Foraging?

[sarasvati]

Being in dire financial straits (I've been unemployed for 7 months now and my employment insurance gives me all of $36 a week), I've been looking at ways to further cut back on expenses, and aside from cruising for sales and buying second-hand, I've started to give thought to the matter of foraging for food.

I'm lucky to live in an area where my choices are pretty decent when it comes to wild food. I know where I can get fiddleheads, rhubarb, rose hips, cranberries, raspberries, strawberries, crab apples, chestnuts, and blueberries when the season's right, and though that may not be much, it helps me stretch my grocery budget just a little bit further. And that's really just what I know of off the top of my head. If I start looking around, I might find even more!

Does anyone here have experience with foraging? Interested in it at all? Tips and tricks you'd like to share? I'm a little nervous about starting to forage, mostly because I haven't done it before, and any encouragement is appreciated.

Comments

[holyschist]

I've never foraged seriously, but I do nibble on wild things on a regular basis. I'd suggest getting a good guide to the edible plants of your area, preferably one that includes introduced weeds (many of which are edible). By "good" I mean one with a focus on edible plants, clear photos and descriptions, and that is easy for you to use to identify plants. The internet is a good place to find out what kind of stuff is in your area, but not so convenient for making field identifications (although if you can't afford a book, you could take photos and notes and go home and try to ID--I think there's more margin for error there).

This looks like a good site, and it includes Canada, although I haven't looked at the database so I don't know how many plant entries it has: http://www.wildcrafting.net/

I'm always very cautious unless I'm 100% sure of what a plant is. For example, on a backpacking trip once, we collected some little bulbs, some of which were definitely onions. Others were either tasteless or bitter, and since while some death camas is bitter, some isn't, we just didn't eat anything that didn't smell like an onion. Camas is one of those plants that is safest if you observe an area through the flowering season and mark the edible ones.

Some edible plants are not safe to consume in large quantities--fiddleheads (and not all fiddleheads are edible) are one of those.

If you have that much around in the way of fruit, you probably have pretty good options for salad greens as well.

With anything you haven't eaten before, start with eating a small amount to see if you'll react badly or if you might have misidentified (some people suggest a skin test first--I think it depends on how sure you are).