Five Foraged Foods You Probably Have in Your Backyard: Adventures in learning NOT to Starve on Sundays

 On Memorial Day several years ago, Deus Ex Machina decided that every Sunday until Labor Day he was going to eat only what he could forage, and because I am a very supportive wife, an avid locavore and a lover of food challenges, I agreed to join him.

Unfortunately, we have very busy lives.  Deus Ex Machina has always had a full-time, outside-the-home job, and I have always worked part-time from home. In addition, we were  homeschooling at the time, and even though it was summer, our daughters were still very busy with lessons and activities that do not follow a school-year schedule. Complicate the issue by adding our extensive list of volunteer activities, and what you have is not a lot of time left to forage.

We have read that the average hunter/gatherer spent three hours per day procuring food, which seemed easy enough. Three hours a day does not seem like that much time, until one is faced with a very busy modern life. Unfortunately, unlike the typical hunter/gatherer we were also limited by laws that prohibit hunting certain animals in certain areas at certain times of the year, which means that our food options were that much more narrowed, often to just what we could gather.

Foraging Sundays turned into an interesting project. Ideally, we would have been able to find time to get out during the week for food that we could enjoy on Sunday, but that was not always what happened. Our daughters called it Starving Sundays, and while we did not, ever, come close to starving, there was more than one Sunday morning when we hauled ourselves out of bed wondering what, and if, we would be eating that day.

As luck would have it, we had a few stand-bys that we were able to count on eating – no matter what else we found. These were plants that were growing very close to home, many of them in our yard. Most people would consider them weeds and work very hard to eradicate them. On more than one Sunday over our summer of foraging, we became incredibly thankful for them, and even if we never thought much about it before, we now know that these plants will always have an honored place in our landscape.

There were five plants, growing in our yard, and probably accessible to most suburbanites, that became central to our diet during that summer.

Dandelion

Dandelion is one of the most unfairly maligned wild plants out there, which is a shame, because dandelions are tasty, incredibly versatile, and especially healthful. What makes the dandelion even more valuable is that the whole plant can be used, in its time.

In the early spring, the tender greens are harvested for salads and sautés. We also harvest them for dehydrating for use later in soups and as a seasoning during a long Maine winter. Mid-spring, the flowers are ready for harvesting. The petals add a nice subtle flavor and color to salads, or the whole flower head can be battered and fried with a flavor and texture a bit like deep fried mushrooms. The flowers can also be used to make wine, which can be enjoyed later in the year. Later in the season, the greens become stringy and less palatable, but we used the older, more bitter greens in pesto. Finally, at the end of the season, in the early fall, we harvest the root, which is dried and roasted, then ground to make a coffee-like beverage.

Blue Violet

Common blue violet is one of the first plants to appear in the early spring. Both the leaves and the flowers can be eaten raw in a salad, and that’s usually how we enjoy them. The flowers also make a beautiful, edible garnish. After the Summer Solstice, the violet flowers die back and the leaves get tough and stringy. At that point, this darling little plant is relegated to lovely ground cover.

Wood Sorrel

Another garden pest that sated our hunger over this project is wood sorrel. It has been added to salads and as a garnish for fish to add a rich lemony flavor, and on days when there was no been fish and not very many other greens that are still tender enough for salad, we have made a soup out of wood sorrel. With a little butter and salt and some curry powder, wood sorrel makes a wonderful soup.

Purslane

We discovered purslane, an extremely nutritious and delicious wild weed, quite by accident a few years ago when our daughter noted this odd looking plant growing in her garden. Much to her dismay, it competed – and won – for space against the pumpkin seedling, but once I figured out what it was, I would not let her pull it. The weed was purslane, and it has been favored by savvy gardeners for centuries. We were incredibly thankful for this weed during our project, and our favorite way to prepare it is coarsely chopped and stir-fried.

Berries

To round out the five foods that we depended on when there was nothing else we could find is berries. Most people not only recognize berries when they see them growing, but they will also have some experience with foraging berries, either as a childhood treat or as a trail nibble.

We usually ate the berries raw, but we occasionally incorporated them into a dish using some of the other plants we had foraged. Our favorite way to cook them was to toss them into our purslane stir-fry. The sweet berries added an interesting depth to what would otherwise have been a salty, savory dish.

We learned a great deal during our summer of foraging and have continued to add to our knowledge and skill-base of our local flora and fauna. It is comforting to know that nature really does provide all we need, if we just know where to look.