I went to a free class on fall foraging last night. Here are the notes from it.
The class was taught by Amy Crowell; she runs the
Wild Edible Texas website and has a business,
Edible Yards. She does foraging walk classes occasionally as well; I hope to be able to go on one of those with her.
She recommended the book
Edible and Useful Plants of Texas and the Southwest: A Practical Guide; she also recommended anything by Samuel Thayer, but books about foraging generally will only have a small section that applies to Texas.
Foraging tips:
-Be sure it's legal and you have permission to harvest from the site.
-Take only what you need.
-When gathering flowers and fruit, leave enough for reproduction the following year.
-If collecting perennials, cut the top and leave the roots.
-When harvesting roots or tubers, you do kill the plant so harvest sparingly.
-Wear long pants, carry harvesting bags or baskets, and bring along all the tools you'll need (edible wild plant guide, pruners, scissors, gloves, shovel/trowel, etc.).
-Be sure you know what you are harvesting and what parts of the plant are edible!
She said the best places for foraging were edge spaces- meaning, basically, where the land changes from one thing to another- you'll find the most diversity there. River's edges, along fences, even the edges of parking lots. Be careful not to forage too close to parking lots because of exhaust and oil runoff. She mentioned finding a whole lot of forage right at the entrance to the Green Belt. She suggested looking for places that looked neglected and overgrown, because those sorts of places will be less likely to have been sprayed with herbicides or pesticides; be wary of areas that looked too manicured for this reason. It was also mentioned that uphill tends to be better, since this will be less affected by runoff. The taste of plants will vary depending on soil quality, how much moisture they get, and all sorts of other things. If you're not familiar with what the fruits of a plant look like, the easiest way to tell if they are ripe is if they come off the plant easily when you pull on it.
She brought in several plants that she pulled up from her yard or nearby and encouraged us to pull off a leaf and eat it. Among the things she passed around:
Lamb's quarter or wild spinach or pigweed: edible leaves. Good in salad. Tasted... I dunno, leafy.
Amaranth, also called pigweed: Apparently several plants are referred to as 'pigweed'. Anyway, this one also has leafy-tasting leaves. Stems are sometimes purple. It also has edible seeds, but they're so small and harvesting them is a pain in the ass so it's easier to just buy those at Whole Foods.
Wood sorrel or oxalis: It looks a little bit like clover, but has heart-shaped leaves. The leaves have a distinctly tangy flavor. All parts of this plant are edible. They have oxalic acid (probably explains the name), which is part of what gives them their flavor. If you eat vast quantities of it and have poor kidney function it could be bad for you, but it's mostly safe (spinach has more oxalic acid in it).
Purselane: a succulent creeper, the stems and leaves are not only edible but are very high in omega-3 fatty acids according to one of the other participants who works at East Side Cafe and cooks with these. I don't specifically remember what this tasted like but it did have a pleasant flavor; Wikipedia says it's salty and a little sour.
Prairie tea or Croton: dry, fuzzy leaves that are used more as an aromatic, like sage, for flavoring rather than just eating straight. She also makes pesto with it.
Turk's cap: the leaves, flowers, and berries are edible. The leaves are dry and are better cooked; she uses them like grape leaves for things like dolmas.
Mexican plum: She didn't have any ripe ones to try, but passed around a branch that had pale yellow unripe ones. When ripe they're a deep reddish-purple and are more tart than sweet usually.
Prickly pear: She made prickly-pear margaritas which were delicious. These require some preparation because they have tiny hair-like spines that are definitely not good eats. She just uses a paring knife and cuts the skin away; several people mentioned that you can burn them off over a gas stove or even with a lighter in no time. They have lots of seeds in them; these can be ground into a flour. Fiesta sells green ones that are really sweet; the reddish-purple ones you see around here tend to be tart. The flowers of this cactus and even the pads (especially the young ones that have the green things on them that haven't yet turned into spines) are edible. The fruit are called
tuna in Spanish, which confused me last night because no one explained that when they occasionally referred to it as such.
Day flower or widow's tear, and
Spiderwort: this one's more for eating in the spring, but you'll see them all year. The leaves and flowers are edible. She had one, but it was pretty beat-up and didn't have many leaves, so I didn't try it.
Pecan: the best way to tell that they're ripe is when they fall off the tree. She'd made a pecan pie for us. Yum!
Other plants she talked about but didn't bring samples of:
Hackberry: the berries are mostly inedible hard seeds, so it takes a lot- but hackberries are all over the place and produce a lot of fruit. She made a sauce out of them that her husband said tasted like sweet tea.
Mesquite beans: they are a good source of protein. Cook them first (pods and all) and then grind them up into flour.
Acorns: Same as the mesquite beans- they make good flour. They have a lot of bitter tannins in them, so boil them and keep changing out the water until it no longer turns brown to get rid of those.
Morel: There are morels in the Hill Country! She is not a big fan of mushrooms, so she doesn't know much about them. Someone in the class recommended
Texas Mushrooms: A Field Guide.
Mustang grapes: the green ones taste like rhubarb when cooked, and when young have soft seeds that don't need to be removed. When they get older, they turn purple- the seeds become hard, and they become so acidic that they will burn your fingers and lips. But the green ones make a tasty pie- one of her favorites.
Mountain grapes: they're sweeter and tastier, if you can find them; they're a lot smaller than mustang grapes.
She also mentioned henbit, Texas persimmon, chile pequin, and wild onions and garlic on the hand-out, but we didn't talk about those.
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