Harvest Time

Plums are falling all over the jogging trails, blackberries are starting to ripen in sunny spots, the elderberries are getting nice blue/purple coloring, and even the figs are ripe enough to pick!  This is a very tough time of year, trying to get out and harvest all the wild edible fruits before the birds, bears, or sun ruin you crop.  I have been watching a dozen fig trees for the last two months, waiting and waiting for the telltale droop of the figs that tells you when they are ready to harvest, and the time is now!

During a morning jog, I just picked a 5 lb bag of figs from along the trails of the American River!  i am sure I will be back soon for more!

Lemon Jelly, sorta....

If you happen to live in the Sacramento area in the late "winter" using "foraging vision" you will have noted the crazy amount of citrus available to pick almost everywhere!  In January, Tracy and the boys and I went to a friends house and loaded up on mandarin oranges, navel oranges, lemons, limes, and kumquats.  Then the experiments started - maybe I will write about some of those later, but write now I wanted to talk about Lemon Jelly.

I was on a roadtrip for work in mid-March with a gentleman from another company who I work closely with often.  Three hour drive each way to a meeting, of course the subject of foraging came up!  One end result of this conversation being, that when I dropped him off at his house, I got to wander into the back yard and pick a large bag full of Meyer Lemons.

Earlier in the year, with piles of lemons, limes, and oranges, I had tried multiple different methods of putting up citrus.  Not to say that the methods and recipes did not work, but what do you do with 20 pint jars of bitter marmalade?  I ended up dumping out all but four jars and figure I will bring it out as more of a novelty item on occasion, it just does not fit with what we eat on a regular basis.  Same with the orangelemon chutney and orange jelly.  One nice thing, I do make alot of blackberry jam in the summers, so I had squeezed a bunch of lemons and froze them in ice cube trays for use during the summer canning season.  But with 2 gallon bags of lemon cubes, I had to think of another use for this large bag of lemons!

So I decided to make Lemon Jelly - easy enough:

8 cups lemon juice
6 cups sugar
lemon peels in jelly bag -

I boiled the juice with the skins in a bag for pectin content,
added the sugar and removed the peels,

I usually put two plates in the freezer to test the sets of jellies or jams, especially when trying something new like this.  I boiled this for two minutes, tested the set on a plate, and though it set well - jarred it, canned it for ten minutes in the pressure canner at 5 psi, and ended up with 10 jars of lemon syrup...

What happened?  I am not quite sure, but I think I jumped too soon on the plate test and I never had a jelly set, that or I had too much heat in the pressure canner and something went wrong. 

So I ended up with jars of light lemon syrup, I thought about recanning to get the set, but then thought, "how often am I actaully going to want to use lemon jelly?"  Lemon syrup on the other hand, came in really handy over the last couple of months for making homemade margaritas!  So in the end, I did have a successful use of foraged lemons!

Walk through the Woods

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of being invited for a walk through a local park with a foraging expert.  Stephen Nix, who also writes the blog Foraging School let a small group through the woods near his house.

Stephen led a very informative talk as we walked through the Hinkle Creek Nature Center and pointed out all the local edible or useful plants.  A particularly good point Stephen had at the beginning of his class was to always utilize the Latin names for the plants as well as the common names in order to avoid any identification confusion.  Of course, until I learn more Latin names this does not do too much good.  The point was well taken when later in the walk there was a discussion revolving around milk thistles and different ways to eat and cook them. The statement was made that you could eat all thistles, shortly followed by someone asking about star thistles.  Star thistles are not in the thistle family and are not edible.  That conversation just highlighted the errors that can occur based upon using common names for plants versus the Latin nomenclature.

Unfortunately, I did not get to listen to Stephen as much as I would have liked.  Tracy and my two boys were with me, and Carter, my two-year-old, is only happy for a short time in the backpack while listening to people talk.  We let him loose and he ran up and down the mile long trail, thoroughly enjoying himself, but either Tracy or I had to give chase and miss portions of the class.

It was definitely an enjoyable walk on a Saturday afternoon.  The kids enjoyed being outdoors, and Tracy and I managed to learn a few new plants to add to our diet.
My favorite was Miner's Lettuce.  I have heard and read about Miner's Lettuce for some time, but I have never been to trusting on book identification of plants, so having someone show me this plant was very useful.  Once identified, it is easy to pick out and I have had several Miner's Lettuce snacks since!

It was a pleasure to meet Stephen and others for the NorCal Foraging Yahoo Group!  We look forward to returning the favor by leading a walk through our local park someday soon!

Persimmon Hunting #2 - Blinded by the Foraging Bounty

Despite a rapidly approaching holiday season with the in-laws coming into town and massive house cleaning underway, I could not back off on my need to forage.  Much to Tracy's dismay, I would continue to go out and come back with a pocket full of acorns, walnuts, or persimmons as mentioned in my last post.  This time I had taken it a little too far, and did not even get to bring anything home!

A couple of days before Christmas I got antsy to get out of the house.  It had been raining all weekend and we had been working on different projects in the house and preparing for the imminent arrival of Tracy's parents.  Looking outside and seeing a break in the weather, I used my boys as an excuse "The kids need some fresh air!" and loaded up my baby and toddler sons into the stroller.  As the sound of the vacuum sends me, my dog, and both my sons into states of full fledged panic, Tracy thought this would be a great opportunity to clean without all the whining (me) and crying(boys).

Of course, she knew what I was up to when I grabbed a couple of our picking bags and threw them under the stroller, "Just in case," I said.

Each season in our neighborhood seems to highlight different fruits or nuts that are available.  In our older, historic district neighborhood, the trees bushes all seem to have a purpose.  Being December, I noticed all the houses that have citrus fruits hanging, which should be ripe in January, and noted them for future reference.  I scouted around several olive trees and looked at the abundance of fruit that is \wasted into yards, but I already had enough olives curing for the year, and have not finished my olive oil press yet (future post!). 

So, the main thing I am looking for on this day is persimmons - I made cookies with the heart shaped persimmons, but I was hoping to find the other kind, the tomato shaped non-astringent variety.  I have seen several around but was looking for some that were either on a vacant lot, public land, or on someone's front lawn where I could knock on the door and ask for permission to pick.  I am still a little new at this, but knocking on someone's door and asking to pick fruit from their backyard is not something that I am willing to do yet.

So, the boys and I are about five blocks from home, wandering down a promising looking alley when a gust of wind whips up the alley blowing leaves and branches everywhere.  Immediately after the gust, it started raining.  Not a casual sprinkle as it had been doing earlier that day, but buckets of water dumping from the sky, and I was outside with two young children without any rain gear.  I pushed the stroller next to a garage building on the leeward side of the alley way and took my coat off to cover up the baby - he thought this was funny the whole time and played with the zipper on my coat while his dad got soaked.  But my two year-old was as exposed as I was and was shortly soaked as well - it did not help that the rain was going sideways and crosswise as the wind kept whipping down this little alley.  Throw in some pellet size hail pelting us as we crouched beside this garage and we must have looked quite the sight if anyone could have seen us!

Once the hail turned back into buckets of rain, I decided that we needed to move.  I was soaked, my toddler was soaked, and the baby was starting to get wet.  We pushed up the creek (yes, creek - the dry alley had turned into a 6" deep creek from the rains) past several houses until we found one with carport opening onto the alley and took shelter inside.  I figure I will go back someday soon and thank the owner of the carport as it provided excellent shelter for dumb dads who try to stroller their kids through a rainstorm, and if we are knocking on the door to give thanks for the shelter, we might as well ask if they want all the oranges off of the tree in their backyard.

Now we had shelter, but we were all pretty wet, my two year-old was definitely too cold, and I did not feel toasty warm myself.  We waited a few minutes till it looked like the rain was lessening, then we decided we were going to make a break for it to get home - five blocks through the rain pushing a stroller.  I figured that if I ran fast enough, everybody would be soaked but we would be home quickly to get dry.  We pushed out of the alley/creek at full speed, careening around the 90 degree turn onto the sidewalk, and then came to a stop. 

Pulling up in front of us was Mom!  Tracy was at the house when the rain and hail starting dumping out of the sky, and realized that I was outside with both kids wearing light fleece coats.  She jumped into the car to go find us.  We loaded up both the boys and headed for home, already laughing about our adventure.

How did I miss the huge black clouds bearing down on my little family?  I had my foraging blinders on, all I could see were oranges, olives, and persimmons, and missed the little things like thunder and clouds that should have warned me in time.  But honestly, I cannot say it will be any different next time.

Persimmon Hunting

As the leaves have fallen, the abundant harvest season is coming to a close, but in multiple trees around my neighborhood I noticed a bright orange fruit left dangling from tree branches even after all the trees leaves moved on.  I had no clue what kind of tree these were, but with a little research I figured out that I was looking at persimmons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persimmon

I immediately wanted to knock on doors and gather in the persimmon harvest, but my wife was adamant that I finish the large variety of non-quite complete projects that were cluttering up the pantry. 

A week later I had some things complete when my brother stopped by.  We took the two boys out for a jaunt through the neighborhood to get hot chocolate and coffee, and among other things I mentioned my persimmon obsession.  It was too early to knock on doors to ask permission to pick any, but my brother and I surveyed the abundant supply through the neighborhood. 

Persistence is the key!  Around the corner we found a persimmon tree in a mortgage company parking lot.  It was fairly small, about 10' tall, with about 50 persimmons hanging off the otherwise bare branches.  Across the alleyway we could see a 50' persimmon tree in someone's backyard with tons of fruit hanging from the branches, so we assumed that at some point this small tree had been seeded from that larger tree.  Either way, we knocked on the door to the business, but no one was there.  These were the bell shaped persimmons, versus the pumpkin shaped persimmons we saw in other areas.  As fruit was falling to the ground and rotting, we decided to help out their landscapers and collected a couple of the persimmons from the lower branches. 

The taste was interesting - very sweet and tangy, but immediately followed by the dry mouth astringent  taste.  Almost like an aftertaste, but it makes your mouth pucker up.  Definitely not good for eating in the raw form!

So what to do with persimmons that you cannot eat raw?  I had to turn to the internet and found several recipes for persimmon bread, persimmon pudding, and persimmon pie, but I settled on making persimmon cookies.  You can never have too many cookies around over the holidays!

Persimmon Cookie Recipe

How I Ended Up Inventing Apple Stuff

There I was, a couple hours away from my fated rendevous at my brother's house for dinner, and my beautiful wife and I just realized we had nothing to bring with us.  You always have to bring something with you when you go to someones house for dinner!

Well, important dinner engagements or not, two year-old boys will be two year-old boys, and we knew we had to let our son run for a bit, or he would not get tired, then he would not take a nap, and then for all I know the world could end in a big fireball of cranky toddlers.  My son is very easy going and enjoys all the crazy adventures that his dad takes him on, but he does have alot of energy (I do not know where he gets it I say as I write this blog in the early morning hours).  Since it was a weekend, we stopped at a local school, actually my old elementary school, to let him play on the playground. 

As we let him run free across toys too dangerous for a toddler, my wife and I looked around.  She asked if it was the same as when I went there, and I remembered the apple tree that had some branches that hung over onto the school grounds from an adjacent property.  Lost in memory of foraging adventures as a 5-10 year-old, I said "There used to be an apple tree right there."  My wife replied, "You mean the one with the apples on it?" 

A minute later I was showing my son how dangerous climbing was from high up in the apple tree, shaking and picking a dozen late winter apples from the higher branches.  My son joined right in, gathering all the apples as they fell and taste testing the fruit for quality assurance.  But more importantly, now I had an idea of something for my dinner.  My wife's family is famous for their invention of the classic dessert called "Peach Stuff", which involves dumping a can of peaches in a pan, sprinkling yellow cake mix over the top, pouring a half stick of melted butter on top, and baking for 20 minutes.

So I took the apples home, and extrapolating on the earlier inventive success of my in-laws, invented "Apple Stuff" - kinda a cobbler, but a little different and easy to make!

Apple Stuff Recipe: 

8 apples, cored and sliced
3 cups sugar
2 cups flour
2 cups water
1 cube butter

Add apples, one cup sugar, and water to pot, bring to boil until the apples release their juices
Mix 2 cups flour and 2 cups sugar together
Melt butter and mix with flour and sugar, should be crumbly
Place apple mix in a pan.
Sprinkle flour/sugar mix over apples
Cook for 20-30 min at 350 degrees or until batter is crispy on top.  The apples should be fairly runny still, but the dish highlights the taste of the apples with the crumble on top more as a added filler.
The best was using the wild apples.  The apples are not the perfectly shaped, devoid of taste as with apples you can find in any grocery store.  They have many imperfections, several had worm holes and some had been pecked by birds (I either threw these out for other foraging beasts, or if it was minor just cut around those areas), but all that just means that nature likes them and that no pesticides were sprayed on the tree. The main thing is the taste!  Apples are meant to have alot of taste, and the shelf-ripened apples you buy in a store are seriously lacking compared to what is produced by a tree that had to struggle through the summer to make its fruit. 

And to close the story, the Apple Stuff was baked in time for dinner and well received by all!

Apple Stuff Recipe

Matsutake (Tanoak Mushrooms) for the Thanksgiving Gravy

I first remember picking Tanoak mushrooms (Matsutake's for those not from the northern California coastal area) when I was around five years old.  Picking mushrooms is one of those childhood memories of the fun and excitement that now as an adult, I wish to pass on to my children.  If you read too much of the news, it is inherently scary and risky, but I knew how to identify the correct mushrooms when I was five, so it cannot be that hard right?

I took my wife and two young kids this year to pick Tanoak mushrooms for the first time on Thanksgiving day - my sons are two and six months, so I had the two-year-old in a backpack and my wife had our baby in a bjorn.  We were joined by my older brother with his three kids (6,11, and 13) and my old man (Pops to the McKnight family).  We went to our favorite patch of tanoak trees and started wandering up the hills looking for the elusive mushrooms. 

Back in the old days, around 1990, you could go out and pick garbage bags full of mushrooms and it seemed like there were as many as you wanted.  My family has gone out picking tanoak mushrooms for generations, but then in the mid-90's we had buyers come into town.  It seemed that the local tanoak mushroom was the same as the Matsutake craved by the people of Japan for some reason, but more importantly at the time, they were paying big money for good mushrooms!  Being one of the few families in the area that had always been harvesting mushrooms, usually for our Thanksgiving gravy and always for personal consumption, we had an immediate benefit of being able to find and sell mushrooms for what seemed to be astronomical prices.  It was great as a 12 year-old kid to go out for a short afternoon jaunt with my parents and sell what I collected for several hundred dollars.  Even better, they mainly wanted buttons and paid little for the big steaklike tanoaks, so we always took those home for a fry after picking.  Everything tastes better when you have loads of cash in your pocket!  Of course, eventually the "professional" pickers found almost every patch of tanoak mushrooms, and raked the leaves from the top to the bottom of each hill, ruining future crops to the point we are at now.

Where are we at now?  Instead of walking the hillside and gathering a sack full of tanoak mushrooms in an hour, we hiked back and forth and up and down a hillside for several hours to get 2-3 mushrooms each.  Amazingly, my two year-old was still excited every time I stopped to check if the mushroom poking out of the dirt was one of our elusive matsutakes.  Like my father before me, I tried my best to teach him the difference between the good mushrooms and the numerous non-good mushrooms.  He won't remember all of it this year, or maybe even next year, but I hope that when he is five he will be able to easily identify the correct mushrooms as I was.  We also practice the techniques as Pops taught me - knock the top of the mushroom to knock any potential spores on the ground after you pick, push the leaves back over the ground when you pick, and do not take the little baby buttons, let them grow.  Little things, but little things that we know from family history over successive generations in the same area that will ensure a better harvest in years to come. 

Slowly but surely, the Tanoak mushroom is coming back into our family tanoak patch.  Hopefully, with no huge spike in Matsutake prices, our little forest will be allowed to recover and I can show my sons a good mushroom harvest, and give them the memories to pass on to another generation.