GranolaBox

A Few of Today’s Wild Finds

If you’re the type of person who likes authoritative narrators and solid information, these posts will frustrate you.

I’m a neophyte at wild foods, falling all over the place with dumbness, so most of these posts will be reporting the obvious and maybe even promulgating lies until I improve a bit.

Sorry about that.

Anyhow, let’s start with the savories.

These are wild onions (the bigger ones) and wild garlic or chives (sort of like onion angel hair). Only, purists don’t like the term “wild onions.” I’m too ignorant to be a purist, so I do.

Your companions can smell your breath from a few yards away if you nibble on these during a stroll. They’re delicious, and abundant. They grow like grass in the spring, before the other plants choke them out.

There are poisonous lookalikes, I’ve heard, though I haven’t seen any. But gastronomic distress is easy to avoid — don’t eat wild onions or garlic that don’t smell POWERFULLY like onions or garlic. It couldn’t be simpler.

These are wild grapes, after a winter. I’ve walked the trails here for years without noticing them, but they’re everywhere. This isn’t the best picture to show it, but they actually hang down in the same purple triangle shapes you see tole-painted on cheesy crockery. Combine those spiral tendrils and giant leaves that clamber over sturdier plants and you have a species that’s easy to identify.

Easterners turn up their nose at wild grapes, because some of them are “foxy.” But the truth is, about three major types grow wild here, and only some are foxy, and none of those I’ve tried. In fact, I’d find them delicious if I were the least bit hungry. Not to mention, there’s probably been a lot of happy interspecies hijinks here in wine country.

If I’m not full of crap, this is an Eastern White Pine. The needles offer up crazy amounts of vitamin C all winter long, but especially when young and bright like these. You can brew them into a tea, or just chew on the needles — the younger, the better. From what I’ve heard, all pines make a decent tea.

I think it’s hilarious that I don’t know what this is — let’s just call it wild wheat. Anyway, I noticed that even now, in February, there were still a few grains clinging to the heads. I popped them into my mouth and they were kind of nutty and chewy. That was cool, since grain isn’t something you expect to find in the forest.

Apparently, wild grain has several nutrients that got genetically “turned off” in domestic strains. Who knew.

Behold! I bring you rose hips from the Rugosa rose. These guys are also bursting with good ol’ Vit C., something hard to come by in winter sans a supermarket. I’ve heard a) the seeds are the most nutritious part, and b) you shouldn’t eat the seeds because they upset your stomach. So the jury’s still out on that.

These wild hips are tiny, esp. compared to those those I grew up with in Alaska, which rivalled the Hindenberg.

At first I had a hard time distinguishing them from other red berries. Then I realized that (DUH!) … these guys have thorns! Although on some shrubs, the thorns are fairly subtle. And then I learned to recognize the goldfish mouths you see on the ends. That’s (ahem) the botanical term.

Interestingly, the taste varies wildly from shrub to shrub. Some hips are AMAZINGLY tasty: tangy and citrusy. Some are just, meh. And some are perfumey, like actual rose petals.

I Don’t Know What the Hell These Are

This is one groovy mushroom, but slimy. It probably looked a little better a few days or weeks ago. It might have been edible, but I don’t mess with mushrooms, at all, except perhaps for morels. You MUST know all a mushroom’s potential lookalikes before you go there.

The creepy thing about mushroom poisoning is that sometimes, you seem to recover after the first stage of nausea, vomiting, etc. Then, you feel fine for two or three days. And then, you die.

Don’t know what the hell these are (L., some kind of thistle?). But I aim to find out. Aren’t they hams? LOOKATME LOOKATME!

UPDATE: the guy on the right is a second year mullein. CheckItFreakin’Out.

This goes by the name of wild cucumber, which is confusing, because another completely different plant also gets called wild cucumber. This invasive species absolutely flattens the local crop of corn that grows north of our street.