Wild foods

[tenngun]

Good post on wild meats got me thinking, what wild foods have you gathered
I’ve had wild nuts, hickory and walnut, made acorn flour, cat tail roots, poke, lots of berries. But pretty much leery about gathering

 

[Daryl Crawford]

Love ramps when I can get them. I pickle the bottoms to preserve them. I saute the tops for excellent greens or chop them into salads.

 

[Brokennock]

Fiddleheads, ramps, butternuts, hickory nuts, white oak acorns, sassafras (young leaves and roots), wild grapes (very similar to concord), black caps (a local/regional name for wild black raspberries), wild blueberries....
No particular order there. Some I enjoy more than others. Some having been gathered in greater quantities than others.

We don't have persimmons or paw-paw here, I'd gather some if we did.

Nervous about mushrooms. I like them, buy them in the store,,, but very leary about finding and consuming wild ones.

 

[TDM]

Muscadine grapes, blackberries, wild plum, & persimmons. Never got around to trying the different acorns. And don't know enough to safely pick mushrooms.

 

[1950DAVE]

Sassafras tea, wild garlic in a French onion soup, dandelion greens, dandelion buds, dandelion root coffee, blackberry leaf tea, immature cattail pods.

 

[Ames]

Teaberry leaf tea.

 

[Winchester97]

Deep fried dandelion flowers.(extremely good), ramps, morel mushrooms, puffball mushrooms,walnuts,butternuts, hickory nuts, maple syrup from our maple trees, black raspberries,blackberries and wild asparagus.

 

[sheriff john]

Daughter's an amateur mycologist/forager. She eats stuff I won't put in my hand. Fungi is her specialty and I gotta admit there are many "out there" as good/better than morels. Dandelions are a good source for everything from salads to jelly. My personal favorite are Paw-Paws. Missouri's state fruit. Taste is betwixt banana and mango. Wild stuff's generally more flavorful than store-bought and fresh beats store-bought every time.

You can eat any mushroom you find .....once.

 

[TDM]

I have quite a few wild plum trees, they don't all produce every year, but there's always plenty around. Funny thing is my deer don't seem to eat them. So I enjoy them myself.

And your right about mushrooms @sheriff john. Wish I knew enough about them to try.

 

[QuinnTheEskimo]

Ramps and fiddleheads are early spring favorites. I pick mushrooms when I can, morels, chanterelles, black trumpets, lobsters, an occasional porcini but I’m not good at finding them, hen of the woods in the fall, those are my favorites. Wild strawberries, blackberries and black raspberries. I’ve picked butternuts in the past but they’re all but extinct around here, I pick shag bark hickory nuts occasionally.
I’ve picked “mustard greens” in cornfields with my in-laws, that’s what they call them but I don’t really know what it is. It’s kind of a weed and has yellow flowers.

 

[Ponderosaman]

Once in the Sierra Nevada foothills I stopped to pee on the side of the road and there was the most beautiful blackberry a foot away from a big ole steamer someone had left there. Man it looked ripe and juicy (the blackberry). I still have never had a wild blackberry.

What I have dabbled in a little is mesquite pods and cactus fruits. Both are tasty if you get the right ones. Barrel cactus fruit are interesting and taste like a very lemony sweet pepper. If I ever get back to brewing, I’d like to make a sugar mesquite, prickly pear beer. Saguaro cactus are excellent, but are ripe when it starts getting miserable hot and supposedly you can get in trouble for collecting them.

 

[tenngun]

Once in the Sierra Nevada foothills I stopped to pee on the side of the road and there was the most beautiful blackberry a foot away from a big ole steamer someone had left there. Man it looked ripe and juicy (the blackberry). I still have never had a wild blackberry.

What I have dabbled in a little is mesquite pods and cactus fruits. Both are tasty if you get the right ones. Barrel cactus fruit are interesting and taste like a very lemony sweet pepper. If I ever get back to brewing, I’d like to make a sugar mesquite, prickly pear beer. Saguaro cactus are excellent, but are ripe when it starts getting miserable hot and supposedly you can get in trouble for collecting them.

Used to get prickly pear in New Mexico. My mother didn’t trust any wild food hardly. But after I left home my dad talked her in to trying one. She did, she didn’t know you needed to peel it first…

 

[appalichian hunter]

I am surprised no one mentioned wild persimmons. Very good when ripe.

 

[TDM]

I am surprised no one mentioned wild persimmons. Very good when ripe.

I did.

 

[appalichian hunter]

Sorry must of missed it.

 

[Ponderosaman]

Used to get prickly pear in New Mexico. My mother didn’t trust any wild food hardly. But after I left home my dad talked her in to trying one. She did, she didn’t know you needed to peel it first…

Ouch!

 

[TDM]

They are quite tasty. But only as long as they're fully ripe. I innocently gave one to my wife a few years ago thinking it was ready, but it wasn't. Still haven't heard the end of it, she was puckered up for over a day. Could hardly talk!

 

[sleepingbulldog]

My grandma used to make chokecherry jelly. It was quite a treat. She used to also can wild plums and use them for pastries.
Morel mushrooms and wild asparagus were a big deal too when I was a kid. And we used to eat a lot of wild mulberries right off the tree, but I don’t recall anyone ever using them for anything beyond that.

There was a local guy who made chokecherry wine. It’d make you pucker but it got the job done.

 

[Ponderosaman]

Sort of a wild food. In the Superstition Mountains here in AZ, there is an old homestead in the wilderness that was inhabited by a hermit named Elisha Reavis. When I was in my teens, my pop booked a trip through parks and rec to pack to Reavis Ranch with llamas carrying our backpacks. The abandoned ranch had an apple orchard and an old rickety two story house. We had as many apples as we could eat and checked out the farmhouse which was occupied by a group of Boy Scouts when we were there.

 

[Brokennock]

I am surprised no one mentioned wild persimmons. Very good when ripe.

I did. But, in the context of the fact we don't have them here.
I have thought of buying a couple trees and planting them in some of my more frequented hunting areas....