backwoods menu/Wild tea.

[danmc]

1) muscadines (wild grape of the southeast). yum.

2) tough choice here, but I made some persimmon ice cream with some wild persimmons this year and it was fantastic. But... I don't know offhand where many of those grow

Others that come to mind, hickory nuts (mockernut and pignut), blackberries, elderberries, jersusalem artichoke (careful if you ever bring home a tuber and plant it in your garden, you may wish you hadn't).


I don't mind acorns after soaking but I wouldn't go out of my way for them unless I was really hungry.


still looking for a hot drink from wild plants that I like. Don't care for pine needle tea or dandelion tea. Persimmon seeds roasted and ground are good but at least for me they are no where nearly as widely available.

-Dan

[nell67]

persimmons grow rather wildly around here,nothing to pass by a wooded area and run over tons of them after they ripen and fall.

[fishpole]

some surprisingly easy critters to trap that i happen to enjoy:

muskrat
opposum
racoon
squierrel (witch im sure you have all eaten)
woodchuck

vegies:

cattail tubers (pounded and ground into flower, sun dried, or boiled)
wild onions
acorns
dandilion (and dandilion wine lol)

[danmc]

persimmons grow rather wildly around here,nothing to pass by a wooded area and run over tons of them after they ripen and fall.

this year a friend turned me on to the joys of roasting the seeds from persimmon and grinding them to use as a coffee substitute. It's pretty good and so far my favorite "wild" hot drink.

[chiangmaimav]

mulberry tea, mango, and a vegetable Thai call kah but I am not sure what English name is.

[danmc]

mulberry tea, mango, and a vegetable Thai call kah but I am not sure what English name is.

For the mulberry tea, is it from the dried fruit?

-Dan

[skunkkiller]

blood pudding is good all it is is the blood cooked it has the techer of pudding .when you cook a pork chop and the blood runs out and cooks on the edge of the chop that is what blood pudding is.

[chiangmaimav]

Dan, the mulberry tea is actually made from the dried mulberry leaves.

[edr730]

fried ditch lily with egg and cornmeal (a delicacy that is similar to fried squash blossoms)
elderberry (sour, but add sugar)
morel mushroom (superior to all other mushrooms)
poke salad (also some parts are very medicinal)

These are foods that I ate commonly as a child and still do eat, but less regularly. I agree with the tastes of others here, but I listed some that are a bit less common. Deer meat (if the tallow is cleaned off), cottontail (far better flavor then domestic rabbit or snowshoe), squirrel (prolific and easy to run down and shoot while just sitting there while you shoot it), fish (panfish have a delicate flavor even for those who don't like fish), Walnuts (unequaled compared to domestic varieties, all berries (all superior), maple syrup, honey (follow the bee). These are the delicacies of the forest that many of us have enjoyed. There are many others that I haven't mentioned, only tasted or only read about that are very interesting as well. Two that sound interesting to me at the moment are the cattail (almost all edible) and itchweed (stinging nettle...makes good rope and very edible and extremely medicinal). I am new here, but hope to learn more about this subject....and thanks for starting the post.

[danmc]

fried ditch lily with egg and cornmeal (a delicacy that is similar to fried squash blossoms)

I've never had either. Are the tubers similar to soloman's seal tubers? Is it the tubers you fry?

With regards to cattail, I haven't tried the tops yet. I find the steamed roots to be fairly bland. I wouldn't jump with excitement about having them for dinner (unless I was really hungry and then I definitely would) but I wouldn't complain either. Just don't eat the tough fibers. Suck off the starchy stuff and spit out the fibers.

-Dan

[edr730]

Danmc....it is the flower that you fry. I guess the tubers might be edible, but I never ate them. If you try the squash blossoms, only pick the long stemed ones; they are male and don't produce squash. Thanks for the input on the cattails. I may try them the roots soon to see if they are edible in the winter. I'll smash them up good, let them freeze, thaw them slowly and hope that the starch is the first thing to melt away. kinda like a shortcut to boiling the water away. This method has worked good on some other stuff.....maybe it will work, maybe not. It doesn't sound like it's something I want to make a part of my regular diet...at least not the roots.

[ClayPick]

Looks like a roast of moose and fiddleheads tonight, gees times are tough. My wife enjoys Labrador Tea so we gather a few lb’s of that every year. As far as I’m concerned I’d rather drink bilge water.

[Hcaterpillar]

Wild Garlic, Pignut (Conopodium), Thistle leaves.
Current faves for winter - Frosted dandelion, small leaved sorrel, juniper berries, pine needles (mostly just to chew on).

[Norse&Native]

1) muscadines (wild grape of the southeast). yum.

2) tough choice here, but I made some persimmon ice cream with some wild persimmons this year and it was fantastic. But... I don't know offhand where many of those grow

Others that come to mind, hickory nuts (mockernut and pignut), blackberries, elderberries, jersusalem artichoke (careful if you ever bring home a tuber and plant it in your garden, you may wish you hadn't).


I don't mind acorns after soaking but I wouldn't go out of my way for them unless I was really hungry.


still looking for a hot drink from wild plants that I like. Don't care for pine needle tea or dandelion tea. Persimmon seeds roasted and ground are good but at least for me they are no where nearly as widely available.

-Dan

Dan, try chicory coffee. It tastes a lot like dark coffee. Just dig up the root and roast it in your oven for about twenty minutes, grind it and add boiling water in a cup or French press.

[Road Scholar]

In Maine, my home state, burned over land or otherwise disturbed land usually produces big crops of wild blueberries. You can pick faster than you can eat em but not by much. As a kid, we followed a whole succession of wild foods, gathering them as a family, and then we all pitched in to make foods with them. In the fall, old abandoned apple trees on abandoned, overgrown farms still produced wormy apples but they cooked up fine after cutting out the bad stuff. Another plant that is found on those old overgrown, abandoned farms is the daylilly. These have edible blossoms and I'm told the roots can be eaten too. There's usually wild asparagus but you have to know where these are or you're too late by the time you can see those tall feathery leaves. The old farms will usually still have old, thin, sour stalks of rhubarb too but they are still good. An ornamental that is often found in such places is the japanese knotweed which has bamboo-like segments but is soft and sweet. These can be cooked and the stalks eaten. One of my favorite wild foods was always to catch a big mess of yellow perch. These fish are considered trash fish and no one will every object to taking even a bushel basket full of them. I experimented and found a way to make them quite edible and they are extremely easy to catch. I've even caught them from belly tickling before. The trick is to fillet them and once the skin is off, the fishy taste is mostly gone. You can soak them in sour milk, bread them, and fry for a very nice meal. Cattail stalks can be boiled when not too mature and they taste kind of like wheat. Drink a tea made from pine needles. It's got vitamin c enough to keep one healthy. It's common and very simple to find so it is very worth while. Basswood leaves can be used to wrap rice, grains, or other seeds and (lots of them) packed into a pan and baked. Think of grape leaves. I eastern europe, an easter meal is sarma which is rice and meat wrapped in grape or cabbage leaves and baked in a casserole. It's good too.
--
Harry, the Road Scholar

[biddysere]

To throw in a few; Wild onions and Camas stuffed inside a snowshoe hare and baked in the ground. Yum! Right now here in the south, the Greenbriars are shooting. Probably one of the best tasting plants down here

[NCO]

Arctic raspberry, Cloudberry, Lingonberry, Cranberry, Blueberry, Woodland Strawberry, Chanterelle, Porcini, Slippery Jack(the mushruum, not the person...), moose, rapit, grouse, etc...
There is so many things in woods you actually can eat that sometimes you just have to choose what to have, bow down and pick it up..
Also using dryed Red Clover flowers for tea!!

[snakeman]

wood sorrel, blackberries, wild strawberries, more blackberries, salmon and freshwater fish, and more blackberries, and venison.

[oldsoldier]

What about the nuts we got plenty of em here.. No but seriously. How about wild mulberries? We have a couple of mulberry tree on our land. The berries look like small blackberries. are SUPER sweet and we get 4-5 gallons every year. easy to gather too. We put a couple of 14'X 25' tarps out on the ground then shake the rap out of the branches the ripe or mostly ripe berries fall off onto the tarp. Just pick up the corners slide the berries to one end and dump em' in a bucket to take inside we usually rinse them well put em' ( the first couple of gallons or so) in freezer bags and put in freezer for latter use. Have had a bumper crop the last couple years and this year looks like another one!! tried canning some( jelly/jam) didn't work done something wrong BUT we did have a few pints of some of the best syrup I've tasted in a long time. My next favorite(s) would be the wild persimmons and the pecans that grow along the river bottoms a few miles from here.

[Rick]

There are a number of things that could have gone wrong with your mulberry jelly/jam.
1. Make certain you use pectin as a thickener. Too little or none can cause runny jam.
2. Too little sugar can also cause runny jam.
3. Undercooking - You need to bring it to a full rolling boil for one minute.
4. Overheating or uneven heat distribution can break down the pectin.

You'll also need to add lemon juice to the mulberries because they are very low acid.

Here's a great site on mulberry jams. Scroll down for the directions.

http://pickyourown.org/mulberryjam.htm

Mulberries contain resveratrol and large amounts of anthocyanins. Both have been shown to combat and/or be effective against cancer.

Indiana must be the mecca for mulberries. They grow everywhere!!!!! You'll find them ripe throughout June, July and into August in Indiana.