Anyone gone out foraging??

[arcticslug]

Has anyone gone out into the woods foraging for any food yet? I've been going to the farmer's market around here and there are some really great wild foods available. My absolutely FAVOURITE is fiddleheads - baby ferns that aren't unfurled yet. Fantastic fried with butter and garlic. There are also some other plants that I've seen in the forest and also at the farmer's market - mainly greens.

I can't wait until the berries start coming out. The bushes around town and also in the wilderness around here should be coming up soon - blueberries, thimbleberries, strawberries...so good!

I would like to hear what other people are doing as an alternative to the grocery store. Do you guys go to farmer's markets, grow your own food (if so, what kinds do you grow) or hunt/fish for food? Sometimes I get this fantasy that it would be so cool to be able to live 100% self sufficiently. It would force you to eat only what's good for you and at the right times of year.

[MichaelG]

I am not a fisherman. If I cannot catch anything after 20 minutes I pack up and go home. Once I took my boys fishing and caught a fish called a "flathead", about a kilo and very ugly, although delicious when filleted.

I was under the impression that we had a 'deal' going with fish, that once caught they would politely succumb and get turned into fish mornay at our leisure. This beast attacked me with spiked fins, then proceeded to bite me and left me with bleeding hands that took days to heal. I took it home, obtained two 'steaks' off it which the boys refused to eat.

Sum total of my foraging! Used to love 'berrying' when I was a boy in England and there are vast quantities of 'elderberries' there that can be crushed to make a Wicked wine, tastes like port.

Also my son in law in N. Queensland takes me pig hunting but I can't use a gun. If I lived up there I would LIVE on pigs and kangaroos!

cheers

Michael Gardner
Australia

[Lobstergal]

When I was a child and used to go to New Brunswick with my mom we used to go digging for clams and picking wild strawberries. Fish was so plentiful there. It practically jumped out of the ocean at you. I have been thinking about those times a lot and wonder if we had lived there how much knowledge regarding foraging I could have learned from my mom but now I forage at the Farmer's Market. It is the best place IMO for food here in the city.

P.S. I love those fiddleheads too. :-)

[Hellistile]

This reminded me of my childhood days picking Saskatoons in the river valley. Thanks for the memories. I'd love to be able to pick mushrooms, but I don't have that old-country talent of knowing which ones are edible. Nowadays, my foraging is restricted to Farmer's Markets.

[daguttgrl7]

i was visiting a friends house the other day and she let me 'forage' in her fridge because she was afraid to look. now that was some kind of wild wonder in there! i think there were items that could have been prehistoric...
okay, so that was my lame attempt at foraging. just thought i'd give it a try and throw one in for good measure ;)

[Lobstergal]

Any good forage is a forage of mine. :-D

[nela]

In the autumn we go into the Pyrenees and forage for wild mushrooms. You have to go with someone who knows about the different varieties because some of them are poisonous. We pick baskets and baskets of the good varieties and even sun dry some of them to use later in the winter in sauces, etc. Yum!

You have to be careful when you pick them and use a knife to cut them off at the base, leaving the roots so they can grow the following year. Oh, and you have to put them into wicker baskets, not plastic bags, I think it has to do with the resulting taste or something. Mushroom picking is a big thing here in the autumn, some people won't tell you where they get theirs from, it's like a huge secret. People guard their "territories" fiercely. LOL.

[JenofWi]

I forage in my yard. It's the only place here in the city I can be sure in unsprayed. We eat lots of dandylions in the spring. That's really about it though we have lots of Burdock, purslane and clover. Are those edible?
I have a friend whose husband forages for morel mushrooms which cost 19.99 a pound at the store. Needless to say, they are always welcome.

[Lobstergal]

All this talk of foraging is making me want to go to the library and look up books on edible wild foods and learn more.

[LondonIan]

Living in London doesn't give me a lot of room for foraging and anything from my garden is likely to be covered in cat and fox pee.

However, I do occasionally apply dark stripes across my face, change into camo and go after meat with a bow and arrow. Boy, that get's me funny looks in the supermarket.

[Hellistile]

It does, Ian? I thought that was normal attire in some parts of London?

[LondonIan]

! Damn, I must have missed them!

[FionaMcB]

Besides the weekly Farmer's Markets, one on Wednesday and one on Saturday, we have miles of blackberries and wild asparagus. Can't go wrong with those. When I was much younger a friend took me to his dad's property in Alaska for a two week get-a-way. We stood on a bank with nets and let the salmon jump into them, I've never had fish that good since. We ate just about nothing but salmon and berries, and each night drank his dad's stowed away Scotch and Port.

Thanks for the memories!

[JenofWi]

This reminds me of when I was telling my good friend about this diet and how I was trying to only eat things I could find if I were naked on the African plains armed only with a club (Doesn't Neaderthin say something like that?). She replied: Your husband must love watching you prepare dinner that way.

[LondonIan]

Jenowi - ROFLMAO! Too funny!

[Paleomama]

We love to forage for wild foods. My husband used to lead wild food classes so he is much more versed in what is okay and whatis not. My 8 year old in particular has a natural eye for spotting wild foods. My favorite is wintercress but we forage for all sorts of things (burdock, soreel, fiddleheads, lambsquarters, dandelion greens etc..) I've been eating fiddleheads as my breakfast vegetable as of late. I steam them and toss them with a tiny bit of olive oil.

[walnut]

i'd love to get into wildcrafting/foraging more. i'm not full-on paleo, but i definitely lean towards eating whole foods/wild foods.


we picked a lot of saskatoons when they were on. waiting patiently for blackberries right now. they're just starting. i made some fireweed jelly for my hubby, but it's loaded with sugar, so i wont be eating it. i've been eating dandelion greens out of the garden too. i have a book called edible garden weeds of canada, and i'd like to actually use it more often! nettles are something i'd like to consume more of too.

i wish that it was easier to find mushroom fields. i'm on the bc coast, and apparently there's really good mushroom picking around here, but like someone else said, people fiercely guard their secret picking grounds.

my hubby's been talking about going out bow-hunting! i'm trying to motivate him to do more than talk about it. :)