yearofplenty

What I Learned from a Week of Eating Only Wild-Foraged Food (Pt. 1)

I've long wondered what it would be like to dedicate a week to eating only wild-foraged foods and this has been my week to give it a try.

The foraging experience is vastly different depending on the season. Early spring is abundant with fiddlehead ferns, stinging nettles, and savory mushrooms. Late summer has an array of ripe fruits and tree nuts. But mid-summer, while lacking in tender greens and beefy fungus, serves up a main course of berries - strawberries, thimbleberries, blackberries, serviceberries, elder berries, and huckleberries. I timed my week-long foraging experience to coincide with this wild-berry buffet. 

I have some broader inquiries to make about the experience but here are some initial observations about the week.

1. It takes time: The first four days of the week all started with a couple hours of picking huckleberries in the mountains around the Spokane. My rule has been to pick only enough for each day, so each day has arrived with nothing in the cupboard. In this sense it's the ultimate slow food. I've enjoyed the quiet time in the mountains for reflection each morning but the time required would make it difficult to fit into my non-sabbatical rhythms.

I could imagine making one day a week a forage day, sampling what nature offers up and intentionally making time to head out into the wilderness.

2. I'm surprised I'm not more hungry: My daughters' softball tournaments later in the week led to afternoon foraging, which meant going long stretches without any food. To my great surpise my cravings have been minor during these long stretches. Early in the week I was cranky and hungry, but with six days under my belt my hunger has subsided. Last night I actually had leftovers from dinner. 

I find this to be true every time fast. The first couple of days are miserable but after getting over that hurdle there is a quiet contentment that comes over my body and mind. At first I rebel against the limitations as a small crisis, but then the crisis passes and the limitations become a path to a strange peace. I suspect that this experience is what compels religious ascetics. 

3. Berries get old after awhile: It seems like a dream come true to eat your fill of huckleberries every day but I'm kind of sick of them at this point. Thankfully I discovered purslane, a nice-tasting wild green that grows abundantly in our garden. There is a poisonous lookalike (spurge) that grows right alongside it so you have to be careful, but it is fantastic in a little stir-fry. It is also renowned for containing more omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy green vegetable.

I also discovered an old apricot tree on conservation area land in Spokane Valley. I have avoided gleaning from working farms but the apricot tree is wild at this point so it's fair game. Because the tree isn't being watered the fruits are small and the sugars are concentrated. Wow! The best apricots ever.

The purslane and apricots are good examples of the tasty but hidden abundance that surrounds us. 

I've also eaten thimbleberries, serviceberries, and tiny strawberries.

4. There is enough: The first couple of days were filled with urgency. I wondered if I could gather enough each day to sustain me. I even picked strawberries the size of sunflower seeds, thinking that they might be all I would have for the day. I now know, at least this time of year, there is enough. Huckleberries are the perfect example.

Spokane is part of what I'll call the Huckleberry Belt. You go anywhere in the mountain regions of Eastern Washington and Montana and you'll find that huckleberries are a cultural icon. Red-fingered pickers sell them at stands on every corner in tourist towns and high-end boutiques carry lines of huckleberry soaps, make-up, and gourmet candy.

Whole families in this region dedicate summer-weeks for camping and picking berries, filling coolers with them for jams, pies, and the freezer. Everyone has their "secret spot" for picking and no one is too eager to share the details of the location. It's one of those, "I'd tell you where we go for berries but then I'd have to kill you," sort of situations. 

There is a strong culture of scarcity around this legendary berry, primarily because it only grows in the wild. Despite their best efforts, hortculturists have failed to cultivate huckleberries for commercial growing. Like morel and porcini mushrooms, farmers can't grow them and package them for Costco. It's a wild plant and you have to go into the wild to harvest. Go here for more background on this. 

This wildness lends itself to the sense of scarcity that surrounds the berry. If a food doesn't grow in crop rows or through industrial practices, we can't imagine there is enough and so we sneak around to keep others out of our patch or some even pay $80/gallon plus $35 shipping to buy them online.

Well I'm here to bust the myth of scarcity that surrounds the huckleberry. My foraging week has led me to the mountains almost every day and every place I go is packed with berries. Huckleberries are everywhere. They are not scarce, they are abundant and there is enough for everyone in the Inland Northwest to harvest till it hurts - your back and your tummy. (I've learned that it is actually a little uncomfortable if you eat too many.) If you live in Spokane there is no need to drive to the Canadian border to your families secret spot. Just drive 30 minutes to Mount Spokane and hike around a little and you'll find your fill. 

In a cruel irony it is often our fear of scarcity that leads us to degrade natural places to grow crops or harvest timber which leads to actual scarcity. Haiti is an extreme example of this but the truth holds everywhere. Our fear of scarcity is too often a self-fulfilling prophecy.

An alternative posture to a fear of scarcity is to live in wonder of the abundance of what nature offers up. Foraging has helped reinforce this perspective in my life this week.

5. Be careful: For every edible in the wild there is often a poisonous lookalike. Only eat what you know and rely on more than one source of information to identification. For example, my primary ID book says that purslane doesn't have a poisonous lookalike, but all my other references point to spurge as similar to purslane. I'm grateful to the clarification provided by my these sources because in our garden the spurge grows right next to the purslane. So close that sometimes I'll grab a handful of purslane and a spurge plant is mixed up in the harvest. 

I'll follow up with more observations later in the week.

Tis the Season to Forage for Berries: Learning to Appreciate the Lesser Varieties

One of my hobbies this year has been to learn about edible wild plants. The spring season was abundant with porcini mushrooms and fiddlehead ferns but the heat of summer slowed my outdoor foraging adventures to a halt. Most of the edible green plants are only good as tender shoots fresh out of the ground. I lost track of my Edible Wild Plants book (which I highly recommend) until some fresh red berries on the side of the road reminded me that it's berry season. I know the basics about common blackberries (which don't grow much on the east side of the state) and huckleberries, but I have been eager to learn about some of the lesser known varieties.

Last weekend our family had a chance to get away to Mount Spokane and explore. We did find an abundance of huckleberries but I'll offer a report here on what we learned about some of the other less-prized sweet little morsels of wild goodness. 

Thimbleberries: These are readily availbale along roadsides. They are in the raspberry family of plants, but are more tender and drier than some of the sweeter berries. I've heard they are considered a delicacy in the midwest where they are made into jam. My rule of the thumb is that if you take four cups of any berry and combine them with 8 cups of sugar for jam they will taste awesome and aparently that rule holds up with the thimbleberry.

Here's what the wikipedia entry says:

Thimbleberry fruits are larger, flatter, and softer than raspberries, and have many small seeds. Because the fruit is so soft, it does not pack or ship well, so thimbleberries are rarely cultivated commercially. However, wild thimbleberries make an excellent jam which is sold as a local delicacy in some parts of their range, notably in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan.

Mountain Ash Berries: I noticed that these are abundant at Mt. Spokane and you don't have to look too hard in any landscaped area to find these berry-laden deciduous trees. I had no idea they are edible until I found them listed in my book. There edibility comes with a caveat - don't eat them raw and they are best when harvested after the first frost. Here's some more info.

The fruit of European Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) can be made into a slightly bitter jelly which in Britain is traditionally eaten as an accompaniment to game, and into jams and other preserves, on their own, or with other fruit. The fruit can also be a substitute for coffee beans, and have many uses in alcoholic beverages: to flavour liqueurs and cordials, to produce country wine, and to flavour ale. In Austria a clear rowan schnapps is distilled which is called by its German name Vogelbeer. Rowan cultivars with superior fruit for human food use are available but not common; mostly the fruits are gathered from wild trees growing on public lands.

Rowan fruit contains sorbic acid, an acid that takes its name from the Latin name of the genus Sorbus. The raw fruit also contain parasorbic acid (about 0.4%-0.7% in the European rowan[7]), which causes indigestion and can lead to kidney damage, but heat treatment (cooking, heat-drying etc.) and, to a lesser extent, freezing, neutralises it, by changing it to the benign sorbic acid. Luckily, they are also usually too astringent to be palatable when raw. Collecting them after first frost (or putting in the freezer) cuts down on the bitter taste as well.

Elderberries: There are two varieties of elder berries that I've seen, one that has a shiny dark purple fruit, almost black, with a purple stem, and another that is a dusky light blue color with smaller berries. Here's the scoop on the shiny dark purple variety known as sambucis-nigra (pictured to the right). 

The dark blue/purple berries can be eaten when fully ripe but are mildly poisonous in their unripe state.^[6] All green parts of the plant are poisonous, containingcyanogenic glycosides (Vedel & Lange 1960). The berries are edible after cooking and can be used to make jam, jelly, chutney and Pontack sauce. Also when cooked they go well with blackberries and with apples in pies.

Here's the link to the USDA citation. Here's another helpful link.

The pale light blue variety, which are more common in the northwest, are a cerulea variety. They are sweet, but have small stone-like seeds and the leaves and stems are poisonous. Here's some information on their edibility:

Edible Uses:The fruits of blue elderberry are edible raw, cooked or used in preserves. This is the most well-tasting of the North American elders, even though it is full of small seeds. The berries are rather sweet and juicy. They can however cause nausea if eaten raw, but ripe berries are edible when cooked. Berries can be used in portlike wine, jams, and pies. They should always be cooked and are used primarily in wines and syrups. The fruit is usually dried before being used. Some caution is advised, see the notes below on toxicity. The flowers are edible raw or cooked, and are said to be pleasant and refreshing raw. A pleasant tea can be made from the dried flowers.

Caution:The leaves, green fruits and stems of members of this genus are poisonous. The stems, bark, leaves and roots contain cyanide-producing glycosides, and are therefore poisonous, especially when fresh. The fruit of this species has been known to cause stomach upsets. Any toxin the fruit might contain is considered to be of low toxicity and is destroyed when the fruit is cooked.

As you can see, even with edible berries, there are cautions that need to be taken. Only eat wild berries and plants that you have identified with the help of a proven guide book. My post here is not enough to effectively ID these berries, and it is not offered as a guide. This is just a report from the field and a friendly invite to explore the often hidden wonder and beauty of what the land offers up.

I'll continue to explore and report on what I find. Let me know if you have a lesser-known berry that is a favorite.

BTW: Did you notice that I casually offered up the precious news that huckleberries are ripe and abundant on Mt. Spokane right now. Don't say I never did anything for you. :)

Genetically Modified Food in the News: Wikileaks, Catholic Church, US Gov, Washington Apples, Golden Rice

Photo: old coal mining railroad bridge from the 1800's in Black Diamond, WA.

There are a series of recent intriguing stories on genetically modified agriculture and bio-technology. 

I was surprised to learn via the most recent Wikileaks cable release that the U.S. government has, for years, been lobbying the Catholic Church to change their negative stance toward GMO crops. 

The Catholic News Service reports that one cable indicated that:

The U.S. Embassy would "continue to press the moral imperative of biotech" by sharing research on economic benefits and safeguards, which it said would be important to "winning Vatican hearts and minds."

In another instance:

The cable ended by stating: "Post will continue to lobby the Vatican to speak up in favor of GMOs, in the hope that a louder voice in Rome will encourage individual church leaders elsewhere to reconsider their critical views."

Other examples of the US State Department advocating for the acceptance of GM crops around the world can be found here. 

There are two ways to interpret these revelations. The more generous read is that the State Department is interested in addressing world hunger and so they are advocating for the Vatican's help in opening up impoverished countries to GM crops. So called golden rice that contains Vitamin A is an example of one such GM innovation that could help millions of malnourished people around the world. Syngenta is one of the key players with this rice and to their credit they are helping make it available 

The other way to read the advocacy of the State Department with the Catholic Church and foreign governments is that they are doing the bidding of large U.S. corporations to pave the way for the proliferation of GM crops that are dependent on expensive herbicides like Round Up. The reality is probably a mixture of the two, but I'm inclined to think that powerful economic interests rather than humanitarian compassion is the driving force behind this lobbying effort. 

While the State Department lobbies overseas, there is a battle brewing in the U.S. over GM sugar beets and a proposed GM apple that resists browning. 

I hope there are some countries around the world that hold on to their ban on GM crops. Those countries that allow GM crops are finding that once the genie is out of the bottle it's awfully hard to contain. For example, an organic oat farmer in Australia just lost his organic certification when a neighboring farm's round-up ready canola contaminated his farm with GM seeds. 

I personally need to learn more about the development of GM crops before offering an educated opinion. I don't want to be a reactionary luddite when it comes to GM technology, but the rapid proliferation of bio-tech in the food system really scares me. James McWilliams offers an intriguing "middle path" in responding to the the the GMO industry. 

WSU Study: Organic is Better In Almost Every Way

Scientists from Washington State University have completed one of the most comprehensive comparisons of conventional and organic farming methods and, at least in the case of strawberries. The study involving 13 conventional and 13 organic farms in California reveals that organic farming results in better tasting more nutritious fruit, and leaves the soil healthier than conventional methods. Science Daily sums up the results;

Among their findings:

• The organic strawberries had significantly higher antioxidant activity and concentrations of ascorbic acid and phenolic compounds.
• The organic strawberries had longer shelf life.
• The organic strawberries had more dry matter, or, "more strawberry in the strawberry."
• Anonymous testers, working at times under red light so the fruit color would not bias them, found one variety of organic strawberries was sweeter, had better flavor, and once a white light was turned on, appearance. The testers judged the other two varieties to be similar.

The researchers also found the organic soils excelled in a variety of key chemical and biological properties, including carbon sequestration, nitrogen, microbial biomass, enzyme activities, and micronutrients.

DNA analysis found the organically managed soils had dramatically more total and unique genes and greater genetic diversity, important measures of the soil's resilience to stress and ability to carry out essential processes.

Now we need an economist to do a follow up study on the economics of these farms, comparing the financial health of organic farming vs. conventional.

Hard Times for Huckleberry Picking

All reports I've been hearing from friends and wild crafters at the Farmers' Market is that it's been a down year for picking huckleberries. Friends that go to the same spot every year who usually get 6 or 7 gallons came home with three gallons this year. Mo Bereiter, Spokane's mushroom and berry man says the picking is slow and difficult this year.

So you can imagine my shock when we went on a hike yesterday and happened into the most abundant patch of huckleberries I've ever seen. At first the berries were small and scattered but the further we moved off the beaten path the more abundant and big they got. I think the key might be that while the lower elevation berry blossoms got zapped by late frosts, the later blooming, higher elevation berries made it through unscathed.

Scientists have been trying to figure out how to domesticate huckleberries for years without any real success. (For some reason you can't just dig up the wild plants and put them in your garden and get berries.) Dr. Dan Barney from the University of Idaho has been the pioneer in these efforts. In 2005 he indicated that they were 3 to 5 years from commercial production of the wild plant, but the downturn in the economy may have temporarily saved the huckleberry from those that would tame it. On April 21 the University of Idaho announced they were shuttering the Sand Point facility where Dr. Barney has been carrying out his huckleberry research.

As much as I love eating huckleberries, I hate the thought of some day being able to buy a five pound bag of frozen berries at Costco for $10. Some things just aren't meant to be turned into a commodity.

Picture: My "huckleberry hands" with their distinctive purple stains after picking berries yesterday.

How to Choose the Perfect Watermelon

It's peak season for watermelon and I can't get enough of it. Anderson Farm has some of the most unique melons I've seen. Last week we bought an orange watermelon from them and it was fantastic. Anderson Farm sells at the Millwood Market today, 3-7pm, and can also be found at the South Perry and Liberty Lake markets. This video from the NY Times will help you pick the perfect melon at the farmers' market.

How to Can Strawberry Rhubarb Jam and Other Jams & Jellies

Here's the recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb jam (one of our favorites) from the mother ship web site of food preservation, the National Center for Home Food Preservation. The recipe you use is going to depend on the kind of pectin you get. I usually use powder pectin because that's what is readily available in the local grocery story. With the powder I recommend just using the recipes that come with the pack of pectin. Last summer we canned over 30 jars of jam and we are now on our last jar.

Rhubarb-Strawberry Jam
with liquid pectin

• 1 cup cooked red-stalked rhubarb (about 1 pound rhubarb and ¼ cup water)
• 2½ cups crushed strawberries (about 1½ quart boxes)
• 6½ cups sugar
• 1 pouch liquid pectin

Yield: About 7 or 8 half-pint jars

Please read Using Boiling Water Canners before beginning. If this is your first time canning, it is recommended that you read Principles of Home Canning.

Procedure: Sterilize canning jars and prepare two-piece canning lids according to manufacturer's directions.

To prepare fruit. Wash rhubarb and slice thin or chop; do not peel. Add water, cover, and simmer until rhubarb is tender (about 1 minute). Sort and wash fully ripe strawberries; remove stems and caps. Crush berries.

To make jam. Measure prepared rhubarb and strawberries into a kettle. Add sugar and stir well. Place on high heat and, stirring constantly, bring quickly to a full boil with bubbles over the entire surface. Boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in pectin. Skim.

Fill hot jam immediately into hot, sterile jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened clean paper towel; adjust two-piece metal canning lids. Process in a Boiling Water Canner.

Table 1. Recommended process time for Rhubarb-Strawberry Jam in a boiling water canner.
		Process Time at Altitudes of
Style of Pack	Jar Size	0 - 1,000 ft	1,001 - 6,000 ft	Above 6,000 ft
Hot	Half-pints or Pints	5 min	10	15

Below are the general observations I made from my Master Food Preserver course about canning jams and jellies. For my whole series of posts on food preservation.

I have always been a big fan of jams and jellies and now I know why. I learned in my class that traditional cooked jams and jellies are 65-68% sugar. My new name for jam is fruit flavored sugar. That hasn't ruined it for me though. Over the weekend we made batches of raspberry and strawberry rhubarb. Insert Homer Simpson low growling noises here.

There are ways to reduce the sugar content of jams and jellies like using clear jel, or specially formulated pectin, or a freezer jam recipe, but don't reduce the sugar in traditional recipes or your jam won't gel. Turns out that jams require just the right balance of sugar, pectin, acid, and fruit. Messing with the ratio of any of those is enough to ruin a batch. It's really a great arrangement if you think about it. If your friend is aghast at you adding 8 cups of sugar to 5 cups of fruit, just explain that you'd really like to use less sugar but you need that much for it to gel properly. You're not being a glutton, just a conscientious chef.

Here are some things to consider as you make plans for your favorite fruit spread:

• Commercial pectins are made from apples and citrus fruit and come in liquid and powdered forms. Make sure to use the kind of pectin specified in the recipe. You also may find different brands have a different standard package size. I bought the MCP brand and used their provided recipes to ensure the proper balance of ingredients.

• Traditional Jams and Jellies have a reduced risk of foodborne illness because of the high sugar and acid content. If you want to make gifts for friends and families, jams and jellies may be a better option than that canned asparagus when it comes to having piece of mind about safety, both yours and theirs.

• While jams and jellies have a high sugar content, the typical store varieties have high fructose corn syrup as their main ingredient, which is much worse for your health than sugar. Do your family a favor and make them some homemade jam and do your local farmer a favor and use their fruit. Here's the Greenbluff schedule of fruit availability.

• If you're at altitude and need to process your jam for 10 minutes or more, you don't need to sterilize the jars, otherwise you need to boil the jars separately for 10 minutes. I say just plan on processing for 10 minutes and save yourself a step.

• You can make jams and jellies without added pectin by taking advantage of the natural pectins in fruit, but this requires long cooking of the fruit, balancing ripe and less than ripe fruit, and other detailed instructions that I'd rather not have to deal with. I have a hard enough time just measuring 8 cups of sugar without my kids distracting me.

• I've heard jams made with gelatin are kind of lame.

• A kitchen scale is a must for figuring out the amount of fruit you'll need to start with in order to get the measured amount that goes into final mix.

• Don't double the recipe. Changing the batch size changes ratios and cooking times, and will likely result in jam that doesn't set properly.

• 1/4 teaspoon of butter or margarine is a good way of reducing foam during the cooking.

• Sugar crystals in your jam or jelly probably means the ratio of sugar to water is higher than 68%, at which level it is impossible to completely dissolve it.