Food Foraging.

Thankyou for the article, I'm always on the look out for good plant I.D. books, as your advice is sound.

 

Go to Amazon, earch on "wild edibles". You'll find dozens of books. I've got a few in my collection.

 

It took me a while to find one I liked. I hate the ones with just a drawing. It's too vague for me. I need an actual photo of the plant and any distinguishing pieces for me to be sure it's the exact same plant and not something harmful.

 

We've been using this one

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1612120091/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/186-6891182-1001243







It has real pics and tons of info on each plant including how to cook/eat them. It's led to many foraging trips to identify what we have locally and has also prompted us to go buy seeds for some things the misses wants to try.

 

Now is the time to learn what plants are "Edible"!

Sometimes there is a fine line between what is "Edible" and what is "Non Toxic" and its better to know which is which before you have to survive on it!:laugh::laugh:

 

It would be interesting if they included a calorie count so that folks would see how much of this stuff it takes to survive.

 

I use our edibles to round out our meals. I use the landcress and dandelion for salads and as a veggie ( like spinach) tossed with bacon grease and the bacon bits ( thats how I got hubby to eat them ha ha). I harvest the walnuts from the wild tree growing in the tree line behind the house for snacking and baking. I use the wild raspberries and black berries to add to the domestic ones I grow. I thought at one time ( when we bought the land) that we had a paw paw tree, but I haven't seen it since ( frowny face). Just discovered choke cherries growing in the meadow and found some sassafras trees growing ( small yet) back near the back edge of the land. Spied some elderberries down the road near a stream growing last year.

 

What are Choke Cherries good for? I know some people love em but as kids we ate them straight off the trees and thought they were kinda marginal as far as a food item was concerned.

Also with the sassafras, I love it and drink it when I have it but heard years back that it contained carcinogens. Any truth to t hat rumor?

 

A study was done years ago where they fed a lab rat the equivilant dose of the active compounds in Sassafras to equil a 55 gal. drum of the stuff and when the rat got cancer Sassafras was put on the "hit" list. So yes if you drink five gallons of the tea every day for several years it might cause you trouble, however a cup or two a day as a spring tonic/blood thinner for a few weeks will do you no harm IMO.

 

That's my understanding, too.