I have been trying to find morels for a long time. For years. Last year, I found my first morel on Sauvie Island, but it was my only one. Just one modest mushroom. While I was in North Wales at the cusp of March and April, I kept in touch a forager from South Wales. […]
Read more "Burn Morels"It’s springtime, which means foraging opportunities are back in full. The prime time for tender leafy greens, chickweed, miner’s lettuce, violets, etc, is passing into a tough fibrous late-stage. But now the spring mushroom season launches. My glee for plants and mushrooms has expanded with the acquisitions of a new phone, the Galaxy S4. With […]
Read more "My Morel"I’m a terrible forager–a scrappy forager, but a shamefully inefficient one. I don’t have the right equipment or knowledge to preserve what I find. I’m on a tight budget as a grad student, so I don’t have a lot of disposable income to buy foraging accessories. I’m also living in a rented duplex and am […]
Read more "10 Items on a Forager’s Wish List"We’re at the cusp of fall and winter. We have a month to go until the solstice, and yet the air smells like winter and all colors are blue near dusk. The evenings, when they aren’t sodden wet, are smoky from people trying to create little pockets of dry heat and comfort. There’s a tall […]
Read more "Persimmon Season"I’ve become pretty obsessed with mushrooms. I’m afraid I’m becoming like my father. It’s not that mushrooms are his thing; he has an appreciation for them, but fungi are not his speciality. I come home with bags of mushrooms and spread them out of the table for inspection and identification, and processing, if they’re edible. […]
Read more "I Am My Own Mycologist"My first mushroom gathering expedition for the fall was a bus/bike combo trip out to Cape Lookout. Eric had gone on a group Cycle Wild trip the weekend before and came home with pounds of yellow chanterelles. He wanted to take me out to see the beautiful coastline and enjoy the plentiful fungi. While Eric […]
Read more "The First Fall Mushroom Hunts"I do this really stupid thing. I eat fruits and plants that I don’t know what they are. They remind me of something that I know I can eat, so I decide to try out this new plant I find. Eating things you can’t identify can result in extreme pain or even death (if you […]
Read more "Strawberry Tree: Don’t Stop at One"A grape vine has escaped the neighbor’s yard. It is trailing over their fence and tantalizingly hanging over the sidewalk. Do you pick a bunch? I do. It’s now off their property and if the vine is growing lusciously, surely they have tons of grapes behind their wall. According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the […]
Read more "Usufruct Laws"I found Backyard Foraging by Ellen Zachos while browsing through Broadway Books. I’ve read many food foraging guides, most with far more detail than this book, so I didn’t expect Backyard Foraging to be as mind-blowing as it turned out to be. It’s not a very traditional foraging guide. Most guides cover wild plants exclusively, […]
Read more "Backyard Foraging"Anyone in Portland who buys plums right now is an idiot. Have you even looked at the sidewalk? All that ooshy-gooshy stuff you have walk around or clean off your shoes? Look up! Oh my god, it’s plums. Portland has so many types of plums, and most of them are ripe, almost ripe, or just […]
Read more "Don’t Buy Plums"
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