Foraging the Gulf

Sensing some of my corona captives had finally gotten bored enough to take me up on some outdoor adventures, I pitch the idea of renting bikes and foraging the forested areas around the beach. I had planned ahead the day before by preparing love-lacking meals not apt to inspire confidence in our next few weeks of quarantine dining. With the bait of take out of their choice if they come with me. I get my 16 year old to agree to a bike ride and forage.

Incredibly, she even lets me use her backpack.

Foraging for wild edibles isn't something I know much about so please don't take any of this post as expert advice on what wild foods to collect and how to prepare them. I had looked forward to the renowned Southeast forager Darryl Patton coming to teach my students and I about local foraging but it doesn't look like we will be able to meet him this year. Eager to start learning, I grabbed a few books on the subject and downloaded the PictureThis app to help identify our found flora.

The beaches are all closed so finding bikes wasn't a problem. Neither was finding the plants. In three hours and a 6 mile round trip through wetlands, oak forests, beach scrub and woodlands we have enough for a salad, teas, some tasty greens, and a hallucinogenic if things get really bad here.

Burr Clove

The edible seeds grow one per seedpod and can be eaten raw or roasted then ground into flour once they turn black. Being mostly starch, it should be possible to use Burr Clover seeds to produce alcohol. The starch must be broken down into simple sugars for the yeast. The easiest way to do this to combine the crushed seeds with the amylase enzymes found in saliva…in other words, the traditional “spit beer” made by many primitive cultures where a starchy material is chewed and then spit into a large pot to ferment for several days to produce a weak alcoholic drink. Luckily, high concentrations of the necessary enzyme are also found in the sprouts of barley and other grains, which can be bought from brewer supply stores. Foragingtexas.com

Ugh - this sounds exhausting! It is high in nitrogen though, so a good thing to allow to grow as a weed in future planting areas. Tossing it out.

Sow Thistle

So this hurt a little to grab and I could only imagine what it would be like to eat. However, boiled or stir frying the young leaves is supposedly delicious. I put it aside to try. Koestler is watching me look all this up and asks if we still have that frozen pizza.

Wild Geranium

I'm excited to learn that the entire plant is edible raw or cooked, and of course as usual, young and tender is better than old and tough. I taste a bit and it has a flavor similar to parsley. It's going into the salad! Koestler preheats the oven for her pizza.

Wild Radish

I wish now I had grabbed a few more of these guys. Sounds like this is going to be a great addition to "my" salad. It is entirely edible. Tasting it, it's peppery and earthy, much like those of the common cultivated radish. The root is white, long and slender and has a tough outer core that must be peeled. Yep, not doing that but the rest sounds perfect for the salad.

Common Vetch

Most of the plant is edible when young. Though edible raw it's better cooked. ... The unique bean looking seed pods are edible when they're young – Fortunately we got them early when they first came out, before they got too tough and stringy. I don't have enough to cook so I'll add this to the salad.

Common Mouse Ear Chickweed

This is probably something you've spent the winter fighting in your lawn. Most of the chickweeds would be fine to toss into my salad but this one has a rough texture so I'm going toss it in the pot to sauté in butter.

False Rosemary

This is one of the first ones we ran across that I knew would be great. I can use it just like the traditional kitchen herb so I'm going to put it in with the hot items and add a touch to my salad dressing which is a lemon vinegrette. Also adding it to the kids spaghetti sauce just so I can say they ate my stuff.

Bignonia

This is my favorite native vine so I was excited to see it growing wild. It's one of the early bloomers in this area so it really stands out. I planted one at home that I propagated last year and saw its first flower just the other day. I really hoped it was edible because it would have been a fancy salad topper! I found some medicinal uses but nothing that made me feel confident the flower was safe to eat. I left it for the hummingbirds who just love this plant!

Spiderwort

No problem on the garnish issue. The purple spiderwort is a great second option and its greens are going to be a good addition to the salad.

Pennywort/Dollarweed

This is used lots in Asian dishes and sprayed with herbicide in our lawns. It's very versatile but I only grabbed a bit so I'm just tossing it in the salad.

Some things I know were in the area but didn't find today or didn't want to bother with were dandelions, hen bit, cactus, gopher apples, beauty berry, purslane, nettles, juniper, and cattails.

I grabbed some goldenrod and reindeer moss to try in some teas later.

We found lots of berries that were just waiting for summer. Blackberries, wild blueberries, bearberries and even muscadine vines await our return in a few months.

Things we found but didn't eat are the Yaupon Holly as its berries are toxic, Carolina Jasmine can cause hallucinations and possibly kill, and fetter bush whose blooms and leaves are toxic.

Review ---- And... it was ok if you're starving but I don't think it's their fault. I think I need to find better recipes and use more butter. Being quarantined at the beach I just had to use what was here to flavor. Regardless, this is gonna take some practice but we had fun and feel a little more confident in our survival skills - we will do this again but not ready for guests yet.