I look forward to persimmon season every year. It fills me with joy, greed, and FOMO. You understand joy, right? These fruits are small, orange-brown balls of squishy, sweet deliciousness. There’s nothing like ’em and they make me very happy. Downright joyful. Greed is easy, too. No one, anywhere, ever, has foraged “enough persimmons.” FOMO is a tricky thing when…
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Oh how I wish Mike Krebill had been my scout leader! No offense to my mother, who is a lovely woman and was a great troop leader, but when I think about what I could have learned in Mike’s troop…well, I envy his scouts. I met Mike years ago at the Midwest Wild Harvest Festival and was immediately impressed not…
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For a tender green, chickweed is a pretty tough plant. It’s one of the earliest greens to appear in spring and if you live in a snow free climate, you may find it survives a few frosts and freezes. Chickweed doesn’t much like the heat, though. By midsummer it has dispersed its seeds and gone dormant. Those seeds germinate in…
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Acorns are a benchmark wild edible for the serious forager. They’re an excellent source of starch and fat, and a versatile, delicious wild food. There’s no denying that processing acorns takes work, and I used to wonder if it was worth the trouble. It sounded complicated and I was afraid I’d do it wrong. By breaking the process down into…
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Hot leaching is a quick way to remove the tannins from your shelled acorns. However, since hot leaching acorns cooks the starch in the nuts, they’ll require an extra binder to hold together in baked goods. If you’re making acorn flour for baking, cold leaching is a better choice. But hot-leached acorns are still useful! My favorite way to use…
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