I’ve been foraging for as long as I can remember.
It’s really amazing when you look around
and see the variety of things that you can eat
and not just eat but enjoy, make a great meal out of.
This is a plant that has been equated to the supermarket in the woods.
These are cattails.
Pound for pound cattail has more protein than a lot of plants.
Oh that’s a good one.
So when you pick these, it’s this big, you’re
only going to eat this much out of the center,
the rest of it’s real tough.
So this part right here
can be eaten raw and it’s a very agreeable flavor.
Right here behind us is a black walnut tree.
If you look on this branch right here, you
see those mushrooms?
They’re wood ear mushrooms.
Kind of looks like an ear.
These things really come out after a good rain.
This is just one little branch full of wood ear.
This is garlic mustard and if you were to
take a young leaf and chew it,
immediately you would know why they call it garlic mustard.
There’s a garlic flavor, mustard flavor.
This makes a great pesto.
You can basically strip the seed pods off
in your hand and
kind of winnow the chaff away and you’ll have these little black seeds.
Grind up, use it as a pretty good pepper substitute.
Have you guys ever tried these before?
This is black locust.
Black locust produces our No. 1 grade A honey.
This is what the bees collect the pollen from
but these blossoms have a phenomenal floral
fragrance, it’s like perfume when they’re
in blossom and they taste great.
All right let’s go have lunch.
And you ask how you know which plants to eat?
Sometimes if you listen real close,
the plants might tell ya.
So these are cattails.
We’re only going to use the inner part of
this, really tender part
almost like a palm heart.
It’s quite good just like that
but we’re going to cook this up.
We’re going to take some garlic mustard.
So I’m just going to break this up and by
bruising it
you’re going to release a lot more flavor to it.
So these are wood ear mushrooms.
This is something that you find often in Chinese
cuisine, sweet and sour soup.
Now these are good to eat by themselves as
we experienced outside.
Black locust flowers.
They’re great.
They really are.
It’s going to give it a nice little floral twist to it.
So this was an area that was brand new to me
in terms of foraging.
And it just really goes to show that you can go almost anywhere
and find plants that you can eat.
And now it’s time to eat.
Not bad.
