We recalled the sweetness we left behind
July 28, 2022 4:27 AM   Subscribe

Foraging with Janice N. Harrington at the Southern Foodways Alliance.

Illustrations by Désirée Kelly.
posted by the primroses were over (26 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
My foraging experiences have been pretty limited. Mulberries from the trees in my grandparents' neighborhood in Iowa City and blackberries from the bushes in the woods on the last Army base we were stationed at before my dad retired.

This morning I did forage in the basement of my office building for the right ceiling tile to replace a water damaged one. The owners are trying to sell the place, and there's a building inspection at 10:00 am, so of course when I came in at 7:30 AM the third floor HVAC unit had sprung a steady leak overnight. Sigh. At least it is Thursday and the weekend is in sight!
posted by the primroses were over at 6:04 AM on July 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


Poke is such an odd one. You hear about poke sallet being eaten all the time back in the old days, but I'd be so scared to touch it. It's poisonous! And yet it grows so well, and is in its own way so pretty--we keep a few growing in our yard all the time for the birds, they love the little berries.
posted by mittens at 6:32 AM on July 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


In June, I noticed some wild black raspberries growing on the edge of the field where my kids were playing soccer. The fruits were small and green and hard, but I waited a month, and took the kids and we filled a half-gallon container with swollen black goodness, plus a goodly number that they had eaten along the way. We were scratched by the thorns but for the first time in their lives they wore those scratches with pride, like something earned and not merely befallen. While they slept that night, I made the plunder into a pie which we had for breakfast under vanilla whipped cream.

My late mother had been an amateur forager, and she delighted in finding and knowing things in the woods. She was a great maker-from-scratch as well and I have tried and failed to give my kids the magic of a lot of the things I remember her doing; gardening and canning and making applesauce and homemade pasta and the like. This is the first one where I feel like they got it. They got the magic.

Foraged fruit is the sweetest.
posted by gauche at 6:38 AM on July 28, 2022 [4 favorites]


New York City is covered with mulberry trees. I sometimes find them a little too insipid, but still occasionally go out and harvest some. (There's a couple trees in the business campus where I work.)

I also think I know where there's a beach plum bush somewhere here in Brooklyn, and I'll be checking that out Labor Day weekend. I ain't tellin' nobody where.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:45 AM on July 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


Foraging is one of the few things I have really gotten into that has brought me nothing but joy. I really do think its built into us. I pick a few plants a year to learn, find, process, and eat/store/cook/bake/ferment. I now can confidently identify 40ish plants.

This year I made Elderberry flower syrup, Linden Flower syrup, Nocino (its a drink you make from young black walnuts, but I use it as a vanilla extract replacement), and found some Galium Triflorum that I am also going to dry and make a vanilla extract replacement from (this year has been about making what I call "potion ingredients" for later winter baking). I made some awesome wild black cherry vinegar last year that I am still using, fruit leather from autumn olive berries, jellies, jams, and shag hickory bark syrup (oh god its good). Speaking of shag bark hickory, the nuts are SO GOOD! Black walnut, hazelnut, spice bush berries (a replacement for all spice), stag horn sumac (sumac lemonaid is amazing)...its like you are walking around in a grocery store.

I live in a large city on the east coast (you have heard of it) and find no shortage of good places to forage, and whenever I get out into a good natural place its amazing finding all the fun stuff. Just walking around you find something in almost every yard that is edible (if it wasn't covered in road nasty and dog piss...but finding good spots it part of the fun).

It has lead me to gorilla plant some Paw Paw trees, elderberry, raspberry and other "wild" foods around town to increase my supply of spots. Gives you a real thrill to see "your" plants growing in the park.

The rules are simple, start slow, learn one plant at a time, don't eat anything you are not 100% sure of, learn as much as you can about each plant, have fun, take others with you. I have a notebook with a lot of notes.

Mittens, Poke is actually very easy to identify and eat, it just requires that you take the young healthy leaves and shoots (no large stems, roots, berries). Boil it in a large pot of water for 10-15 minutes, toss out the water, cook as you would any hardy greens. If you are really paranoid, boil it again in another change of water for 10-15 again. Its very tasty with onions fried up.
posted by stilgar at 6:58 AM on July 28, 2022 [12 favorites]


I used to think mulberries were boring because the ones on the tree in our yard were so bland. Then I tried some from some feral trees along the coast, and man they are really good, as good as blackberries. After reading the Wikipedia article on poke salad, there's no way I'm gonna risk them. There are lots of good berries and old apple trees in my area. One year I went to visit an apple tree I knew was good and saw a sign warning to stay away. Further investigation revealed a giant hornet's nest in the middle of the tree!
posted by Bee'sWing at 7:03 AM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


My friend and I have been picking sour plums that grow in a nearby cemetery and making tkemali with them. Amazing stuff (and you can make a plum cordial with the drained remains of the plums).
posted by derrinyet at 7:55 AM on July 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


I come from foragers. Southerners who hunted and fished, and who knew where to find blackberries, wild grapes (muscadimes), walnuts, pokeweed, and persimmons.

I've been living part time in Vancouver recently, and you don't need to be a forager to find blackberries around here. You sometimes need to take an adventurous detour off the sidewalk to *avoid* blackberries around here.

I picked my first one of the year last weekend in Fraser Park. Most of the berries were still hard and green and not a single other berry in the patch was any further along than a blush of pink, and yet there was one lone berry that was all the way ripe. I don't know what was up with that king of berries, and maybe I was supposed to leave it to encourage all the other berries along, or something, but I couldn't resist.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:27 AM on July 28, 2022 [3 favorites]


Just a note that you shouldn’t be cavalier about pokeweed. If the right parts aren’t harvested at the right time of year and prepared in the right way it can be deadly.

I’ma big fan of foraging as well, but also leery of foraging along roads and in cities. There’s a long history of lead and other pollutants in many soils and plants can be excellent bioaccumulators of all kinds of pollutants. Best to research bioaccumulation in the plant you’re harvesting and which parts of the plant are likely to accumulate the most. (For example, leaves often have more heavy metals than fruits).

But this was lovely and took me back to my childhood in the south foraging for blackberries and muscadine and persimmon and sumac.

Another word of warning - folks with cashew or mango allergy may also react to sumac.
posted by congen at 8:39 AM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


I’m always surprised that more people don’t know about lambsquarters. My parents were familiar with them and would occasionally find them growing near our house and bring them home to cook; very similar to spinach in preparation and taste. My mother claimed they were intentionally planted on roadsides during the Great Depression to provide food for people. I have been unable to confirm this, but they were apparently eaten during that time. I definitely recommend them if you like greens and can find some growing where they haven’t been sprayed with toxic chemicals.
posted by TedW at 8:51 AM on July 28, 2022 [3 favorites]


Congen, I full agree with everything you wrote, the place I live has a long history of polluted soil, lead, arsenic, the works. I wont dig up a wild carrot and eat the root because I know its full of lead, but I will eat a raspberry or a crab apple, or a handful of nettle greens IF i find them in spots I know are not being actively sprayed (applied herbicide/pesticide is probably your biggest fear in urban foraging), are not old railroad lines or factory dump spots, or have other risk factors (major roads). The risk is low but not 0, which I feel is similar to industrial produced foods (risk is low but not 0). I think being realistic about the risk, but still engaging in foraging gets folks thinking about all that free food out there, as well as how we are treating our environment. I think most folks can do selective urban foraging safely, and that the benefits outweigh the risk. You shouldn't go eat your neighbors lawn because of what I am saying, but its also not something you should fear so much that you wont nibble a mulberry if you find one. Fun fact the cacao tree is SUPER great at sucking heavy metals out of the soil, putting them all into the fruit, making chocolate potentially full of lead, cadmium, etc.

TedW, Lambsquarter was one of the first plants I learned! They are actually rather tasty and grow so abundant that it can provide a real amount of food. Cook them up like spinach. You can also harvest the seed and treat it like quinoa (because its a relative of quinoa). It also has about double the nutrition of a cultivated spinach, and grows free all over.
posted by stilgar at 9:36 AM on July 28, 2022 [4 favorites]


I LOVE foraging, both for food and medicines. I actually started an entire Instagram account just to track all the many, many plants I am learning about and catalog the recipes I was using. Not sure if I'm allowed to link it here (it's not monetized, but it is my work) but PM me and Im happy to share it.

I'm lucky enough to live in a place that has a huge variety of both wild and feral plants to harvest. Most of my time between winters is spent collecting flowers, berries, herbs, and roots. It turns every day into a treasure hunt.

Whenever I visit other places I make a point to find some time to forage so I can sample the local flavors, and sometimes bring the back home. I also think it's important to point out that most of this knowledge was originally held by the indigenous populations and seeking out those sources, and following their guidance on foraging practices is always a good idea.
posted by ananci at 9:46 AM on July 28, 2022 [5 favorites]


I call 'em 'trail snacks'.
posted by cobaltnine at 10:05 AM on July 28, 2022 [5 favorites]


During my teen years we ended up with a copy of Stalking the Wild Asparagus, by Grape Nuts promoter Euell Gibbons. Got into it. Tried many things that were growing. Had a Mulberry tree in our back yard. My dad used to eat the Inky Cap mushrooms that grew in our front yard. I’m not a fan of most mushrooms, though Ms. Windo is, but she is right out on eating foraged mushrooms.

Here in Seattle, it is all blackberries. But not knowing if they have been sprayed makes foraging those hard. Pretty sure we have stopped doing that. A problem with urban foraging these days.

But some of our blueberries are looking solid, (some are not), and my garbage can Snow Peas are putting on pods, and my garbage can Cucumbers now have flowers…

Always wanted to forage Arrowroot tubers and make them into flour or whatever Euell said you should do with them
posted by Windopaene at 10:18 AM on July 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


Thanks for posting this, it's beautiful and I'm going to go in search of more of Janice Harrington's writing. I hesitated for a second before clicking on the link... I have the grumpiness of an immigrant's kid about the vague trendiness of "foraging" that doesn't always acknowledge that some people have always been picking wild greens etc but were not celebrated for their savviness. But this piece shows the family roots, the risks, the reluctance and the newer, shinier knowledge all jumbled together.
I know spring mostly by its smell: earthy and clean. It’s also the season that requires patience, especially if you’re waiting to go asparagus hunting. But what woman goes into the countryside alone? What Black woman searches abandoned farmsteads or strolls along overgrown ditch banks to search for asparagus? The answer pressed against my skin. I could feel it, a knowing touch.

I gave way and called a girlfriend (Chicago South Side) and we went out together. I helped her see the ferny leaves and showed her how to bend slender stalks just so. Two Black women walking a rough seam of ground beside a railroad track, pickups passing by, puzzled faces turned in our direction.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:23 AM on July 28, 2022 [4 favorites]


Figs are cultivated, of course, but before that they were wild and sweet. I know of a couple of neglected fig trees where I seem to be the only human with an interest in the fruit. I wish I could visit them right about now. The trees have some problems, and raccoons and birds get most of the fruit, but that's all right -- they are so, so productive. You don't want to eat too many a day, but if you manage it right, you can be making fig-and-vanilla jam thumbprint cookies for Christmas and giving away the jars.

Gathering figs in the apron of my shirt, pushing one into my mouth now and then, gives me a real hominid feeling that nothing else is ever likely to. I have Neolithic skin and terrible modern eyes, plus I hate the entire experience of eating meat, but picking figs makes me feel like I might have something in common with my distant ancestors after all.

(But these are parthenocarpic figs that don't need pollinating by wasps, of course. I have absolutely no evidence for this, and will not hear any to the contrary.)
posted by Countess Elena at 12:21 PM on July 28, 2022 [3 favorites]


I’ve learned a lot this year from following BlackForager on Instagram. She’s great!
posted by oomny at 1:32 PM on July 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


Mittens, I grew up on poke sallet, wild berries of all kinds, including something my father called "wild cherries" that were super tart. No idea what they actually were. Also, wild persimmons, what we could get before the possums vacuumed them up. Lots of picking teeth with sassafras, which is one of the only trees I can still reliably recognize, after more than half my life in urban areas now.

My health didn't tank until after ten years of eating the shitty urban diet of a young adult who wasn't interested in cooking, and was poor enough to not be able to do it well, or at all sometimes. Clearly I survived the poke quite well. Always with cornbread to sop up the juices.

Adding to the chorus of all the ways foraging in suburban and urban areas will probably poison you from chemicals and heavy metals.

I wish I knew people who shared their knowledge of foraging, but I seem to be one of only a few people I know who is interested in sharing, rather than selling, knowledge. Every time I find someone who is into it, it's their side hustle, along with selling "magic wands" or some trash like that.

My parents have moved into the awful rural suburbs, but they still have muscadine vines (mentioned in the article) in their backyard, blackberries in the front yard, asparagus in the side yard, and three small garden plots. My dad forages piles of walnuts and has elaborate methods for mass-crushing the shells.

Loved this. Thanks for posting it.
posted by liminal_shadows at 2:58 PM on July 28, 2022 [3 favorites]


My current fascination is Pine Bark Bread and Birch Bark Flour.

I hope I can find the time and energy and health to play with something in that vein this year.
posted by liminal_shadows at 3:01 PM on July 28, 2022


Definitely lived this a bit as a broke grad student in KY. Would buy some bait for the week from a bar that is now a boring, expensive hipster bar, head down to a local fishing lake (now a golf course) and catch my dinner in cat fish, blue gill, or trout. I would forage for dandelions, walnuts, acorns, mulberries, and wood sorrel as well. Wood sorrel doesn’t have much nutritional value, but it’s sour and I was addicted to chewing it while studying. KY also has tiny wild strawberries that just grow in everyone’s yards but I never had the guts to eat them or the mushrooms I found.
posted by Cyber666 at 5:14 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


If you mean mock strawberries, I finally got the nerve to try one and it tasted like nothing, just water. My whole childhood, I was convinced that they would be delicious if not for the weed killers that grownups assured me that lawns were covered with (in a mostly successful attempt to get me to not put random outdoor objects in my mouth).
posted by Countess Elena at 7:23 PM on July 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


I highly recommend Samuel Thayer's foraging manuals: The Forager's Harvest (2006), Nature's Garden (2010), and Incredible Wild Edibles (2017).

As opposed to frustratingly vague traditional field guides that cover hundreds of plants, each of Thayer's books only covers about 30 plants, but do so in such detail that even a budding herbivore is assured of some success the first year out. He covers how to find them with attention to each plant's appearance through the seasons, when to harvest them, and how to use them.
posted by fairmettle at 8:58 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


Hey ananci- please make a projects post!
posted by freethefeet at 9:26 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


Tangentially related, the Australian ABC is putting up episodes of Les Hiddin's Bush Tucker Man (Episode 1 here) (from 1988)
posted by freethefeet at 9:37 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


TYFS; sweet thread. The last Sunday of July is hereabouts Fraughan Sunday. By tradition the whole family would traipse up the hill to pick wild bilberries Vaccinium myrtillus for vitamin C and profit (sold to dealers from Covent Garden in London). A few years ago, I found a beat-up aluminium tea-pot in the heather presumably from a long-ago Fraochán Sunday picnic lunch. Nowadays, I have no fruit-picking competition except with the birds.
posted by BobTheScientist at 10:52 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


In my family, we have always foraged: berries, fruits, nuts, edible flowers and mushrooms. We haven't looked for greens, though I always ate fresh leaves from the beeches and seeds from elms with my dad, when we were out foraging for other stuff. It is something I'd very much like to do more. I've begun, already decades ago, but it is not a routine in the same way as the other foods, because I don't have any personal guides, only the internet. My first experiment was with thistles, because I was given a very tasty jar of pickled thistles from Sardinia. My pickling failed. But I haven't given up.

In the cemetery opposite my apartment there are tons of herbs and also figs and wild strawberries, but one has to think about the dog (and cat and fox pee) situation. But there are places where one can find herbs including ramps that are fine, and we use them a lot. The figs rarely ripen, so I'm looking for good recipes for unripe figs. I wouldn't touch the strawberries, the birds get them.
posted by mumimor at 8:47 AM on July 29, 2022


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