Unstuffed: Fungi and Flora

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Fungi and Flora

After a cool and rainy start to the day, the sky cleared and the sun came out in time for another Wild Edibles session.

This week, Martha showed us the polypore mushroom Dryad's Saddle.
This mushroom is not highly sought after, being thought of as too tough to eat and not having much of a flavor by many. We collected a few to try anyway. Martha pared off the tender edge of the mushroom and lightly sauteed the pieces. There was just enough for each of us to have a small sample, and I have to say I really enjoyed the texture and flavor. It was quite meaty, not tough at all and it had a unique flavor that I really liked. I would definitely eat this mushroom again.

Growing nearby were some very unattractive false morels. These are toxic and should not be eaten.

True morels look like this (and they taste amazing!):

Moving from fungi to flora, we identified sarsaparilla. (Taxonomy and uses here.)

Chickweed
Here is a great tip for identifying chickweed (from this site): "Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of common chickweed is the single lengthwise line of fine white hair on one side of the stem, but switching sides above and below each node."

Motherwort

Common mallow

Chokecherry

Little baby wild grapes and leaves.

Cleavers

3 comments:

Susan said...: I'm really enjoying your posts on the edible wild. I always endorse eating your 'weeds' instead of spraying them. I increase my intake every year as I learn more edible species. Dandelion fritters are becoming a regular at my kitchen table, though my husband would like to mow the lawn that I've let go to harvest enough flowers.

SQ; May 21, 2009 at 11:48 AM
Amber said...: Thanks Suzy Q.
I am just loving this course. I look forward to it every week. Sadly, my bus was late the Wednesday before last and I missed my ride, hence no post for that week. But there are still two more weeks left and I will be posting about them for sure.

I made dandelion fritters last night and they were so tasty!
I also collected a cup of violet flowers to make syrup. I'm hoping it turns out. I'll post about that too.

As Martha says about weeds, "If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em!"

Take care,
Amber; May 22, 2009 at 11:08 AM
Susan said...: Does anyone know if there is a similar course in BC, specifically, around Kamloops? . I heard someone does an ethnobotany walk around here. I've been wanting to do something like this for years. Might have to move back to Ontario.

Thanks!

SQ; May 22, 2009 at 11:24 AM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali