Stairway To Ramp Heaven

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Yesterday me , JuJu the donkey and a good friend went ramp huntin' in the woods... there was alot of pointing, turning around, following ridges, judging terrain, and memory sharing - of where local people said they had found them before. Impressively JuJu pushed right through the forest with me, stepping over fallen trees & always guarding our back, stopping when i stopped, maybe even smiling a donkey smile.

After a hike so up and downhill that my legs are actually sore... we came upon the BIGGEST most heavenly, grandest HUGE insane ramp patch I have ever seen, and most likely will ever see! Thousands and thousands of them, more then i could take in standing in one place... going downhill, uphill... 360 degrees all around. I had the urge to lay down in it and roll around till I smelled like an onion.

For anyone who might not be familiar with "ramps", they are a delicious wild edible leek, or onion type plant. (see more close up pics here.) They have a strong odor & flavor - people love them so dearly here in the mountains that they have festivals sharing all their ramp recipes & NO ONE ever tells where the ramp patch they've found is. No one, including me. :)

We dug up about enough to fill a half gallon jar, some to eat, some to replant in our own hiding places.

When you first dig um' up, you have to pull back a rotten looking layer of brown-ish skin, to reveal the beautiful white root of the ramp (see pic below).

Digging down a few inches, cause ya can't pull the plant up by it's leaves (it will break)! The whole entire thing is edible....mmmmmmmm. And did i mention they taste sooooooo gooooood?!!

Xoxoxox

Boiling Chestnuts

I know I told ya'll I was going to roast the chestnuts I foraged for in my 'hood... but since I didn't have a pan big enough to lay them all even & flat in the oven, I decided to try and just boil them in some spring water. (This project was NOT a fail either! It's SOooooo Delicious. YAY!)

ALL YOU NEED:

• chestnuts
• a knife
• water
• a pot

What I read and have been told numerous times is that chestnuts can explode while cooking. I've been told this same thing about sweet potatoes and never seen it happen... but I decided the chestnuts seem more like a bomb.

STEP ONE: Take a sharp knife and draw a lil' X on each chestnut to keep it from exploding. This also makes it way easy to peel open after they are done cooking!

STEP TWO: Dump all your X'ed chestnuts into boiling water. Let them boil for about 20 minutes.

STEP THREE: Peel open at the X and eat dat' yellow-ish nut on the inside. It's GOOD! Make sure you dont eat the funked out rotten gray ones (or at least I didn't cause they smell sour and bad).

It's so good, I ate them all at once. I couldnt stop!!! I felt like a f'en squirrel. :)

I have to go back to that tree and see if there's more...

xoxoxox

Do You Forage For Food?

...cause it's kinda exciting and fun. Not to mention probably some deep biological drive that feels super satisfying to fulfill. While I am working on having much of my own food growing at the Luck Cabin by planting dwarf fruit trees, having seasonal veggie gardens, planting a variety of culinary herbs, and learning about edible forest plants... I also am a food foraging scout for at least 2 miles around me.

Meaning, alot of the folks who live in these parts don't actually live here anymore. Farmers get old and die, the family holds onto the land but doesn't want to live there, or there are the once popular vacation homes that are for sale & abandoned now. These people just are not around, and with all the walks I take in the area I can't help but scope out every plant, fruit tree, nut tree and take a mental note of when it will be ready to drop a good meal.

Pictured above are a ton of small white peaches on the ground at a house no one has lived at for quite some time. I picked through them to find the best looking ones. I wanna make peach sauce! :)

Pictured below are HUGE delicious turnip greens I found in a field down the road, the cabin & property there is a vacation spot I have yet to see anyone stay at. The field is mostly overgrown.

There are some places where neighbors DO live, and have such an abundance of apples and chestnuts they are willing to share. :)

Another "food" I forage for is seeds. I find seeds to other herbs, plants, and wildflowers that I want to take back with me to my cabin. In my hand (pic below) is the seed head for the herb YARROW. I use yarrow alot during the summer in the natural bug repellent I make for my skin.

Usually while I am out on these walks I find tracks from native animals, and sometimes I find the real thing...

These are wild turkeys that were very close and within perfect range to get for dinner, but I don't have those kind of hunting skills yet. Or rather I only had a big knife on me at the time and not a gun, or a bow & arrow. But the potential to forage some good turkey meat is easily available...and for me personally one turkey would last me 6-8 months.

FOOD I GATHERED :::::::::

I got a pretty good variety of free foods to eat. Think about it.. it's FREE. Free food and free therapy because giving in to your inner hunter/gatherer just feels good, feels peaceful, and right.

And since these foods are wild, they are not only organic but they are even better then organic!

Chestnuts, apples, peaches, acorns, turnip greens (and wishfully a turkey, maybe next time)! And there is so much more to be had, this is just what I can fit in my backpack and carry on each trip. Had I bought all this at the health food store I would have spent a fuckin' TON of money, just organic apples alone woulda broke me.

But now i can have yummy peach and apple sauce, and enjoy the fruits & nuts of my scouting labors. :)

Xoxoxox

Chestnuts & Buckeyes, not the same nut!

Back in the day when I first became interested in foraging for food, I got really excited about all the "chestnuts" falling around my cabin. I collected massive basket fulls, and felt like I had struck gold in the yummy nut lotto! That is until my poor boyfriend at the time ate them.
He believed me that they were chestnuts and while I was asleep one night he boiled a bunch down and began peeling and eating them - he said they tasted bitter and sick but he ate about 10 of them anyway and got really bad stomach probs the next day.
The internet was not as saturated with info as it is now, but he decided to look up more about cooking chestnuts since his were so f'en gross and discovered he'd been eating poisonous buckeyes, otherwise known as "horse chestnuts" ( they are poisonous to horses).
Poor guy. He never was right after that. He never was right before that too though.
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So here are clear pictures for ya'll food foragers out there who might be curious about these nuts...
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This picture below is the big shiny HORSE CHESTNUT, or BUCKEYE. It is poisonous to people and to some animals too. DO NOT EAT THIS NUT!

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This next picture below is a real EDIBLE CHESTNUT! You can eat these, most people prepare them first by roasting or boiling. But HERE they say you can go ahead and eat them raw too. (I am gonna roast mine! mmmmm)

Xoxoxoxo