Archive for 'foraging'

Wild Black Currant Brandy Voted Best in House

Saturday, January 28th, 2012 at 5:34 am  
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wild black currants fairplay co 350x262 Wild Black Currant Brandy Voted Best in House

Rain-kissed wild black currant goodness.

It’s wild booze month at Hunger & Thirst and again I have Butterpoweredbike to thank for motivating me to the computer to write something. That—and for getting me into the liquor cabinet for a night of distraction from my many winter obligations.

Fortunately, Gregg and I were good little alcohol squirrels over the warmer months, storing wild foraged ingredients in bottles of booze now and again. One batch of our prized bathtub gin—made from vodka flavored with juniper “berries” and wild angelica—remains, but as of the other night there were also a few experiments yet to be tried: wild grape vodka, wild black currant vodka, and wild black currant brandy among them. Read the rest of this entry

A Fall for Pumpkin & Acorns Soup

Saturday, November 26th, 2011 at 8:53 pm  
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pumpkin acorns soup 350x298 A Fall for Pumpkin & Acorns Soup

Pumpkin and wild acorns soup, garnished with pumpkin seeds and a dollop of sour cream.

Okay I’ll admit it. I’m rusty—rusty at cooking, rusty at foraging, rusty at writing about stuff that interests me. I swear I ignore the writing for a week and suddenly it’s three weeks and before I know it I’ve totally forgotten that I actually enjoy writing.

The computer crash didn’t help. I lost several not-yet-published entries I was excited about—one on homemade wild sumac candies (think pink lemon drops), yet another acorn rant, and a fun-filled account of recent drama that took place around a foragers’ gathering down Denver way, wherein Gregg’s car landed in the impound just as I was making the famous Hank Shaw’s acquaintance. (This was hilarious … in retrospect.) Needless to say, I lost composure, data, and momentum. Follow with a 3-day power outage in wintry Colorado at 11,000 feet and you’ve got one cold, frustrated forager-blogger. Read the rest of this entry

Foraging Unfamiliar Ground (for Radio)

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 at 7:19 am  
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first burdock 350x262 Foraging Unfamiliar Ground (for Radio)

Digging burdock root deep in the brush with Jim Pullen of KGNU. Photo by Butterpoweredbike.

As wild food foragers, we sometimes find ourselves on unfamiliar ground. A trip somewhere new can be both exciting and intimidating. What is there to forage here?

This was the situation in which my co-foraging friend, Butterpoweredbike, and I found ourselves two weeks ago in the dry, windswept hills northwest of Lyons, Colorado. We’d been invited there by the landowner, Cheri Hoffer, after she heard of our plight to find a plot of private land on which to forage with KGNU producer Jim Pullen, who wanted to tape us foraging for radio.

Together, we drove the long, rough, dirt road there wondering whether we’d made a mistake. Neither of us was familiar with the habitat; everything seemed to be brown, and the media was on its way. What were we going to find? Crap.  Read the rest of this entry

Boulder to Rediscover “The Forgotten Feast” November 1

Saturday, October 29th, 2011 at 6:57 am  
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Hunt Gather Cook 288x350 Boulder to Rediscover “The Forgotten Feast” November 1Hank Shaw, author of Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast, makes a tour stop at the Black Cat Farm Table Bistro in Boulder, Colorado on Tuesday, November 1 to sign books and help guests rediscover that which has been forgotten through a prix fixe feast featuring foraged foods and flavors. 

Chef Eric Skokan presents the menu, which is slated to include risotto with porcini and second cutting hay, pickled mallow, campfire trout, spruce, pine nut aioli, crispy thistle, Colorado lamb (not to be confused with the next menu item) lamb’s quarters, burdock root gratin, and pickled rose hips, with maple and walnut cake, black walnut ice cream, and nocino for dessert. Any of the non-foraged ingredients are deeply local, with 80% of the restaurant’s usual provisions coming from their 70-acre Black Cat Farm.  Read the rest of this entry

Cattail Bob’s Book is Back in Print

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 at 7:32 pm  
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Best Tasting 223x350 Cattail Bobs Book is Back in PrintCattail Bob Seebeck’s popular local guide, Best-Tasting Wild Plants of Colorado and the Rockies (1998) is now back in print, self-published and available for purchase either directly from the author (email cattailbob[at]q.com) or the Pikes Peak Community College (PPCC) bookstore, with plans underway to make it available at Amazon in the near future. 

In recent years, used copies of the formerly out-of-print guide have been selling for upwards of $100 online. (Today I saw a new copy going for $229; holy crapola!) Seebeck is currently offering the re-issues for $25 plus $3 shipping & handling.   

The succinct field guide to approximately 70 edible plants deemed best-tasting by Bob is prized for its inclusion of four full-color pictures of each plant at different seasons of the year, aiding identification. Entries are divided into high and low altitude categories and include charts describing growth phases of plants by month and altitude. Look-alikes for edible plants are listed along with their toxicity in addition to a separate, bright-red-appointed section on toxic plants to be avoided. 

Instead of specific recipes, he includes food preparation suggestions such as this one for pennycress (Thlaspi arvense): “Strong, almost garlic-like flavor. …Young fresh leaves work best in salads, sauces, soups, and stir fries…,” leaving the reader free to invent her own wild concoctions.  Read the rest of this entry

There’s No Foraging Like Snow Foraging

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011 at 9:53 am  
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colorado rockies october 2011 262x350 There’s No Foraging Like Snow Foraging

October snow hovers in the high country.

It’s mid October and it just keeps snowing here in the high country at 11,000 feet in Colorado Rockies. You’d think foraging season were over, but it’s not. 

Two days ago I awoke to a steady snow and found myself unable to focus on work. By noon it stopped but the wind kicked up; the way it whipped around the house inspired Gregg to curl up by the fire and swear he’d stay inside all day. I felt exactly the opposite, however: I needed to go outside.

It’s hunting season so the hand-me-down pink bell bottom cords and orange puffy vest were in order. It was hat and gloves weather too with all that wind. 

The mining road was vacant and the snow plentiful. I reveled in getting fresh tracks as I hiked through 3”- 4” deep swaths of pow. At a switchback I clambered over the fallen tree trunk that obscures the footpath to the secret meadow, which I descended brushing snow off the low bushes as I went. 

There were many non-producing low juniper shrubs en route but eventually I found the one I was looking for, which I’d spied a few days prior. It is the most fruitful creeping juniper shrub I’ve ever found, and despite the snow it was still laden with plump, blue berries.  Read the rest of this entry

Berry Bliss at Strawberry Park

Thursday, October 6th, 2011 at 6:44 pm  
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strawberry park springs fall 350x262 Berry Bliss at Strawberry Park

Strawberry Park hot springs in fall. Photo by Gregg Davis.

This blog is just the small-potatoes-rambling of one over-exuberant semi-neophyte foraging addict, but I swear, wild food must be en vogue or something—because in the last four months I have received not one or two but three different emails from producers seeking to create TV or web shows about foraging. 

One inquired as to whether my collecting missions require acts of bravery. Acts of bravery? I was inclined to reply in the negative, but, eager to please, I dug deep and ventured this response: “Does hanging off a mountainside to collect currants count?” (It’s not that I have to hang off the mountainside; it’s just that that’s where the best currants are.) I got the sense that he appreciated my effort but found the answer wanting, however.   

Next he asked whether I travel worldwide for special wild foods. “Um, no,” I replied. Clearly my hobby is less sexy than TV might hope. “Mostly I forage locally where I live,” I explained. Really I’m just a poor fool working 10 jobs, scavenging my food from the wild so I can afford to live in paradise, and banging away at the keyboard about things that interest me whenever I get the chance.    Read the rest of this entry

Foraging Fungi in the National Forest

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 at 11:51 am  
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forest products sign 350x270 Foraging Fungi in the National Forest

As of September 2011, the South Park Ranger District does not require a mushroom permit. Fungi foraging in the neighboring White River National Forest, however, requires a free permit for personal use.

Note: I wrote this article at the behest of a Forest Service representative; it is re-posted here, plus subtitles, with permission of the Summit Daily News, which ran it on October 1.  

Just as collecting firewood from the national forest for home use requires a permit, so too does foraging for fungus in the White River National Forest in and around Summit County, Colorado, including areas that were once part of the Arapahoe National Forest. 

Fungi Foraging Permit Free but Required

“Mushroom gathering requires a personal use permit that we have been issuing for free at the Dillon Ranger District Office,” said Cary Green, timber management assistant for the East Zone White River National Forest. The limit is five gallons of mushrooms/day — the equivalent of one 5-gallon bucket or two grocery sacks — with a total season limit of 67 lbs. Other popular Forest Service permits include those for Christmas trees, boughs and transplants. Read the rest of this entry

Lactarius Deliciosus is fine with me

Friday, September 2nd, 2011 at 10:12 am  
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delicious milk caps 350x262 Lactarius Deliciosus is fine with me

Newly picked Lactarius deliciosus aka delicious milk caps. Note gills are light orange, not white.

It rained quite a bit a few days ago and now the mushrooms are up again, though we’ve found only one bolete in recent days—a magnificent one, but past its prime so we left it. I wonder if the season for boletes is past?

No biggie. Boletes are good but so are Lactarius deliciosus, a mushroom I had not intended to try because it has gills, but when my friend Butter announced that she was looking for it, I starting looking too—and then found them in abundance. 

Delicious Milky Caps  

Lactarius deliciosus is just as it sounds: milky and delicious. It’s creamy light orange, both on the cap and gills (which should not be white). Deliciosus is what happens when you sauté it in oil for a while—though just how delicious it is seems subject to debate, with Vera Stucky Evenson (1997) saying, “Although a popular edible in other countries, Colorado’s variety of this species are not always delicious.”  Read the rest of this entry

The Current Currant Season is Kicking

Friday, August 26th, 2011 at 8:09 am  
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currant spiny 350x262 The Current Currant Season is Kicking

Juicy Ribes berries dangling from spiny branches, beware! Photo by Gregg Davis.

The currants and gooseberries were not yet ripe here at 11,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies when I published my August Wild Edible Notebook, which is devoted to berries—strawberries and huckleberries, specifically—but now they are, and oh what a currant season the current season is!

I had an inkling of the potential the other day when we visited the Como Roundhouse during Railroad Days and Deb was kind enough to leg Gregg and I and Kor from Holland out back to see the ruins of the housing tenements, where I found big bushes laden with ripe and hairy but not altogether tasty red currants. Yesterday, however, when we pulled into the parking lot of the Limber Grove Trail, berries were the first thing I saw.

I couldn’t believe the size of those purple berries. There were so many of them—and the biggest I’ve ever seen! So eager was I to begin collecting that I didn’t realize I’d positioned myself in a big anthill until ants were swarming up my leg. After hopping around maniacally to shake them off, however, I found better footing and returned to my collecting.  

The bushes were rife with big, painful spines, complicating picking. When I absentmindedly tried raking the bush with my fingers like I do with huckleberries, I wound up cutting a painful, horizontal paper-cut-like slice into a purple-red stained finger.   Read the rest of this entry

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