The foraging thread - No such thing as a free lunch?

[Stoneheart]

They also make decent applesauce, it's a bit more sour than sweet applesauce (unless you add sugar of course) and you get something more like Dutch appelmoes: it goes well with chicken, game, pork, leek, onion, cabbage. Or you can mix it with mashed potatoes to make bliksem, or mix with mashed potatoes and leafy greens (maybe foraged greens) to make stamppot.

You eat it on potato pancakes...

 

[Dyn]

Just take stuff from the supermarket dumpster it's way easier and the food doesn't taste like shitty lettuce.

 

[afternoon_tea]

As a rule, younger leaves are better for most plants to avoid the bitterness, and so they're not too tough. Dandelions, garlic mustard, and nettles especially. Nettles are very healthy unless they're flowering and you mustn't eat older leaves, because that's when they start developing calcium crystals that aren't good for you. At least, so I'm told, it might be bullshit but I haven't risked it. The young leaves are nice and there's lots of them anyway! You can use them in pretty much any recipe where you'd use spinach, just cook or dry them to get rid of their sting.

Nettles are one of my favorites. I love making nettle pesto (the grinding gets rid of the stingers). I'll usually throw in a little garlic mustard too since they both are at their prime for eating at the same time.

If you find older nettles you can always make a hair rinse with them, the silica content is good for your hair. My hair has gotten more delicate as I've aged and rinsing with nettles makes it feel so smooth and silky.

Yesterday I got some rosehips and elderberries. I did a little mushroom foray not expecting to find edibles, but found a lot of cool non edibles though, including some stinky squid and a perfect and huge destroying angel (a. virosa). I found a handful of chanterelles though, so now I have a new spot to look after the next rain. I took the few I found and put them in some vodka with some peppercorns. It gives it a nice apricot-like flavor.

I have a tree in my backyard with chicken of the woods I can get whenever I want which is pretty cool. I also have some oyster and shiitake logs.

 

[Hongourable Madisha]

I tried making the horse chestnut detergent and used it on my hair, and it actually feels better than a lot of shampoos, it's clean and soft and not greasy but not dried out either. Hippies and wooks and crusties now have no excuse not to wash, they can get conkers free, they're not adding synthetic chemical shampoos to the water system, and it's not imported from far away with a big carbon footprint. Wash your local wook today.

 

[Hongourable Madisha]

Nettles are one of my favorites. I love making nettle pesto (the grinding gets rid of the stingers). I'll usually throw in a little garlic mustard too since they both are at their prime for eating at the same time.

If you find older nettles you can always make a hair rinse with them, the silica content is good for your hair. My hair has gotten more delicate as I've aged and rinsing with nettles makes it feel so smooth and silky.

Yesterday I got some rosehips and elderberries. I did a little mushroom foray not expecting to find edibles, but found a lot of cool non edibles though, including some stinky squid and a perfect and huge destroying angel (a. virosa). I found a handful of chanterelles though, so now I have a new spot to look after the next rain. I took the few I found and put them in some vodka with some peppercorns. It gives it a nice apricot-like flavor.

I have a tree in my backyard with chicken of the woods I can get whenever I want which is pretty cool. I also have some oyster and shiitake logs.

That's really cool, how did you grow them on the logs? I've heard of people using books they don't read any more to grow mushrooms, they buy or collect the spores, soak a book in water, open out the book, then shake the spores over the top and it grows. Well done on finding chanterelles, those are really expensive in the shops round here. I like them just fried with butter, or on pasta.
Rosehips are nice to snack on (as long as you eat around the seeds, they have itchy hairs on them), there's some near my house and I usually pick a couple to eat while I'm foraging other things. The only things I've been able to make with them is syrup and ketchup; they taste a lot like tomato but a bit sweeter, so they make a good sauce.

 

[Rafal Gan Ganowicz]

Acorns are great forage. Bake them or dry them and grind into flour for bannock bread

 

[afternoon_tea]

That's really cool, how did you grow them on the logs? I've heard of people using books they don't read any more to grow mushrooms, they buy or collect the spores, soak a book in water, open out the book, then shake the spores over the top and it grows. Well done on finding chanterelles, those are really expensive in the shops round here. I like them just fried with butter, or on pasta.
Rosehips are nice to snack on (as long as you eat around the seeds, they have itchy hairs on them), there's some near my house and I usually pick a couple to eat while I'm foraging other things. The only things I've been able to make with them is syrup and ketchup; they taste a lot like tomato but a bit sweeter, so they make a good sauce.

My current logs I made by using mycelium spawned on sawdust (this is easy to buy online, but I have a friend who has his own little mushroom lab) then you drill holes in dead logs that are appropriate for that type of mushroom and stuff it full of the spawn and seal it with wax, then I just leave them in a spot in the backyard that gets damp when it rains and wait for them to colonize. Usually it takes about a year for them to fruit, but I've had logs that took 3 years, I never thought they'd fruit.

They also sell mushroom growing kits but these can be kind of expensive. I think there's a few that are paper based, but these you can only get a couple fruitings from.

I make rosehip jelly with oranges and pink lady apples and just strain the seeds out during the process. I live near the beach and we get these enormous hips from the beach roses here, they have way more fruit on them than most other rosehips I've seen.

 

[Hongourable Madisha]

My current logs I made by using mycelium spawned on sawdust (this is easy to buy online, but I have a friend who has his own little mushroom lab) then you drill holes in dead logs that are appropriate for that type of mushroom and stuff it full of the spawn and seal it with wax, then I just leave them in a spot in the backyard that gets damp when it rains and wait for them to colonize. Usually it takes about a year for them to fruit, but I've had logs that took 3 years, I never thought they'd fruit.

They also sell mushroom growing kits but these can be kind of expensive. I think there's a few that are paper based, but these you can only get a couple fruitings from.

I make rosehip jelly with oranges and pink lady apples and just strain the seeds out during the process. I live near the beach and we get these enormous hips from the beach roses here, they have way more fruit on them than most other rosehips I've seen.

I think those are the same roses that the council plants round my way, rosa rugosa. They have these big fat hips on them that look and taste like tomato.

Acorns are great forage. Bake them or dry them and grind into flour for bannock bread

I've never tried that but seen it done on shows like Ray Mears and River Cottage. How does it taste, does the tannin all come out in the drying?

 

[Rafal Gan Ganowicz]

I think those are the same roses that the council plants round my way, rosa rugosa. They have these big fat hips on them that look and taste like tomato.
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I've never tried that but seen it done on shows like Ray Mears and River Cottage. How does it taste, does the tannin all come out in the drying?

Yep. It's bland, TBF. But if you butter and salt anything enough, it's tops!

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

Vegetables be damned I only forage for mushrooms.
It's good that sometimes people die, it keeps the masses from the forests and leads to more bounty. Sucks that near towns you have to arrive in the forest with the break of dawn to have a chance to score and to beat others to the good spots.

I could identify every single deadly mushroom that grows here, and also all the very tasty ones, as a very small kid. I think pretty much all branches of my family are big into it.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

When I as homeless I used to catch rabbits and turn them into jerky

 

[Stoneheart]

Got me some nice Boletus on a hike yesterday.
Today i will make Ragout from them.
The woods are full of mushrooms this year.
maybe i will get me some Amanita on the weekend, i know a nice spot for them very close to my weekly bikeroute.
They are very nice if you know how to cook them. I think i will fry them with horse liver like grandma did it.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

I like amanita rubescens for a quick snack, just fried with a bit of salt on a piece of bread.

The cruelest thing that happened to me was once long time ago the forest was suddenly full of the bitter boletes. They look so beautiful and get your hopes up and boom it's a bitterboy. Dunno what happened since otherwise I see them rarely, but that one year they were everywhere. There are ways to drain the bitterness off them but I think it's not worth the effort for any other reason that to prove you can do it.

 

[Captain Hastings Official]

It's the most wonderful time of the year: fucking pawpaw season.

Get 'em quick, before the opossums do.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Has anybody found an easy way to make acorns edible yet?
I know you can boil the tannins out of them to make them safe, but that takes fucking forever.

 

[Hongourable Madisha]

I've found a lot of barberries around - they're very invasive and escape from people's gardens. That brings up an important point regarding how edible some plants are: barberries are mostly safe, but are dangerous for infants and pregnant women and can interact with certain medications.
A few commonly cultivated plants like grapefruits can stop absorption of medications - doctors and medication packaging will often warn you about grapefruit because it's a popular food, but they won't list every single wild herb. Hawthorn can affect blood pressure and heart medication, again, they're safe if you don't have specific issues with them but it's still important to check.
WebMD has a drug interaction checker, so it's worthwhile looking them up there too, I'll add it to the OP. Here's the page for barberries: https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-433/european-barberry

 

[NoodleFucker3000]

My grandma used to do this.

Its called poverty.

 

[FatalTater]

I was blessed with morel mushrooms in my yard this spring. They're the only mushroom I look for since there aren't many look-alikes and it's easy to tell a true morel (caps are attached and they are hollow.)

 

[Orange Rhymer]

My foraging:
-I don't dine on swine fungus. I dislike fungi. However there is a nice PlanetNet product for fungi called Shoomify - Take a picture and get an identification.
-I hoard discarded wood from trees. Sticks and cut trees. I don't understand shredding good trees into mulch.
You can mill trunks and branches into great pieces of wood with character. Be careful - your tools will groan at the HARD natural woods. Managed pine is like jelly compared to the forge of Mother Nature.
Wood you can't use can easily be burned after as little as 2 weeks drying (as long as you have dry wood to start a fire)
You can make charcoal by gassifying (incomplete combustion) unused wood.
-Make a bonfire around a sealed metal paintcan or sealed drum filled with wood cutoffs
-the container MUST have holes, so the trapped gasses in the wood can escape
-burn for an hour, extinguish, pull out the container
-black charcoal all inside.
I haven't bought charcoal in years.

Also, I enjoy eating natural chestnuts (not Horse) from a few HUGE nearby trees. Fight the squirrels for them!
I shell them, and carve a deep 'X' into the flesh.
Season to taste - (a bit of brown sugar+salt is nice)
Bake at @400'F for at least 30min- or to taste. (I like them a bit crunchy on the outside)

 

[Coffee Druid]

I've been reading a lot of foraging books lately since I tried Scribd and have access to lots of books. On my daily walk today I started looking and realized there are a variety of fruits around. There were juniper berries and firethorns (berries), though those are questionable to me. However, I found two large patches of chiltepins (tiny capsicum peppers) and southern dewberries. They're along the fence of the property I'm living at so I plan to go back and pick a few tomorrow. Perhaps I'll pickle the peppers and eat the berries (or make jam if there's enough).

I'd love to go on more foraging/nature hikes but I'm wondering about the legality of just tromping through random places picking the plants. Does it matter? Not like they're using the wild plants anyway.

I got a couple apps to identify plants and they're decent for the most part so far. One almost feels like Pokémon go for plants.