Foraging for Ginkgo Nuts

Foraging for ginkgoes is a stinky business. You've seen ginkgo trees - they have those lovely green fan-shaped leaves. But you might not have seen their fruit, mainly because most landscapers choose to plant the male trees (which have no fruit and don't smell) as opposed to the female trees (which have the smelly fruits).

You will likely smell the fruiting ginkgoes before you see them. They grow all over the Quad at the University of Alabama, where my foraging venture this month has taken place. To forage for ginkgoes, you should first put on latex gloves. The nuts are encased in the pulpy fruits, which can give you an allergic reaction (a skin rash kind of like you would get from poison ivy). So practice safety! Look for the fallen ginkgo fruits on the ground around the tree, and disregard any fruits that have large holes or tears. They should be slightly wrinkly in texture.

Push the seed, or nut (technically a drupe) out of the pulp, and place it into a bag. Rather than leaving a mass of smelly, nut-less pulps on the ground, I tend to put the discarded pulps in a second bag - you can throw it out or, ideally, compost it.

Once you have collected enough nuts, wash off all of the remaining pulp (you can also discard the gloves at this point). Wash thoroughly.

You must roast the nuts - ginkgo nuts are not edible raw. Leda Meredith and Wildman Steve Brill recommend roasting at 300 degrees for 30 minutes, but I recommend longer, about 45 minutes. I should caution you that your entire home will smell like cheese.

When you finish roasting the nuts, they look a little like pistachios (but that's not how they taste). You will open them similar to the way you open pistachios, however - except that there's one extra step.

Once you've cracked open the shell, the nut will still have a thin peel - similar to a roasted peanut. It's edible, but I tend to take them off.

Ginkgo nuts have an interesting taste. My foraging companion and I decided they taste like something between an almond and swiss cheese. The texture is also between these two things - though closer to swiss cheese. They are extremely healthy. Ginkgoes are very low in fat and can lower cholesterol. They've been shown to promote higher brain function and help prevent memory loss. They're rich in antioxidants. However, health professionals warn that children should not eat more than 5 nuts a day, and 10 for adults (some say 8) to avoid "ginkgo poisoning" (an upset stomach in most cases), though I will say I ate about 15 and felt fine. I ate these 15 before reading about ginkgo poisoning, however, so that's my excuse.

Happy foraging!

We can eat dandelions, but do they taste good?

Not really.

That is, not by themselves, pulled fresh out of the ground.  The greens have a bitter taste that I personally like, but I imagine most people won't. If pulling dandelions up from the ground and eating them is your first taste of wild edible foraging, you will probably be disappointed.

Now that being said, once you add dandelion greens to a salad, they enrich and embolden the flavor.

Fresh dandelion greens on top of leftover corn, tomato and eggplant salad

I tried picking some dandelion greens, washing them, and adding them to my leftovers of a flavorful vegetable salad (prepared by dear friends Andrew and Yelani), and the mix of the bitter greens with the sweetness of the corn and tomatoes was a perfect pairing.

Harvesting dandelions has so many benefits. They're weeds, so you're not harming a species by yanking a few of them out of the ground. They're a forager's dream in that you can use multiple parts of the plant. And they're extremely healthy.

The younger leaves are less bitter and can be added raw to salads and sandwiches (wash them first!).

Unopened flower buds can be fried or boiled.

You can make wine out of the flower petals.

You can blanch the leaves for cooking (just add a little olive oil).

You can make tea from the leaves, roots, and flower petals (don't use the whole flower head).

You can make dandelion coffee out of the taproot of the plant.

For more on making tea and coffee from dandelions (and preserving any leftovers), the Forager's Harvest blog has a very helpful entry.

The health benefits: dandelions have lots of vitamin A, calcium, and potassium. They can help with weight loss, improving memory, and PMS (in tea form). Dandelion is also a diuretic. For more on the nutrition and health benefits of this miracle weed, check out the Edible Wild Food blog.

For now, I'm going to stick with eating the greens. Something to bear in mind: pick dandelion greens right before you're planning to use them, if you're eating them raw. They will begin to wilt in your hand within seconds after picking them, so it's not the kind of plant you want to pick early on your foraging walks.

Foraging and Delayed Gratification

One of the frustrating things about foraging: most foraged plants are seasonal. Granted, this means that you can find some edible plants at any time of the year to harvest, but it also means that the edible plants you want to eat may not be ready for a while.

I have seen several lush fig trees with small green figs blooming on street corners throughout uptown - but they are ripening slowly. Today I spotted some furry green pecans growing in the university area... these won't be ready until fall.

I've also seen canna growing all over the city (mostly in private yards, but in some public spaces too). The beautiful red canna flowers may be blooming now, but foragers typically harvest the young rhizomes (horizontal roots), not the flowers - and these shouldn't really be harvested until the fall.

Canna growing along the street in the Riverbend area

Finally, to my surprise, I saw a ginkgo tree - according to the USDA site, these don't even grow here! In the fall, when the fruits fall to the ground, you can remove the seeds from the squishy fruit (with gloves), wash them, bake them, shell them, and fry or boil the nuts. Very healthy and delicious.

But for now, I have to wait.

Ginkgo in the Black Pearl

The Eat the Weeds blog has some helpful information for harvesting and enjoying ginkgo, if you're so inclined.

New Orleans' volatile weather adds another challenge to a by-the-book forager: many things ripen before or after they're supposed to according to nature guides or other informational sources.

I've noticed that some trees are already sprouting bunches of large bananas, while some are just beginning to flower. Kumquats are supposed to ripen in colder weather, but I've seen them growing all over uptown.

My personal strategy is just to track the things I want. You can find maps online of different cities and the location of various edible plants - for example, this one from Atlanta shows where you can find different fruits on a map of the city, and it wisely cautions foragers not to trespass. As you locate accessible wild edible plants, you can track them in this manner - and you won't forget where you saw a plant you're hoping to harvest.

Happy foraging!

Bamboo, Oyster Mushroom, and Fish Stir Fry Recipe

Harvest of Oyster Mushrooms by Rudi Ardiansyah

Gilled underside of my oyster mushrooms

Bamboo and oyster mushrooms grow all over the place in New Orleans, and the rain we're currently seeing means it's a great time to "mushroom hunt" (I recommend the trees along the river) and to look for new, tender bamboo shoots.

I talked a bit about the health benefits of bamboo in my last blog, so I will focus more on oyster mushrooms here and then give a yummy stir-fry recipe at the end.

The first thing you should know (and that I learned): mushroom hunting is dangerous - if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. Some species are deadly, and others aren't deadly but will still make you very sick.

I know what oyster mushrooms look like because I have had a friend I trust with the knowledge point them out to me on multiple occasions, and I have seen him cut them off a tree, prepare them, and cook them, and I've eaten them with no dangerous results. Whole Foods also sells oyster mushrooms. Don't rely on photographs alone - either harvest them with someone whose knowledge you trust, or buy some and get familiar with the texture and varying sizes.

In Backyard Foraging, Ellen Zachos advises novice foragers to avoid mushrooms with gills (instead focusing on pored and toothed mushrooms. Deadly mushrooms tend to have gills. Unfortunately for beginners, oyster mushrooms also have gills.

The Recipe

These mushrooms are delicious and meaty. When I harvested some, along with the bamboo shoots, my partner and I decided to make a stir-fry. Here is our recipe (for 2 people):

Two small to medium size white fish fillets (we used tilapia)
Some bamboo shoots, boiled for 15 minutes and peeled with pointy ends cut off (I had about a half cup; anywhere from 1/3 cup to a cup is fine)
Some oyster mushrooms (we had about a cup)
Half an onion, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
Pinch of ginger powder (or 1/4 tsp minced or grated ginger)
Pinch of salt
1/4 ground black pepper
Garnish: black sesame seeds and scallions

Stir fry the mushrooms, bamboo shoots, onions and garlic in some olive oil, adding a dash of either minced ginger or ginger powder (which is what we used), salt, and fresh ground pepper. (You can adjust the seasoning measurements according to your taste preferences.)

Lightly sauté the fish filets in olive oil in a separate pan; then slice and briefly toss with the other ingredients.

Serve garnished with black sesame seeds and chopped scallions (if you have them).

Enjoy a healthy, nutritious and tasty meal.

Harvesting and cooking bamboo

Bamboo shoots ready for harvesting. Photo by Leonora Enking

One of the books I came across when I first started reading about foraging was Ellen Zachos's Backyard Foraging. While Samuel Thayer's book focuses on venturing out into the woods or swamp to forage, Zachos's focuses more on plants you likely already have for ornamental purposes.

Zachos lists bamboo as one of these edible plants. Foragers should harvest the young shoots (which look a little like asparagus), about 6-12 inches tall.

In New Orleans, bamboo grows all over the place - in front and backyards of uptown homes, along the canals in Gentilly and the Lower Ninth Ward, in storefront displays and along the river. I came across a grove in public domain uptown and harvested a couple shoots to sample the flavor.

Don't eat the shoots raw. Zachos cautions that "some species contain a toxic cyanogenic glycoside called taxiphyllin" (31), which foragers can remove by boiling the shoots.

To prepare: cut off the tips of the shoots, slice gently through the outer skin (just the surface), and boil the shoots until tender. Remove the shoots and cool. Peel the layers and slice the core.

After this process, I tried stir-frying the shoots with a little butter and salt. They were yummy! When I harvest more, I will try mixing them with honey-garlic chicken and cashews. You can also add the shoots to salads, rice, or whatever suits your fancy.

Bamboo is very nutritious. It is high in fiber and rich in protein. Various studies have revealed other medicinal and health benefits: bamboo can help prevent cancer, aid in weight loss and improved digestion, and treat hypertension, hyperlipemia, and hyperglycemia.

As an added foraging benefit, bamboo is considered an invasive species, so you don't have to feel guilty about harvesting the shoots. It will keep spreading.

I'm Never Buying Tea Again...

After my experiment with the tea from loquat leaves, I decided to try a few other recommended brews.

In the Garden District yesterday I came across a couple mulberry trees. Mulberries look like slightly elongated blackberries, and they taste delectable - almost like a sweeter version of a blackberry. The trees can grow pretty tall, though, and my friend Elizabeth and I could only reach one or two of the ripe fruits (which we ate).

Instead, I took some of the leaves home, washed and dried them, and brewed a tea. The dried leaves are very crumbly and easy to pulverize. My partner and I tried it last night and found it similar to green tea in taste.

The health benefits of mulberry leaves and tea are numerous, even more so than loquat leaves. According to http://www.mulberrytea.org/, the leaves have 10 times as much iron as spinach and 25 times more calcium than milk. They are rich in fiber, antioxidants, potassium, vitamins A, B, and C, and other nutrients.

Mulberry tea can help with weight loss. It reduces unhealthy cholesterol, balances blood sugar, and can help fight cold symptoms. And it tastes delicious.

(Interesting bit of trivia: mulberry leaves are the sole fruit of silk worms.)

During my walks around uptown and the Garden District, I've found a lot of fig trees (on public property). The figs aren't quite ripe enough for harvesting, but you can eat the leaves and use them to make a wonderful tea - one that tastes a little fruitier than other herbal teas.

Some health benefits of fig leaf tea include treating bronchitis and diabetes, lowering blood pressure, and beautifying the skin. You can learn more on the natural health sites here or here.

Figs are starting to grow on this tree in the Uptown/Riverbend area of New Orleans.

Mulberry and fig tea or capsules cost $6 and up at the grocery or natural food stores. Why not forage for free?

The Amazing Loquat Tree

I first noticed loquats (also known as Japanese plums) when I was walking from my car to Jazz Fest this year. There is a large loquat tree at the corner of Esplanade and Crete in Mid City. I saw the small pale orange fruits on the ground and wondered if they were kumquats. I looked up and saw the large tree with its glossy dark leaves - not a kumquat tree.

A few days later, I saw one just off of Maple Street. I stepped on one of the fallen fruits with my shoe and a couple large, slimy seeds popped out. I saw a man tending his yard and asked if he knew what kind of tree it was; he said it was a Japanese plum.

These trees grow all over New Orleans. I see them along the River Road (Leake), but also all over the Uptown, Garden District, and Mid-City neighborhoods. They have some low-hanging fruit, though much of it is too high for me to reach.

After reading a little about loquats, I plucked one from a tree and tried it, first peeling off the skin since I hadn't washed it (you should always wash your fruit!). It tasted like something between a peach and an apple, with a little citrus thrown in.

That next weekend my friend Patrick and I picked some loquats as well as some wild blackberries, and we made a fruit cobbler - which turned out delicious (and very pretty!). I will provide the recipe at the end of this post.

When reading about loquats, I discovered that they are very nutritious, and that the leaves also have medicinal properties. The fruit is rich in Vitamin A, fiber, and potassium, among other nutrients. The leaves can be used in a tea that can beautify skin, treat a sore throat, combat diabetes, and release antioxidants.

Recently, I dried some loquat leaves (used my dehydrator to expedite the process), and my partner and I made tea. It was delicious and soothing.

To put this into perspective: you can order loquat leaves for over $40 per pound, or you can pick them for free.

Recipes:

Dried loquat leaves and crumbled leaves for "tea."

Loquat tea:

1) Pick several leaves and wash them thoroughly.
2) Dry them.
3) Crumble the dried leaves and put a pinch in a teacup (maybe a teaspoon's worth).
4) Pour boiling water over the leaves and steep until the leaves sink.

Loquat and blackberry cobbler:
*The size of the pan really depends on how much fruit you get. For a 9x13 pan, you should have about 3-4 cups of fruit. I like to use half loquats and half blackberries, but it's fine if you get more of one than the other. If you have less than 3 cups, adjust the pan and lessen the other ingredients.

Ingredients:
Loquats and blackberries*
1 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup of milk (I use 1%)


1) Half, peel, and de-seed loquats. Mix with blackberries and sugar.
2) Melt butter in pan.
3) Mix other ingredients and pour into pan.
4) Pour fruit/sugar mixture into pan.
5) Bake at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes (check after 30 - cobbler is ready when the batter has risen and started to brown).

Serve warm - maybe add a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Enjoy!

Getting Started: Learning from Samuel Thayer

As I mentioned in my last post, I became very "foraging-curious" after reading Into the Forest.

My curiosity at this stage was limited to talking to my boyfriend about how cool it would be to know which plants were edible and which weren't. Then, for my birthday, he gave me Samuel Thayer's book The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants. I couldn't put this book down for the next couple of weeks. Here are a few things I learned:

1) When people use the term "foraging," they can mean any number of things.

Thayer uses this term to mean going into the wild and harvesting edible plants you would not, in most cases, find in the grocery store. We're not talking about rosemary growing along the sidewalk or blackberries growing along the river... we're talking about putting on waders to stomp around in the swamp for arrowhead rhizomes.

Other definitions of foraging might include simply finding free food (there is a dumpster-diving community, believe it or not... but it's not for me), or locating falling fruit in an urban landscape --knowing where banana trees or lemon trees are growing in a public space, for example.

2) Identifying plants is tough! 

Some plants we identify naturally - most people, for example, can identify an oak, a pine tree, bamboo, or dandelions. But I'm not sure I'd be able to identify a pin cherry tree from among a line-up of other trees with red berries, even if it was bearing fruit.

I devoted a lot of time and research (both reading and walking around looking at plants) to the practice of identifying plants. This is an ongoing process.

I find field guides to be useful (for example, Edible Wild Plants - Peterson Field Guides), but even more useful was visiting the University of Alabama Arboretum in Tuscaloosa, where many plants and trees are labeled. I couldn't forage there, obviously, but it helped me learn the "tells" of certain plants and trees.

I also have a lot of terminology to learn in order to identify plants. Thayer provides a helpful glossary at the end of his book, providing illustrations and definitions for terms like "lenticels," "umbels," and "corm."

3) Harvesting wild plants can be as difficult as growing and tending your own garden.

Now, that's not universally the case. Some plants, like dandelion greens, are easy to identify and to harvest. But some are so challenging that for me, it's not yet worth it.

My friend Patrick was very excited when I told him that according to Thayer, wild rice grows all over the country in rivers and lakes. For a while he was eager to identify wild rice and try to harvest it (bear in mind, it retails for about $8 for a small bag). I then told him that according to Thayer, we needed a canoe to harvest it. We checked several different foraging websites, and the canoe seemed pretty essential to the process.

But the canoe was just the beginning. The rice season is usually less than 2 weeks on a particular body of water. That means you don't just have to have the canoe - you have to use it at the right time. You have to have "ricing equipment" - which includes "a canoe, a paddle, a pole, a pair of knocking sticks, a tarp, and gunnysacks" (128).

But let's just say you have all of this equipment, you harvest at the perfect time, and you knock a bunch of rice into your canoe and onto your tarp. Then you have to "finish" the rice, which means drying it to "make the chaff brittle," then rubbing and winnowing it, which seems like an incredibly tedious process. Then, of course, you have to cook the rice or store it.

Even for foods less difficult than wild rice, harvesting can be a challenge. You might have found a grapefruit tree, but do you know when, or if, it will bear fruit? New Orleans is rife with loquat trees, and the loquats are ripe now - but I can't reach 95% of them! Thankfully I can reach the leaves, which make a delicious tea.

You have to learn the seasons, which vary according to region, and it helps to have the right equipment. Thayer's book seems geared more toward the midwest and Pacific northwest. I have to adapt for the southeast.

4) There are varying levels of commitment in the foraging community. 

How many people have a canoe? Thayer mentioned the canoe as though the reader would have one tethered in a pond behind her house. He also mentions other foraging tools of the trade -- a large shovel, trowel, and digging stick, containers, a berry hook, jelly bags, strainers, a food mill, a flour mill, nut picks, canning jars... you get the idea.

If foraging is an RPG, I have very little equipment and very few experience points. I imagine I'll accumulate more equipment as I accumulate more experience.

I have gone ahead and invested in a food dehydrator, which is the coolest appliance ever (and it's inexpensive and very easy to use). It helps me get foraged foods ready for storage and foraged leaves ready for making teas. Plus, I've also discovered that dehydrated prosciutto, mango, and bananas are all delicious.

5) There are unspoken "rules" of the foraging community.

Some of these concern safety, others the environment, and still others legality. More on these rules in a later post. I will go ahead and share the first and most important rule, however: to quote Thayer, "never eat any part of a plant unless you are 100% positive of the plant's identification, and certain that the part you intend to eat is edible in the condition in which you have harvested and prepared it" (23).

6) Do your research before attempting any adventurous foraging.

Thayer states (in bolded font): "if you need to use a book to identify a plant, you are not ready to eat it" (27). I'm comfortable with a handful of plants mentioned in his book, but for most of them, I have a lot of learning ahead of me.

For now, I'll continue taking exploratory walks, reading field guides and books on foraging, skimming foraging blogs, consulting the USDA and Geological websites to identify which plants grow in my region, and harvesting only those plants with which I'm already familiar.

Happy foraging!

Starting with what I recognize... like dandelions

"Foraging-Curious"

I recently became fascinated (my friends would say "obsessed") with foraging after reading Jean Hegland's novel Into the Forest this past spring. In this novel, modern civilization has gradually shut down, and two teenage sisters cope with this shutdown in their home 20 miles from civilization, in the forests of Northern California.

One of the major turning points in this novel occurs when the younger sister starts using a book on plants to identify the edible and medicinal plants which pervade their surroundings, unveiling an endless supply of food, tea, and homeopathic medicine.

The survivalist aspect of contemporary foraging is perhaps its primary appeal to me. I binge-watch shows like Survivorman and Dual Survival not because I'm especially outdoorsy, but because I wish I were. I admire people who can grow their own food, hike the Appalachian trail, build fires without matches, and identify what plants are edible and what plants are poisonous.

My primary interest in foraging is just the knowledge base - I want to be able to identify edible plants, to know when and how to harvest them, to know how to prepare them, and to know their other benefits (medicinal, nutritional).

Foraging also appeals to me for both dietary and economic reasons. I spend $4.99 on organic blackberries, but they grow everywhere along the river in New Orleans, where I spend my summer. I spend roughly $6-$8 buying a box of tea, but I can make tea from the leaves of loquat trees, blackberry bushes, fig trees, and many other plants for free.

Many foraged foods have excellent health and nutritional benefits. In a recent article in The Atlantic , James Hamblin describes how researchers have compared the most popular diets (low-carb, paleo, Mediterranean, etc.) to determine which is the healthiest, and concluded that "real food" is healthiest. Hamblin cites Dr. David Katz: "If you eat food direct from nature... you don't even need to think about this. You don't have to worry about trans fat or saturated fat or salt - most of our salt comes from processed food, not the salt shaker. if you focus on real food, nutrients tend to take care of themselves."

Looking into some of the most available wild plants in my immediate neighborhood (loquats, dandelions, blackberries, plantains, rosemary, bamboo), I found that they have a wealth of nutritional and medicinal benefits - everything from beautifying skin to helping digestion to preventing cancer. Most are rich in vitamins and minerals as well as antioxidants. The list of benefits just goes on from there.

I live and work in Tuscaloosa, AL, yet I spend the summer with my partner in New Orleans, and I make frequent visits to Atlanta, so I plan to explore the edible plant life in all three of these cities.

I am learning about foraging from scratch, so what may be obvious to many people (or the equivalent of picking rosemary in your backyard to experienced foragers) is often very exciting for me. Actually, picking rosemary from my backyard is exciting to me.

Happy foraging!

Blackberries at the Fly. They were gone two weeks later.