groundhogpeggy
10-16-2008, 08:37 AM
This is such a big message board, I might've missed it elsewhere, but does anyone here do any foraging for food?
I used to, but have gotten too busy to do much in recent years... I used to have my own method of getting really good dandelion greens... I'd walk all around the yard in the early springtime, with scissors, cutting off the attempts of the plants to bud... "Nip it in the bud," according to the wisdom of Barney Fife... anyway, as spring progresses, you have to get out there more and more often, nipping away at those buds... the greens will stay milder and get bigger (especially the ones growing in the shade), and you can have very nice dandelion greens until one day the plant finally outsmarts you and gets buds in spite of your efforts, then, it's all over for the greens. However, at that point, you can begin harvesting the flowers... they fry up really well, battered, or you can make very nice jelly from them.
We've also harvested violet greens (takes a LOT if you cook them, but raw you only need a handful), violet flowers, and made jelly from violet flowers (I was talking to a friend about this one time and she described the violets she intended to use for this and I realized she was talking about a different plant entirely, so, it's a good idea to make sure you know your weeds before you begin eating them... here's a good place to start: http://wildmanstevebrill.com/ ).
There's also lambsquarters, which make the best greens of all of them, in my opinion, and the seeds are edible too... there are so many others... I used to have areas of the yard where I'd encourage some of these weeds so we could have plenty of free, wild food too.
I've heard lambsquarters also called "fat hen," supposedly because grass-fed hens will prefer them over other things.
Anybody else doing this sort of thing?
I used to, but have gotten too busy to do much in recent years... I used to have my own method of getting really good dandelion greens... I'd walk all around the yard in the early springtime, with scissors, cutting off the attempts of the plants to bud... "Nip it in the bud," according to the wisdom of Barney Fife... anyway, as spring progresses, you have to get out there more and more often, nipping away at those buds... the greens will stay milder and get bigger (especially the ones growing in the shade), and you can have very nice dandelion greens until one day the plant finally outsmarts you and gets buds in spite of your efforts, then, it's all over for the greens. However, at that point, you can begin harvesting the flowers... they fry up really well, battered, or you can make very nice jelly from them.
We've also harvested violet greens (takes a LOT if you cook them, but raw you only need a handful), violet flowers, and made jelly from violet flowers (I was talking to a friend about this one time and she described the violets she intended to use for this and I realized she was talking about a different plant entirely, so, it's a good idea to make sure you know your weeds before you begin eating them... here's a good place to start: http://wildmanstevebrill.com/ ).
There's also lambsquarters, which make the best greens of all of them, in my opinion, and the seeds are edible too... there are so many others... I used to have areas of the yard where I'd encourage some of these weeds so we could have plenty of free, wild food too.
I've heard lambsquarters also called "fat hen," supposedly because grass-fed hens will prefer them over other things.
Anybody else doing this sort of thing?