Foraging Basics
Wild edible foods are often more nutritious than those found in the grocery store. They’re fresher, they need no cultivation/care, and they grow in soil that is often more fertile and teeming with life, because it has not been continuously farmed and repeatedly tilled. When you’re left with only shelf-stable foods after a disaster, you’ll likely be grateful for the gift of fresh wild greens and berries. My foraging knowledge is not extensive, but I have tried enough wild edible foods to provide some recommendations. For this post, I am relying primarily on the pages linked below, as well as Northwest Foraging (Benoliel, 2011). If you want to learn more about foraging, here are some of my other favorite sources of information: Braiding Sweetgrass (Kimmerer, 2013), The Forager’s Harvest (Thayer, 2006), Incredible Wild Edibles (Thayer, 2017), Pacific Northwest Foraging (Deur, 2014); these Instagram accounts: @blackforager @foragecolorado, and @linda.black.elk. Before starting your foraging adventure, please heed some standard foraging disclaimers:
Foraged foods can be categorized in many different ways. One rough categorization method we’ll use is the amount of water that’s needed to clean and prepare the food (again, because our clean water is limited). We’re not going to discuss wild edible roots and tubers here because - though high in nutrition and valuable calories - they often take more water to prepare. We should also avoid foods found growing near busy roads because these foods are more likely to be dusty from car traffic and associated pollution. We can further categorize wild edible foods by the season in which they’re available. Few edible wild plants are good to eat year-round, but some have a longer harvest period than others. I’m choosing some that have fairly long harvest periods. They are all potentially harvestable in April (when I’m writing this), and they can all be eaten raw or cooked (though Miner’s Lettuce is a bit too tender and cute to cook, I think). You will probably not find them all in one outing, but they are fairly common in our area, easy to identify, and well worth knowing. Foraged green salad ingredients Dandelion leaves - very nutritious, but not a favorite of many, as they are usually bitter. Gather a small number of relatively clean, younger leaves. If you have the patience of a few weeks, dandelion leaves can be grown in a “blanched” fashion by depriving them of sunlight (just cover them with an inverted plant nursery pot. This process reduces their bitterness, and may also keep them cleaner. Blanching is a common growing practice that can mollify the flavor of cultivated plants like endive, radicchio, and rhubarb. If you use this process with dandelions, you may choose to include a larger number of leaves in your salads. Lamb’s quarters - very nutritious, much more tasty than dandelion, though not as widespread. As Alan Bergo mentions, it needs disturbed soil to thrive. Many consider it a weed, but if you want to let it multiply, harvest only the tips (these are the most tender anyway). Lemon balm - this perennial mint relative can become a bit weedy if the seed heads are left to develop. The flavor is nice and lemony, but the leaves may be a touch fuzzy for some. A handful of leaves in a salad are nice, and a lot of them can be used to make pesto when you have access to a food processor and electricity. Miner’s lettuce - This Portland Plant List native is my favorite of the suggested ingredients here. Its leaves are sweeter and more succulent than spinach, and it grows easily through the winter and early spring. I planted them in my yard years ago, and so they grow by themselves as an abundant spring annual. The early leaves are simple, succulent, and heart-shaped. The later leaves grow in a distinctive pointed circle that completely surrounds each stem, with tiny white flowers in the middle. As the name implies, this plant was eaten by gold rush miners, and its vitamin C often warded off scurvy. Of course, this plant was known and cherished MUCH earlier by native peoples - one of their names for it is Rooreh. Sheep sorrel - This miniature relative of French Sorrel (mentioned in Day 3’s post) is quite similar - the leaves are smaller, and in a more pronounced arrowhead shape. Both bring a nice tartness to a salad. Salad recipe
0 Comments
Corn Salad - Adapted from FoodHero.org and Recipes For Disaster, from EVCNB.org
Optional - chop and add other fresh greens that you might have. Chives, french sorrel & lovage are perennial greens that are easy to grow outside. If you use these when clean water is limited, it’s best to harvest from the top half of the plant, as these will likely need little to no washing. AuthorLincoln Thomas, Newsletter Editor, Neighbors Ready!
This is the first in a monthly series of blogs on recipes that you can easily prepare in a disaster or emergency without power. If you’re like me, you have dozens of gallons of water and food stored in a number of places. You could probably last more than a week without power, but you might not have thought through what that would be like. Is your stash of emergency food balanced in terms of nutrition, energy needs, and palatability? What factors should you consider to minimize any loss of your precious supplies? How might you supplement and extend your shelf-stable goods, once you’ve used up the fresh food from your fridge? Find out, as we discuss these day-to-day considerations in this blog series, Eating without Electricity. We start with Day 1, the power has gone out, and it may be out for days. What supplies do you use up first?
AuthorKaren Ronning-Hall, Disaster Preparedness Evangelist, living in beautiful Portland, Oregon, with hubby Bill, daughter Geneva, Bean dog, Thumper kitty, and Terry the turtle. The U.S. government’s comprehensive report on the effects of climate change details challenges for every part of the country.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
February 2024
Categories |