Posted on 04/18/2017 1:54:35 PM PDT by nickcarraway
"Wildman Steve Brill" served the audience dandelions, chickweed and onion grass during his presentation on edible weeds at the Scarsdale Public Library on March 31. Steve Brill has been foraging, or gathering wild foods, for over 35 years. Early on he was arrested and handcuffed by undercover park rangers for eating a dandelion in Central Park. Subsequently, after his educating the New York City Parks Department, they hired him to give public foraging tours in Central Park.
We dipped corn chips into a delightful pesto made with garlic mustard. Garlic mustard (scientific name Alliaria petiolata) came from Europe and parts of Asia and is invasive, aggressively taking over our forests floors by outcompeting the native forest plants that support our local ecology. Perhaps our eating non-native invasive plants can be part of a strategy to garlicmustard
Garlic mustard is great raw in salads, mixed with more mild greens. It's also good steamed, simmered, or sauteed.
help control them.
Steve's daughter Violet provided parts of the presentation with surprising knowledge and poise for a seventh grader. She has her sights on becoming an ornithologist as well as an expert forager.
The Bronx River-Sound Shore Audubon Society brought this delicious presentation to Scarsdale.
For recipes and information about foraging, his website is at www.wildmanstevebrill.com.
It’s also a very good green to grow in the winter with row covers here in Mo.
Yes, Euell Gibbons wrote "Stalking the Wild Asparagus", an that was my first introduction to foraging.
The book identified how to identify wild edibles through sketches, not photographs, and where to look; it's best to use a companion field book to verify identity.
On my first forage, I successfully found wild asparagus, wild chive, and spearmint in a farm hedgerow adjoining the then apartment house .
When I was growing up in Michigan, we had about a two-mile stretch of roadway ditches that, in the spring and summer, were full of asparagus. My mother would drive us down to the far end and had us walk back to the house, picking asparagus and putting it into paper grocery bags. What we didn't eat fresh, she canned in Mason jars. As all five of us boys just loved asparagus, we made sure that none of us told anyone else about the bounty along that stretch of road. I'm sure that others knew about it and harvested some, but there was always multiple bagloads for us to pick when we went looking. Without that, I probably would have never had any asparagus until after I left home, as it was considered "very expensive" when purchased fresh or even in cans.
We also looked for bottles to turn in for deposit and, on occasion, found cash .. usually paper money .. that must have been blown out of passing cars. We used that to buy BBs and fishing tackle for our own use. We may have looked feral .. or, at least, what passed for "feral" in those days .. but we were all proper boys for the time.
I’ve figured out an easier way:
1: Bring a bedsheet, one that you don’t mind getting dirty. Lay it across a large tub, making sure there’s enough extra to hang over the edges.
2: Use pruning shears to cut the stalks into lengths that fit into said tub. Wear gloves, those things are prickly! Lay the stalks parallel to each other as much as you can, they’ll fit better that way.
3: When the tub is full, tie the edges of the sheet to form a bag. Hang this in a dry place until the stalks are crispy. (Depending on your climate, that might not take long. Autumns are usually damp out here.)
4: To thresh, you can either tap the stalks vigorously over a bucket or tub. Or, cut the stalks to shorter lengths and use a bucket thresher: http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/threads/bucket-thresher-pic-heavy.554524/#post-7719842
5: Winnow by pouring the grain from one bucket to another, in front of a fan.
Amaranth hulls come off easily on their own with the threshing. Lambsquarters needs dehulled, which adds an extra step. I will admit, I prefer amaranth largely for that reason.
Actual plants with no psychoactive properties?? I didn’t know that. I even asked at a dispensary about it.
CBD oil 2:1 is the most effective for me. I take it at bedtime. No high.
It has all the other good stuff
Some of the medically useful cannabinoids are inherently psychoactive, for example, THC.
I do not reference the cannabinoids.
I reference the terpenes.
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