Wild Foraging Trip: 6/29/08

So this morning, my cat brought me a present, as usual...



I suddenly decided, why waste perfectly good bird meat? My cat never eat his birds, he kindly snaps their necks though, unlike most cruel house cats, who toy with their prey until they are beyond recognition.
So I wrapped it in a plastic bag and stuck in the fridge in preparation for dinner.

My mom picked up some of my favorite wild veggie flower today, Milkweed:



They have lots of bugs they coexist with in their habitat, so we have to soak them for several hours until all the bugs float to the surface. They have to be processed multiple times. By pushing them into the water, with the flat of your hands, the bugs float to the surface. Drain the water, and repeat about 3 times.



Shadow and I then proceeded on a wild foraging hunt, for the rest of our night veggies!
The first things we came across were LOTS of prickly lettuce!
Prickly lettuce must be cooked until the spines on the stalk are soft.
I like to cook them in walnut oil and soysauce, with garlic.





The second thing we found on our trip, were yucca pods!
The seeds taste amazing, like a nutty mini water chestnut.
I stirfry them in my veggie stirfries.





The need to be cut down the middle, at the intersecting points. Then the seeds will pop out. This demonstration is done by Shadows hands! :)





By the time we were done, we had a half filled bowl, this is just a few pods worth.



Afterwards we found a bit of mullein, and continued picking our prickly lettuce along the way. The mullein is a slight sedative, great for relaxing tea, mixed with either mint, sage, clover, etc. The leaves are soft and fuzzy.



We proceeded on our journey, and found some fairy ring mushrooms, or LBM's(lil brown mushrooms) if you will. They were in some manicured grass outside of a business. They love the water!



We stopped in front of 7 Eleven and hit the jack pot of food!
I found a meadow mushroom, just one...but there were two dead ones next to it, so I have a mushroom pickin' spot!



The underside of the sweet scented meadow mushroom:



Among our finds were some Lambsquarters, which grows prolifically everywhere!
The flower heads I find to be really enjoyable, the rest of the plant tastes similiar to spinache, but BETTER, and it IS in the spinache family. Although, it doesn't have the bad side effects of spinache. We don't need arm tumors like Popeye!

Lambsquarters flowerheads:



Full grown Lambsquarters:



Below is some Plantain, which is good for sore muscles, bruised muscles, and used in healing salves. The indians put in their shoes to protect their feet on long journeys, and heal the sore muscles. The leaves are also used in healing salves. When the seeds mature to a darkened blackish color, they can be stripped and cooked in butter and eaten by themselves, thrown on salads etc.



We collected a huge bag of dandelion greens, they are slightly bitter, and they are best collected young, as they get more bitter as they age. The flowers can be cooked in butter, used in baking, etc. The flowers may also be eaten raw.



We picked some sage on our way home:



When we got home, I dug a fire pit to cook our little bird, and started a fire, putting wood on three times until we had built up enough coals to cook our bird.



While Shadow threw the whole bird in, feathers and all, I cooked the stirfry.
We combined all of the above ingredients, with some fresh garlic and red onion, and stir fried it up.



The bird looked mighty tasty when he was done:



We then combined the stripped bird meat with the stirfry, and voila!



It was INCREDIBLE tasting, needless to say; today was a good day. A beautiful epic wild food adventure, that ended in bliss. A hard days work, and we have plenty of veggies for our week to come!