nature's bounty

do you pick much fruit or food or herbs or whatever wild?

this week I picked some brambles; they're nearing the end of the season so the selection was pretty spartan but I probably bagged enough for a decent sized pie or crumble

there's a big pile of nettles outside my front door and I'm itching to make some nettle soup or tea with them

how about you? what have you foraged lately?

i think it's impossible to live in seattle and not pick blackberries. on hikes i've picked red huckleberries, blueberries, what i think are black huckleberries (i didn't have my book to verify), evergreen huckleberries, salal berries. a few other things i can't remember. but nothing in enough quantity to bake or cook with.

sorry, didn't realize this was in i love cooking. carry on.

Like Lingbert says, blackberries. They are rampant here. That's it though, for the past few years. I foraged prickly pears and piñon in AZ, and all sorts of stuff back in Indiana when I was growing up there.

I'm plotting a quince-picking excursion for tomorrow. At a u-pick though, not truly foraging.

Brambles galore. Dandelions and Fat Hen for salads, Field mush on lucky occasions (I don't trust my mush knowledge enough to go picking in woods without someone who really knows what they're doing). Various shellfish back when I lived in Cornwall, but that, sadly, doesn't qualify as recent. Nettles, also.

Speaking of which, don't pick nettles at this time of year unless you're very, very anxious to shift your bowels. March to June only, and then only the tops.