Reflections of katlupe: wild edible plants

Showing posts with label wild edible plants. Show all posts

Sunday, January 20, 2013

The Wild Plants Around Your Home

Dandelions

My newest blog post on my new blog is about wild plants. One of my favorite subjects! This is the link to it:

Edible Or Medicinal Foods Are Plentiful Around Our Forest Homestead

Saturday, July 09, 2011

Day Lilies Are An Edible Plant

Day lilies grow along my road!

July is a month I look forward to because our day lilies are in bloom. They are so beautiful along side the road in front of our house and paddock. The roads through out the state forest have them too, but not like we have.

Beautiful!

One year, I was so happy to see them in full bloom........the next day our local highway department mowed them all down! I was livid! You can believe they heard about it from me! The next year I was waiting for them. But they were already under instructions not to mow them down. I can see mowing along the sides of roads that have traffic. Hey, we live in the state forest. Not that much traffic here. Besides my husband keeps it mowed real pretty all summer and it looks nicer than any road I have ever seen.

Summer time flowers!

Day lilies are good to have around. They are an edible wild plant. You can cook the early spring shoots like asparagus. Or include them in your salads. The roots are also edible and the flowers themselves are also safe to eat. Basically you can eat them all spring, summer and fall. Fresh flowers are usually cooked as fritters. Fresh, dried or withered flowers can be used in stews. Flower buds can be prepared as green beans are. The white tubers (roots) can added to salad or cooked like corn.

An edible plant and flower!

I think it is good to know about edible wild plants even if you would never plan on serving them for dinner. Gather some and cook them and add them to some salads. Show your children how you do it. Then try them. That way at least you know how to use them if sometime in the future you may need them. In this world today, you never know. Teach your children so they will know when they are grown up. The day may come when this knowledge will be lifesaving.

Monday, May 09, 2011

Find Foods In The Forest Garden

That's a lot of trash!

This morning we had to take our trash to the local landfill. It is only about five miles from our house. We have been doing a lot of cleaning up and had quite a load. Lots of metal and steel too. Cans and plastic containers. It is amazing how much you accumulate. We had our cans and plastic containers in the cellar due to snow so the last time we went I could not get to it as we still had snow in the way. This time we had a huge trash bag full of cans. Mostly cat and dog food cans. I wish I could feed my cats the cat food that comes in the pouches but I haven't seen any that is ground that comes like that. They will not eat pieces or shreds. Not my fussy fussy little girls! Since they are only open till noon on Mondays we always try to get there early. We were first! So we were in and out very quickly.

The road from our house this morning!

On the way home I saw a lot of the Ostrich Ferns growing along Truck Trail, the road that goes to our house. I stopped to get some pictures.They are called "Fiddleheads" and is one of the edible wild plants you can eat in the spring.

Ostrich Ferns

Fiddleheads are very popular with people who enjoy foraging for wild edible foods. They are one of the first to appear and seems to me about the first week of May is when they always appear here in New York state. I am not sure about other locations though.

Fiddleheads

Other countries have been consuming them for centuries. You steam or boil them and then eat them hot, like you would asparagus. They are comparable to asparagus. You need to remove the yellow brown skin, boil twice changing the water in between. Removing the water removes the bitterness, toxins and tannins. So just be sure to cook them thoroughly before eating. Most recipes I have seen have them being served with hollandaise sauce, butter or any kind of sauces you like. Cheese sauce would be good on them too. Here is a good site for recipes for the Fiddleheads you pick, Wild Harvest.

See how the fern leaves are curled into the head.

Have fun gathering wild edible foods but be sure you use a guide book for safety reasons. There are some wild plants out there that are NOT safe to consume and some of them will kill you pretty fast. So be careful and use a book. Peterson Field Guides are good. Check out their Edible Wild Plants, which is the one I have and use.

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