Black Walnut Adventures

I was recently introduced to the Eastern Black Walnut tree juglans nigra through its fruit, which hung heavy and green, like smooth golf balls. Parts of last year's crop that the squirrels had spared lay dried in the grass, but the fresh new fruit smelled fresh, almost citrusy. Evan, the tree owner, advised that the nuts are very difficult to open. He may as well have thrown down a glove.

Back home the children and I tried to crack it. The husk came off relatively easy with a knife. Immediately the flesh began to oxidise and turn brown. After rendering inoperable a heavy-duty and formerly rather nice nutcracker, we conceded that black walnuts are, in fact, rather hard to open. We also noticed that my hands were turning various shades of yellow to dark brown and black, as was the counter top, and ... it didn't come off. Emma wondered if this is why it's called black walnut. We took the stubborn nut outside and pretended we were hunter-gatherers, smashing our dinner open with a rock. Success! Tasty, but hard-earned. No wonder they are so expensive to buy.

Having already discovered the dyeing properties, we then decided to dye something for real. Using a piece of white cotton fabric, the result was an earthy dark brown. Not a colour en vogue this year, but it would be perfect for camo gear. Thank you Evan for inspiring an afternoon of fun and discovery!

Lamb's Quarters

AFTER purchasing lamb's quarters Chenopodium album, also called goosefoot, several times at the farmers' market, what a great discovery to find it growing wild in a bit of scrub land behind our house!

It sat on the window sill in a glass of water for a while until we'd had a chance to be sure of the identification, then I cooked some and cautiously sampled. Yep, tasted the same. Into the soup it went! Who doesn't love free food?

Reading some more about it, it seems that the seeds too are edible and very nutritious. It's closely related to quinoa, one of the only complete proteins. The plant can become very tall - up to 3m - and as it ages, the stems become woody enough to be used as walking sticks! I think I feel another gathering trip coming on.

Rainbow Nice Cake

THE stall turnout at the outdoor market was disappointing. But in the car park I spotted some bushes laden with fruit. Perhaps we wouldn't go home quite empty handed after all. They were wild plums, about the size of cherry tomatoes, and very delicious. We picked several bags full. After snacking on them all day, the haul yielded four jars of ginger plum chutney.

The next week we went back again, this time prepared with fruit baskets. This time they made a delicious dessert. We simmered the tart plums with a splash of sherry (orange liqueur would have been even better), cinnamon and sweetened with agave. When cooled and thickened, the fruit was layered with a mixture of cream cheese, homemade yoghurt, orange peel and honey, then refrigerated for a few hours to let the flavours meld. Yum! We served it to guests that evening and voted on the best name for our concoction. Emma's won: Rainbow Nice Cake.

Wood Sorrel Tea

WOOD sorrel, with its lemony flavour, is said to make good tea. So we decided to try that out. Gathering enough wood sorrel in our garden was not a problem, and we soon had a large bunch simmering away. Add sweetener (we used honey), pour into a glass and... well what do you know, it's red! Bear in mind that this was a green plant with a yellow flower. But it was very refreshing, especially cold with ice.

The Nine Lives of Cattails

TO my surprise I found I could already identify many of the plants highlighted in the recent wild edibles class. At least, well enough to guess out loud but not necessarily well enough to tuck into without an expert present. While I could identify cattails and knew that they were edible, I didn't realise quite how many uses they have!
Before modern development began destroying the habitat of cattails, American Indians used the nutritious plant in a myriad ways:

• When peeled, the white heart of the shoot is similar to heart of palm and can be used in stir fries, soups, salads, or sauteed as a side vegetable.
  
• Immature flower heads can be eaten like a corn cob.
  
• The super-nutritious pollen can be added to flour for baking.
  
• The jelly-like substance found between leaves can be used medicinally to heal wounds.
  
• Dried leaves can be twisted or woven into cordage, baskets, thatched rooves, toys for children.
  
• The empty seed heads keep insects away when burnt on a fire.
  
• The fluffy white seeds make good stuffing for additional warmth in bedding and clothes.
  
  
  
  That's pretty impressive for a single plant.

First Foraging of the Year

TODAY we harvested from our garden - and we haven't even planted our vegetable garden yet! The plants we harvested are often called weeds, which, as 'plants growing in an undesirable place' (i.e. the flower bed) they were to us too. 'Undesirable plants,' however, they were not.

Yellow wood sorrel has compound leaves divided into three parts, each shaped like a heart. In England it's also known as cuckoo sorrel, because its small yellow flowers bloom when the cuckoo sings. The delicate leaves close at night and supposedly when it's about to rain too. Most of all they have a delicious lemon flavour and are great for snacking.

Chickweed is one of the most common edible 'weeds' and has a tiny white star-shaped flower. The leaves and flower buds are hairy. It's very nutritious and a good addition to salad.

And today we found some tiny shoots of pokeweed! See here for previous adventures with this leafy green vegetable. I have to admit this is more fun to harvest than to boil twice, but somehow it is reassuring to know that we can eat from the garden/the wild just by knowing what to look for. However far so many "foods" in the supermarket are from their original state, it is still possible to eat the healthy way of our ancestors. Providing, of course, your backyard is not sprayed with pesticides :-)

Photo credit: www.all-creatures.org and Emily Porter

Surprise Foraging

SO there we were looking for stumps or pieces of wood that could be used as fairy houses, and we came across blackberries! That is, I thought they were blackberries, but they did look a little different from those I gathered in my youth. The leaves were narrower, the fruits were smaller and longer. Also the berries were all down low, hidden under leaves, instead of up in the sunlight out of reach. But they tasted like blackberries, so I figured they must be some New World variety and I remembered reading in Wildman Steve Brill's book that all the blackberry lookalikes are edible, so we picked away, munching merrily as we went. At home I looked it up - looks like it could be dewberries we found. They are very similar to blackberries but grow on a low vine instead of an upright cane. Or are they just one of the 15-20 species found in the south? Whatever they are, there were plenty that weren't ripe yet, so we'll certainly be back for more. Maybe better dressed for brambles and poison ivy next time! Mmmh, blackberry and apple pie tomorrow?

Foraging Part II

AFTER my success with pokeweed, I wondered what else I could scrounge from the garden. The most obvious was the wild garlic that sprouts all over our lawn. They have long stalks like chives, and if you dig them up, clusters of tiny bulbs. I'm not 100% positive that it's wild garlic - there seem to be differing opinions all over the web - but it's definitely some kind of allium and is not poisonous. So a bunch of that went into my goulash soup.

And then there was the lowly dandelion. Despite their place on many a lawn-lover's most despised weed list, dandelions have multiple uses. Eat them, drink them, grind or chew them. Fresh young leaves make a great and nutritious salad and may also be boiled for a spinachy taste. The roots may be ground up to make a coffee-like drink and the flowers boiled for tea, eaten raw in salad or battered and fried for a crunchy little appetizer. And don't forget dandelion wine! Dandelion has been used as a herbal remedy for centuries and is an ingredient in many common pharmaceuticals in use today. Its root is particularly good for urinary and skin complaints, and with all the vitamins A, C, E and K as well as minerals in the leaves, it's no wonder there are so many rabbits around. We forewent the more complicated preparations and simply picked a few leaves to add to our salad. Yum!

Pioneering Pokeweed

WHILE exploring the wilder parts of our back garden, I noticed some new pokeweed shoots coming up. Many people would recognise this plant, as it grows really tall and has a distinctive red stem and, in the autumn, black berries. But you may not know that poke is one of the first wild greens to appear in the Spring, and has been eaten for centuries. Most parts of the plant are actually poisonous, and despite a common name for the dish, "poke salad" or "salat", it should never be eaten raw. When cooked in a certain way, however, it is supposed to make a delicious vegetable dish. Throwing caution to the wind, I decided to give it a try.

We harvested only shoots that were less than 6-7" tall as those taller become too toxic. Taking care not to include any of the very poisonous roots, the leaves were washed then boiled. They must be boiled for ten minutes at least twice, discarding the cooking water in between, in order to remove the toxins. (Needless to say this dish was not destined for the children.) Then, I dug in with a fork. I felt like a pioneer tasting something unknown, not knowing if I would wake up the next day or not. This thought alternated with the other that I was being ridiculous and people have been eating this wild stuff for years. The third thought was one of irony - that the general populace would think me most weird for voluntarily eating some 'nasty' weed from the garden that I knew to be poisonous; and yet they happily feed their children who knows what chemicals in the average processed food. If nothing else, it was quite the thought-provoking little weed!

Well? you ask. It was absolutely delicious. Texture soft like canned asparagus (well, it was boiled to death). Taste, somewhat like creamed spinach. I suffered no ill consequences and have been unconsciously looking for poke everywhere I go ever since.