Foraging Update

Here is a foraging update:

I picked about a pound of autumnberries on Satuday and made a small glass of juice from it. I will most certainly do this again. I have a "food mill" strainer I used to remove the seeds, which I then destroyed (the seeds not the mill, silly) because of the plants are considered invasive, but I read today that you can roast and eat the seeds, like you would for a pumpkin. I'll try that next time.

I also picked several more pounds of blackberries. I've never made jam in my life, but there are so many out there that I think I'm going to try it anyway. I have an old water-bath canner than I've only used a few times to make applesauce. I'll let you know how it goes.

I played around with winnowing plantain seeds this weekend. I found a patch of plantains that had really baked in the sun, stripped the seeds off and then winnowed them with the wind. You don't get much for the effort at the end... just a little handful of tiny black seeds... but they taste pretty good. I think they'd make a good topping for a bagel, like you would use poppy seeds. I make bagels once or twice a year, usually in the winter. I'm going to collect a bunch of these seeds, dry them out, and store them for just such an experiment.

On my walk at lunchtime today I found a perfect little apple tree a hop, skip, and a jump away from the mulberry tree I described last week in this blog. I tried an apple, expecting it to be nasty like most crab-apples are raw. Not this apple. It was wonderful. Why no one picks these apples is beyond me. I picked another for the walk back to work. Maybe I'll make applesauce too!