session to keep them from spoiling before they are stored in the freezer. The mostly dry berry clusters of sumacs can be preserved and saved all year by drying them in a dark paper bag and storing in an air-tight container. 

Japanese knotweed fruit leather

It is possible to make fruit leather without a dehydrator, but using the machine will give better and more even results. We have used the oven set on low, and even the interior of the car on a hot summer day by leaving the tray of fruit leather on the dashboard. Fruit leathers can be made from most pulpy, sweet fruits, like berries or grapes, or even Japanese knotweed. I prefer the fruit leather seedless, so I use a food mill to remove the seeds to make a thick fruit paste which gets spread over a silicone baking mat on a sheet pan, or the special fruit leather tray for the dehydrator. Once dried, I roll up the fruit leather and wrap portions in plastic wrap or parchment paper. Keeping dried and preserved wild foods on hand allows us to use the abundance of the seasons in our cooking, mixing flavors from the seasons to create whole and balanced, well flavored meals all year.

Preserving Wild Harvests - Freezing

Sometimes the abundance of a seasonal harvest of wild foods overwhelms us, and we are not able to eat all we gather at once. Sometimes I crave the iron-y taste of nettles in December, wineberries in my oatmeal in February, or a rich, wild mushroom stew in the spring. To preserve the harvest, we use several methods of keeping wild food to use at later dates. Freezing is a method of preservation we use on many different types of wild food, from greens to berries, mushrooms, and dried flours. Several years ago we purchased a small chest freezer to keep in the basement just to fill with foraged foods, and I keep an up-to-date inventory on my fridge so I can remember what we have.

Keeping wild greens in the freezer can be accomplished in a couple of ways. In the spring when everyone has ramps fever, we head out to our favorite patches for the harvest. We rarely dig the bulb of the ramp plant, instead we harvest the green leaves by using scissors and snipping one leaf from each cluster of 2-4 leaves. Two ways we freeze them are by making the greens into a ramps pesto and freezing it in small containers, or by finely slicing the greens into strips (called a "chiffonade") and tightly packing them into containers. The ramps greens keep well this way, and I just have to pull out a bit to use them in soups, bagels, or any recipe where they will be cooked.

nettles

Leafy greens also keep well in the freezer, but they need a bit of preparation first. We freeze nettles, dandelions, and garlic mustard greens in thin bricks, that way I am able to break off a bit to use when I am cooking. Before we freeze the greens, we blanch then for about 15 seconds in boiling water, then shock the greens in ice water. This stops the cooking process and allows the greens to keep their color and nutritional content, while removing most of the volume of the raw greens. After the greens are cooled, I wring out the excess water by squeezing them in handfuls, give the greens a quick and coarse chop, then tightly pack a thin layer of greens in a freezer-safe gallon plastic bag. I try to freeze the bags flat on their sides, and once they are frozen, they are easily stacked or placed upright.

July abundance of wineberries and wild blueberries

cranberries, cleaned and ready for freezing

Berries also freeze well, with a little planning. I try to Individually Quick Freeze them, or use the IQF method. We keep wineberries, blackberries, cranberries, blueberries, and non-traditional berries like spicebush berries in the freezer. To prepare berries for the freezer, I generally give them a quick wash and allow them to air-dry. I then spread them on a single layer on a parchment paper-lined sheet pan, and put the pan in the freezer. As long as they are not wet, they will freeze individually and can then be scooped into quart-sized freezer bags. I try to remove as much air as possible from the bag to prevent ice crystals from forming, and use the berries before the next season comes around. While the berries will be a little soft upon thawing, they can still be used successfully in oatmeal, pancakes, juiced, and in recipes like muffins and pancakes.

A large maitake mushroom

It is not often we are able to find so many mushrooms that we need to freeze them, but the 3 of us can only eat so much of the larger specimens at a time. Some maitake can weigh up to 30 pounds, and often we find more than one, so freezing is one way to preserve our harvest. We also freeze honey mushrooms and sulphur shelf mushrooms. To freeze mushrooms, you can either slice and pack them into containers raw, or cook them first and freeze. I generally pack them raw, as the freezing and thawing process makes the mushroom release a lot of its liquid, which I can then reduce and concentrate while cooking with the fungi. I use the frozen mushrooms in soups and in pilafs, and stuff bread with the cooked mushrooms. We also made large amounts of ravioli and burger patties with the fresh mushrooms, and froze them in plastic bags.

Acorn flour, stored in glass jars in the freezer, will last for a couple years

Some of the more unusual things we keep in the freezer are acorn flour (to keep it from going rancid), nuts like hickory and black walnut, pine and cattail pollen, dried and powdered nettles, and the male portion of cattail flowers, removed from the stem. I also keep a batch of Japanese knotweed muffins and berry juice, usually surplus from jam making. There is a small container of garlic mustard seeds in the freezer as well, to use in mustard making and to sprinkle on breads. Having our abundant harvests of wild food on hand all year in the freezer enhances our meals, and reduces our grocery bill at the same time!

Wild Food Foraging Evolution

Wildman Steve Brill

As our level of experience with wild foods continues to evolve and grow, so do our opportunities to share. Eight years ago we were wide-eyed, overwhelmed, and exhausted, trying to take in so much information about so many plants at once. We would take tours with Wildman Steve Brill or Russ Cohen and come away with our heads filled with information, cameras filled with pictures, and a notebook filled with hasty scrawls and notes about dozens of plants. We bought books, watched videos, and read articles online about the wild plants we encountered on daily hikes through fields and forests.

Over the years, we have learned to slow down and take our time to truly become familiar with a plant or mushroom we want to consume. Blogging about our adventures helps me focus on the activity of foraging for wild foods. Developing recipes with our foraged fare gets us to focus on flavors and characteristics of an edible weed or mushroom. We still have plenty to learn, but our pace has slowed significantly now that we have a firm base of knowledge of many common edible plants and mushrooms.

Milkweed, delicious, nutritious, and FREE food

There seems to be an increasing interest in wild food foraging lately, and I am not sure of its source. Is it an increased online presence that has become easily searchable? Is it a food insecurity and poverty-driven necessity? It it a new awareness of the natural world in rejection of an increasingly mechanized society? I don't have an answer to my own questions, but I personally have been affected by the increased demand for the information. This blog has seen increased traffic with each passing month. I have been contacted on numerous occasions by news organizations for comments about wild food foraging, and even more often by individuals who want to join us while we spend our weekends foraging. I see many new blogs popping up, written by amateur foragers and wild food enthusiasts. Established foragers are writing books and touring the country in support of their publications. Fancy restaurants champion and advertise "local, wild" ingredients on their menus as a selling point. There are more people making a living, or at least some money, from foraging now than 8 years ago when we started our wild food journey.

Showing wild grapes

This past month, we have given three wild food walks for limited groups. I am still a bit terrified to speak in a public setting, preferring the shield of a computer screen between my audience and myself. At the Coventry Farmer's Market, the Connecticut Valley Mycological Society (CVMS), was invited back for the annual Forage and Fungus Fair, and we provided 2 short edible plant walks in a field while members of the mushroom club gave fungi walks in the forest for market patrons. Earlier this month, we participated in the Connecticut-Westchester Mycological Association's first annual Fungus Fair. Almost all of the participants on that walk were familiar faces, so I was much more comfortable and relaxed. While we are listed on Green Deane's Eat the Weeds website as instructors, we are just now taking small steps to actively teach others. We look forward to expanding our experiences, and hope to continue sharing our adventures.

Teaching staghorn sumac

Our Joy of Foraging

Mushroom (and coconut!) hunting on vacation in Hawaii with Dr. Don Hemmes

Wildman Steve Brill,
educator

Our evolution in foraging for wild foods is still ongoing. I am happy to state that our current joy comes from being in the fields and woods with full baskets and camera while we seek out wild favorites and discover new fungi and plants. We truly enjoy tasting new flavors and researching new-to-us plants, while honing our identification skills regarding mushrooms during the different seasons. Participating in forays with experienced mushroom hunters and skilled identifiers is something we look forward to every week during the mushroom hunting season from May until November, and we continue to read books and review photos during the cold winter months. Hiking and learning from experienced naturalists and wild food educators is still an activity we actively seek out, traveling many miles and even finding folks to learn from while we vacation in tropical areas. Learning, experiencing, and tasting the natural, wild world around us is something that we feel wonderful participating in, and we are both becoming more comfortable in our skills as we begin to share our knowledge with groups of interested people at public events.

Invasive garlic mustard

Native and abundant sassafras root

Two of our focuses are sustainable harvest of native plants and possible control of invasive species of plants through consumption. We are careful to research the wild edibles we hunt to make sure they are not endangered or threatened species, we take only small portions of a population of plants for our own use, and harvest conscientiously by using the renewable plant parts like berries, leaves, or stems. Digging of roots and therefore killing a plant is not an activity we do often, unless we have a specific need for the roots and the plant population is healthy and able to sustain itself with the loss of a few individuals. The identification and eating of invasive, non-native species of plants is a newer focus of ours. Many of our recipes use invasive plants as their main ingredient and we try to make finding, identifying, and consuming these invaders less daunting and delicious. As a small family of two adults and one child who forage only for ourselves, our personal impact on our environment is low, but we aim to share the ideas and knowledge of sustainable harvest with others that we teach. Foraging wild plants for profit is an activity that we do not advocate or support, and the commercialization of foraging has become a mild concern. Foraging for personal use is an activity we enjoy as a family, along with sharing our experiences with others.

Foray table with Connecticut Valley Mycological Society

Russ Cohen, educator

Blanche Derby, educator

We are fortunate that we have the time, income, and desire to spend on wild food foraging and education. Sharing the experiences, travels, and interactions with other educators with our daughter is another joy we experience through our foraging activities, hoping she will learn while having fun. We are also fortunate to have found so many wild food and fungi mentors, teachers, and friends. I cannot stress enough the importance of learning about wild edible plants and mushrooms from experienced teachers, face to face. While I prefer to read a book, and Robert prefers to learn by watching videos, we both benefit greatly by learning from actual people in the field. You may end up spending lots of money and time on travel to find your local educators, but it is always worth it, in my opinion. Traveling, camping, and recreating with like-minded friends makes the learning even more fun. Our silly hobby of eating weeds keeps growing into a learning and sharing based lifestyle, where we are continually immersing ourselves some of the things we like to do the most: eating wild foods, hunting mushrooms with friends, seeking out new wild flavors and adventures while traveling, and sharing our knowledge with others.

Fungi hunting with Terry, Bill, Noah, and Walt

Rose Petal Recipe - Rose Petal Syrup

Here in the New England area, the beaches are often backed by wild roses (Rosa rugosa) that have large white or pink 5 petaled roses. The flowers will develop into large, 1" deep orange hips, and the stems are wickedly thorny. They are commonly called beach roses or wrinkled roses and are originally from Japan. Now they are listed as invasive in many areas, including Connecticut. They tolerate the salty conditions at the shore, and have proliferated there as a result, growing along sandy dunes on the east coast from southern Canada to North Carolina, and west to Wisconsin and the Great Lakes.

Before the vitamin C-packed rosehips develop later in the summer, we gather the fragrant petals from the flowers. The best time of day to gather the flower petals is late morning or early afternoon. They open each morning, become dusted with pollen around noon, and will drop their petals by late evening, leaving the pollinated and developing hip behind. By gently grasping the whole flower head with your hand and tugging the petals, you will often get most of the petals off easily. The hardest part is avoiding the prickers, and there is often poison ivy growing among the bushes, so be mindful and wear shoes and maybe even jeans when picking.

Thickets of white and pink flowered roses line the shore

The petals contain the lovely rose smell, and are edible raw as a pretty garnish in salads. They can be added to cookie dough, like shortbread, for color and flavor. We also use them to make this wildly beautiful syrup, which we then use to add to seltzer for flavor, as a flavored syrup at breakfast, add to mixed cocktails like simple syrup, and as a base for a floral sorbet. At first, the color will be a dull purple, but adding the ascorbic acid powder will create the intense pink and preserve the syrup. We buy bulk powdered ascorbic acid from the local vitamin shop, it is more commonly known as vitamin C. You could use this recipe for roses you have in your yard, as long as you have not sprayed the roses with chemicals. Many hybridized and domesticated roses no longer have the heady fragrance of wild roses, though, so we prefer the wild roses for this recipe.


Rose Petal Syrup                          makes about 4 cups of syrup

2 1/4 c. water
3 c. granulated sugar
2 c. packed rose petals, coarsely chopped
3 Tbsp. ascorbic acid powder

1. Heat the water to boiling and add the sugar. Remove from the heat, and stir until the sugar dissolves.
2. Allow the sugar syrup to cool to 80°F, then stir in the chopped rose petals. Cover the pot and let the flowers steep in the syrup for 24 hours.
3. Filter out the flowers and squeeze them well to extract all the flavor. Filter the syrup through a fine mesh coffee filter.
4. Remove 1 cup of the syrup, and warm it in a saucepan. Add the ascorbic acid, using a whisk to dissolve it. Add the warmed syrup back to the remainder, and mix it all well.
5. Store in airtight, sterilized glass containers in a dark place, up to a year.

White Memorial Bioblitz 2013

This past weekend we spent 24 hours with a large group of dedicated and enthusiastic science-minded folks at the White Memorial Bioblitz. What is a bioblitz? It's a 24 hour event that tallies every species inhabiting a study site. Biologists blitz the area in search of every living species, and the bioblitz finishes with a final count of all the species discovered. There were bird people, fish people, plant people, lichen people, bug people, and we were part of the fungus working group, along with some other members of CVMS, the Connecticut Valley Mycological Society. The final count for the kingdom Fungi was 89 specimens, and the final count of all species of life was 931 species.

The end of May and very beginning of June are not terribly exciting times of the year for finding fungi in Connecticut. We mostly collected wood decaying fungi and several slime molds, but fellow myco-nuts Emily and Mike did surprise us all and found 3 beautiful morels on site. They were greatly admired specimens.

CVMS Fungi display and one of our club experts, Terry

Some of our better-looking fungi were brought over to the Tree of Life Museum, along with some informational sign boards. Some of our finds included lots of turkey tails (Trametes versicolor and Trametes hirsuta), the platterful mushroom (Megacollybia rodmanii), the blonde morels (Morchella esculentoides), winecaps (Stropharia rugosoannulata), and a few slime molds including dog vomit (Fuligo septica), chocolate tube slime (Stemonitis), and Ceratiomyxa, which was incredibly abundant that weekend. Also on display at the other tables were assorted ferns, some caterpillars, fish, flowers, lichens, moss, and some stuffed animals from the White Memorial Museum.

Robert took some photographs of something we could not at first identify. It looked like yellow tapioca beads on some decayed wood. If the tapioca beads were white, we would identify them as Stemonitis species in their plasmodial stage. Left to age overnight, we were greeted by the wet "chocolate" stage, the fruit body, or sporangia, of the slime mold. Later that day, we dispersed the spores by gently blowing on the strands, leaving the structures that held the spores behind. This is a great species that Robert would like to time-lapse photograph, so we'll keep our eyes open for more of the "tapioca" stage slime. Slime molds are not in the kingdom Fungi, but we often collect and identify them while on forays.

Stemonitis in three stages