Why We Forage...

It's an unseasonably warm October day in Wisconsin and we have no plans so we cruise slowly through the backroads enjoying the beautiful scenery while keeping a sharp eye out for DNR signs. Back "home" in Illinois, parks and trails almost always appear on the map but in Wisconsin we've found some of our favorite trails and forest preserves simply by taking the long way home and suddenly seeing signs declaring a "State Natural Area" lining the road. Today we drive for a bit while the girls enjoy impressive scenes of rolling horse farms and craggy cliffs and we followed the DNR signs until we discovered some semblance of a parking area.

Stepping onto the trail, we breathed in Autumn. We are a Summer family, a family that lives for Summers the way some people live for the weekend. So on this wonderfully warm day I close my eyes and soak up the sun and try to forget that it's October, but my nose betrays me. Heather and I are mindful that we are not just here for pleasure...we're hunting for our dinner, or something to go into dinner, at least. So as we stroll along, kicking up fallen leaves of every shade, we gaze into the woods, high and low, in search of mushrooms.

We forage for food for so many different reasons. Both Heather and I share a nerdy "investigative" trait that allows us great enjoyment in the process of first researching an edible wild food in both books and online and then going out to the forest and actually hunting it down. We then harvest the food, and because we know the source of the food, we need not worry about pesticides or the like, its always "organic". It is, of course, also highly nutritious to eat a wider variety of foods and those foods in the wild tend to have higher levels of antioxidants then most foods, since they have to fend for themselves out there. Bringing this food home to our kitchen has the automatic effect of expanding both our palate and dinner menu, since half of the fun of finding food is discovering a great recipe to prepare it. May I also mention that it's free? Yes, at the risk of sounding like a cheapass, some of our foraged foods are that same that gourmet chefs pay big money for and we can find for free. Lastly, foraging is a great way to reconnect with nature and get some exercise at the same time.

Today we found plenty of mushrooms, but none that were choice edibles as far as we know. But I look down the trail lagging behind and both our girls are poking around in the woods gathering Birch bark, feathers and sticks for an art project back home. The Maple trees are aglow in every shade of yellow, orange and red set against a beautiful cloudless blue sky. As we leave the trail today, our mushroom bag is empty but our hearts are full.

Wild Edible Chicks

Tis the season to find two of our favorite wild mushrooms, Hen of the woods (aka Maitake) and Chicken of the woods (aka Sulfur Shelf). I think the two main reasons we love these chicks is that they are both very recognizable and they are both crazy huge, so if you find just one mushroom you're good for the whole season. 

The Hen of the woods in the picture to the left are ones we located last week in a local park. The one in the foreground was huge-about 18" wide. The little one in the background (see it??) was only about 8" wide. These mushrooms grow pretty much throughout the US in the fall on either living or dead trees. These mushrooms are expensive if purchased in the store and can grow as large as 30 pounds. The underside of the mushrooms are a creamy white and porous surface. Once you locate a Hen of the woods, try to remember where you found it, as they (like many mushrooms) tend to show up in the exact same spot every year at that time. 

When it comes to preparing the mushroom, we just give it a good cleaning, slice it up, and cook it as you would any other mushrooms. For example, Heather sautéed some of the mushroom in butter with onions and tossed it with pasta. The remainder, we sliced to the size we will need for cooking later & placed in freezer bags for future use.

The Chicken of the woods is even more recognizable than the Hen of the woods and nearly as large. This mushroom also tends to be found in the fall but sometimes shows up as early as June. As you can see, on the left, you'd have to be nearly blind to miss this neon orange beauty when wandering through the woods. This one was found in the same area as the Hen. The undersides tend to be butter colored and porous. 

This mushroom gets it's name from the texture. Once cooked, it's remarkably similar to chicken, making this perhaps our favorite mushroom.   Like the Hen, Heather cleans, slices and sautés the mushroom for use in stir fry, fajitas, etc. Again, any extras can be parboiled and frozen. 

Sometimes A Man Has To Can

In our last post I mentioned that I made an insane amount of applesauce, (it actually took two sessions because all of the peeled & sliced apples would not fit into one pot). Now I was faced with the problem of what to do with all that applesauce. While we did freeze some of it, I didn't want to take up all of freezer space for applesauce. So I did what any man put in this position would do, I rode to the Walmart, picked up a case of Ball quart-size jars, and started canning.

Now, I've never canned before, (why do they call it canning when it goes in a jar anyway?!) but the instructions on the box made it seem super easy. If you're curious, there are also recipe-specific instructions on their website, http://www.freshpreserving.com/recipes.aspx .

Since it was my first time and I was a little scared, I also checked on YouTube and of course found about a thousand canning videos there. When all the pain was over, you know that you did it right if the lid suctions shut and doesn't pop back up when you push it down. Mine were good, so at least I know I won't kill the family, well, not this time anyway.

Now that I know it's not to big a deal, I will definitely can some more things. Stay tuned!

When Life Gives You Apples...

Heather and I were wandering through the woods in one of our area parks, a bit lost, to tell the truth. We came upon a pair of beautiful apple trees. Now, these were not those crappy wild apple trees you sometimes find in the woods that wouldn't be fit to feed a horse. These apples, while smaller than typical apples, were plenty sweet and flavorful. Well, never one to pass up a free meal, I loaded up what had to be about 20 pounds of apples into the stroller and headed for home. I hadn't given much thought of what to do with the apples, but both of our girls like apple sauce and apple pie a lot and since I didn't have the patience to make a pie, apple sauce it is!

I had the luxury of an onion corer borrowed from the store to core my apples and that worked just great. Then I peeled them and cut them all into eighths and threw them into a pot. I added a small amount of water, a fair amount of cinnamon and a bit of salt an simmered the whole mess for about an hour. We like our applesauce a bit chunky, so I'd recommend a longer cook time if you prefer it smooth.

The simple home made applesauce was quite a hit with all and it was great to be able to make it for free.

A Great Read

Last week I finished reading "The Wisdom Of The Radish" by Lynda Hopkins. The book is the interesting story of the first year or so that she and her fiance became small-scale farmers on a plot of 3 acres lent to them by her fiance's father.

I actually learned quite a bit about farming through the amusing accounts of the trials and tribulations of Lynda and Emmett's first year. While I don't have a strong desire to become a farmer, I do wish to educate myself on where my food comes from and this quick read did so in an entertaining way.

Lynda and Emmett start off as vegetable farmers and soon work up to roosters, hens, sheep and goats. I enjoyed the book a great deal and found their website, http://wisdomoftheradish.com/ to be great as well. The site began prior to the book, so it's not just a website praising the book. Instead, it has a few years of blog postings, written much the same way as the book, about life on their little farm.

For those of you that want to buy the book, it's available at Amazon here.

Home-Made Tortillas!

When Albert Einstein had blocks of idle time while working at the patent office, he formulated theories that would completely revolutionize the field of physics. When I recently found myself with a few hours of downtime I opted to make home-made tortillas!

I decided to make both the corn and whole wheat flour tortillas, since our family seems to enjoy both, and who the hell knows when I'll have the time to do this again.

We have a tortilla press that we bought years ago at a mexican grocery store. You can pick them up for about $20 or can likely find them online. The press does speed up the process a bit, but I know people that use a roller and that works just fine too.

The whole wheat tortilla recipe I used here because I was looking to avoid using lard. Almost all corn tortilla recipes are simply Masa Harina and water like this one. After mixing the ingredients together I rolled the dough into small balls. I put a layer of saran wrap on both the top and bottom of the tortilla press to keep the dough from sticking to it. Then, I just put a dough ball in and put all my weight on the press handle. I'd then peel off the tortilla, flip, and repeat. I tossed the raw tortillas into a frying pan with no oil, on medium heat, for about 1 minute for each side.

The wheat tortillas were a much bigger hit than the corn, I'm guessing that this is because I didn't use lard, so they "...didn't taste like the store ones." Some of the wheat ones ended up a bit on the thick side, like a flatbread, so the girls had peanut butter sandwiches with those. If you make them really thick, you can use them as frisbees.

Enjoy.

Fall Crops

After one week, we're seeing some seedlings pop up. This year we've decided to attempt a "fall" crop of greens. We planted spinach, peas and three different varieties of lettuce. Never done lettuce before, so we'll see how that goes.