Foraging

Riff89 · Thu Apr 28, 2022 2:41 pm

I’ll throw this in here though it could easily go in the food section as well. Do any of you forage any wild edibles? Up here in my neck of the woods it’s been a time honored tradition to go out in the spring and pick fiddleheads they are tasty little bastards and pretty foolproof to identify. I pick fiddleheads and I also dig ramps which are phenomenal so long as you like onions/garlic. I’m gonna dip my toes into mushrooms this year, I’ve had some chicken of the woods and morels in the past but never really gone out hunting for them but I plan on trying to find some this year. What are the local favorites in your areas?

Wildcat · Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:02 pm

Dandelions are as much as I've ever foraged. Just have to find a field w/out pesticides, which isn't that hard. The flowers are great fried, the leaves make a nice salad and the roots can be eaten like a carrot as well as cooked or roasted. The leaves can also be wilted like spinach. My uncle Moe made dandelion wine when I was a kid, but I've never tried that.

Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:39 pm

I have a friend that is licensed in schrooms etc .. he is a master at finding them , ramps and ginseng . He sells them to restaurants and wholesaler , I believe . I get with him every so often and pick his brain . I have a hillside behind my house that is littered with Shantrel's every year but they arent out yet . I think late june or early july . I missed the Morrel pop recently . Ill be getting with him shortly for an all day excursion of my property and some surrounding property . This year hell teach me how to prepare Chicken of the Woods and how to identify some new to me stuff . Ill try and remember to take the phone to take pictures

Im glad you posted this thread because it reminds me that I want to buy my friend , Mark , a mushroom knife . He uses an old Frost Trapper , that Ive noticed ... the guy deserves a mushroom knife . Watch I get it and give it to him and hes like ... yeah , I cant stand those things , I use a trapper .. lol

Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:54 pm

Freaky Schroom

Thu Apr 28, 2022 4:42 pm

Ruffinogold wrote: ↑Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:39 pm I have a friend that is licensed in schrooms etc .. he is a master at finding them , ramps and ginseng . He sells them to restaurants and wholesaler , I believe . I get with him every so often and pick his brain . I have a hillside behind my house that is littered with Shantrel's every year but they arent out yet . I think late june or early july . I missed the Morrel pop recently . Ill be getting with him shortly for an all day excursion of my property and some surrounding property . This year hell teach me how to prepare Chicken of the Woods and how to identify some new to me stuff . Ill try and remember to take the phone to take pictures

Im glad you posted this thread because it reminds me that I want to buy my friend , Mark , a mushroom knife . He uses an old Frost Trapper , that Ive noticed ... the guy deserves a mushroom knife . Watch I get it and give it to him and hes like ... yeah , I cant stand those things , I use a trapper .. lol

Ginseng fetches big bucks in the market. I'm talking thousands for a grocery bag half full.

Thu Apr 28, 2022 4:45 pm

Tsal wrote: ↑Thu Apr 28, 2022 4:42 pm
Ruffinogold wrote: ↑Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:39 pm I have a friend that is licensed in schrooms etc .. he is a master at finding them , ramps and ginseng . He sells them to restaurants and wholesaler , I believe . I get with him every so often and pick his brain . I have a hillside behind my house that is littered with Shantrel's every year but they arent out yet . I think late june or early july . I missed the Morrel pop recently . Ill be getting with him shortly for an all day excursion of my property and some surrounding property . This year hell teach me how to prepare Chicken of the Woods and how to identify some new to me stuff . Ill try and remember to take the phone to take pictures

Im glad you posted this thread because it reminds me that I want to buy my friend , Mark , a mushroom knife . He uses an old Frost Trapper , that Ive noticed ... the guy deserves a mushroom knife . Watch I get it and give it to him and hes like ... yeah , I cant stand those things , I use a trapper .. lol
Ginseng fetches big bucks in the market. I'm talking thousands for a grocery bag half full.

My buddy , Mark , makes a living at it . The guy is a wizard !!

Puff nstuff · Thu Apr 28, 2022 5:38 pm

I also have a friend who is an expert mushroom hunter. He goes to the Pacific Northwest and the Rockies most every year to gather boletes, morels, chanterelles, and other more esoteric fungi. He took me up to our local mountains a few years back after a wildfire had burned the area the prior summer, and we found a veritable goldmine of morels. We ate them for weeks afterwards - on pizza, pasta, with steak, in omelets...just fantastic. I need to check that place out again in a month or so. Mmmm, morels.

Ronv69 · Thu Apr 28, 2022 10:10 pm

We have wild lettuce, skunk cabbage, palmetto, yaupon and a few other things in the yard. I'm not tempted to eat any of it except maybe the yaupon for tea. I have had the others in my the Scouts and I wasn't impressed.

Silver · Thu Apr 28, 2022 10:50 pm

I only forage in my tobacco cellar.

Puff nstuff · Thu Apr 28, 2022 11:50 pm

There are a few things one can forage here in SoCal that I've never tried, but always wanted to. Miner's lettuce is one; there a lot of wild fennel here along the roadsides; Asians like to pick bracken fern fiddleheads in the nearby mountains; mustard grows everywhere; and of course there's plenty of rattlesnakes ("taste like chicken!"). We have piñones here, too, but those are a major PITA to harvest. Supposedly stinging nettles are good as tea and also fried up like collards, but I don't know anyone who has ever done that; I can't get past the stinging part.