For my birthday a few months ago my brother got me one of the greatest food books I have ever read, Serious Pig by John Thorne. It is an amazing read and one of the few food books that actually makes you think about yourself a bit.
In one of my favorite chapters in the book, Thorne relives a summer during college in which he lived off of $100, getting most of his food by fishing and collecting wild food items. He would pick dandelion greens in his yard for salad, dig for clams on the shore or pick wild berries until he couldn’t carry any more.
That got my adventurous side thinking, what kinds of food could I find in our area, free for the taking?
The first thing that came to mind was mushrooms. Sure, mushrooms are all over Northeaster Ohio, at least 2000 varieties! They are delicious, easy to cook and you could save a great deal of money by collecting some of the premium mushroom species. But then there is the whole, you could die from eating one and no one really knows for sure which ones are poisonous and which ones aren’t.
Ok, something other than mushrooms.
Then I remembered someone else who had walked this road before myself. A few years ago while fishing I saw some folks walking around with buckets near the edge of the woods. After they left I wandered over to see if I could figure out what they were doing. That was the day I first tasted wild blackberries.
It was back to that spot where I went a few days ago. After picking for only maybe fifteen minutes, I had a small bag of berries that I couldn’t wait to eat. You can see my haul in the picture above. Although small from relatively rainless summer, the berries are still super sweet and delicious.
I was considering making a couple jars of jam from these guys, but I can’t keep my hands off of them. They’ve been in my house for less than 24 hours and they are almost all gone. I guess I’ll just have to go get more, if the deer haven’t gotten the rest of them.
Tagged with: Foraging • Free Food • Wild Food
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August 30th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
i just got a big bowl of this from my mom-in-law and love them. i put some in a tupperware with a spoonful of splenda and a little warm water, mushed them up a bit, and put them in the fridge until the next day. i pured this concoction over some lowfat vanilla hagen daas and it kicked major butt!
i think the splenda and warm water & smashing is my version of some recipe that exists. like the crap people call strawberry shortcake.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 6:22 am
I have been trying to find an area where I can do some wild berry picking forever. Would you mind telling us where this spot is? Cuyahoga national park? Rocky river?
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September 3rd, 2008 at 11:27 am
I lerves me some wild blackberries. I used to pick them while at my brother’s baseball games when I was a kid! You could make some delicious “breakfast” bars with them.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
@ Anna
It’s actually in Concord, but I’m going to keep the rest of the location secret. I will tell you that I went back again this weekend to find all of those beautiful berries shriveled. Looks like that season is over.
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November 8th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
If you want some really good foraging try some acorns. I recently just got into foraging and made 2 batches of acorn flour with enough acorns harvested for the next and plans to get more. I made a bread using a basic cornbread recipie replacing the corn meal with my acorn flour. Spring 2010 I plan to harvest some cattail shoots and pollen. Then Maple seeds! Don’t eat the acorns plain. search the internet on how to make acorn flour and follow the directions. The native americans and early settlers made it through the winters living on acorns.
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