Chanterelle mushrooms are found in july, but this rain and abnormal heat has brought them on a couple weeks ahead of usual picking times. I always found these on the edge of woods and property lines behind people's houses. Here is a reference if you want to mushroom hunt for these delicacies.
For more reference photos to find your own, use the search tool on this blog by typing in chanterelle mushrooms, or use the tags "wild edibles", "foraging", "chanterelles" and "mushroom identification" where I've shown these in video too.
I fried them with a little oil, salt and pepper over rice
My grandpa always says the blackberries are ripe and ready to pick around the 4th of July. So around that time every year I go blackberry picking around my yard and forage for them in the woods. Every year since I have been foraging for blackberries, I have noticed that the Chanterelle and Chicken of the woods mushrooms grow around this time as well. From my experience with foraging for Chanterelle mushrooms, is that they grow scattered in patches together. In my neck of the woods, the Chanterelles are growing in the shade along the ground, and I have been finding them behind my house (which is a south facing hill.) I particularly have found Chanterelle mushrooms growing behind people's houses that are up against the woods, or at least not far into the woods.
This year I have picked blackberries alongside the chanterelle mushrooms, and today I foraged for more. I may cook these mushrooms on low heat and eat with noodles--which is usually how I eat the mushrooms. I also eat these with rice.
I had peas growing along the trellis shaped like an "E". Once the pea plants started to die off, I pulled them up and then sowed half runner beans to replace them.
Yesterday I picked some Chanterelle mushrooms that were growing behind my house. With the mushrooms, I put them on the garden pizza I made yesterday. Knowing that the Chanterelles are growing, I'm going to explore the woods behind my house in the next couple of days to forage for these mushrooms.
Foraging for Chanterelle mushrooms
There are other mushrooms growing in the woods. The picture below is of a Bolete mushroom. Some people eat these, but the only mushrooms I eat from the woods is Chanterelles, Chicken of the Woods, and Morels because they are the most easily identifiable and delicious mushroom.
I'm not sure what the mushroom is in the picture here, but I assumed it was an edible mushroom at first. Observing it more closely, the mushrooms didn't look like the Chicken of the woods or Chanterelles that are growing in the woods now. Because I wasn't sure what the mushrooms were and considering they were old, I decided not to cut them to study them closer at my house.
Along with the mushrooms growing in the woods, there are also blackberries and dewberries growing in the woods and around my yard, so I have been foraging for these berries as well, and collected some today. I'm freezing the berries in the glass bowl for an hour (depending on how many berries you have), then put the berries in a plastic bag in the freezer. This method is so that the berries can freeze individually without getting mushy and freezing into a hard clump.
The pictures below are of the Buttercup Squashes that are growing very quickly and becoming huge.I also show them in the garden tour video below.
With the zucchini and crookneck squash, I'm slicing and cooking them on a pizza. The pizza is a homemade dough, tomato based sauce, and some onion on top.
The dough was a very simple recipe. I let a packet of active dry yeast and 1 cup of water with a pinch of sugar sit for 10 minutes and mixed well. Then adding and mixing 1 1/2 Tbsp of olive oil and 1/2 tsp of salt. To the mixture, I then added 2 1/2 cup of all purpose flour. As I mixed the flour in the liquid mixture, I made sure to form the mix into a ball and then proceeded to knead the dough as it started to take shape. I let the dough sit for an hour with plastic covering the bowl of dough. After an hour, I oiled a pizza pan and rolled out the dough while letting the oven preheat to 450 degrees F. I put tomato sauce on the pizza dough and put the slices of zucchini, crookneck, green peppers from the garden on the pizza. I also foraged for Chanterelle mushrooms and added those to the pizza. I cooked the pizza for 20 minutes. It was delicious.
As I read a little bit of Michael Pollan's book "In defense of food", his overall health advice was to eat the foods that grow wild around us in our own environment. His argument was that when we eat the foods around us that grow wild are those that help us adapt to the environment and prevent diseases. Pollan concludes from researching cultures that it's important to follow cultural practices in consuming food rather than food science. Additionally, the soil and plant in the wild is cleaner than that grown in the big-Ag industry with all of its spray chemicals. Because the soil in the woods has more nutrients for years of composting leaf matter and other natural fertilizing, the edible foods are more nutritious, and have a diverse range of nutrients whereas the typical store-bought food is the same mix of ingredients of wheat and sugar components in a very strict ratio with no nutrition left after processing. Although it does not have quite the vegan or ethical message as far as what I usually highlight on this blog, I do see merit in his argument. I highly recommend reading this book, so request a copy from your local library.
In considering this from Pollan's argument, I find that I also strive to eat this way considering I do a lot of foraging behind my house. My Family and people around Kentucky, especially where I live, hunt for food like deer, fish, squirrel, turkey, and so that's their way of eating life that is around them in their environment.
Because I eat vegan, the wild foods I have eaten are fruits, nuts, greens/herbs, and mushrooms. Apparently there is a App on iTunes for Vegan recipes of wild edibles here: The Wild Vegan.
In past posts on wild edibles, I have shown you that I forage for mushrooms in the woods, as well as berries and paw paw fruits. Typically the kinds of mushrooms that grow behind my house are Chanterelle mushrooms and Chicken of the Woods, in the pictures below.
For more pictures of the mushroom foraging in the past years, go to the links provided at the end of this post.
Another mushroom found in Kentucky is Morels. When I was a kid, my Dad and I foraged for these and later he fried them and ate them with ketchup. This how I ate them growing up. I haven't had Morels in a long time because they grow early in the season, and I haven't come across a patch of Morels around my house. Because Chanterelles and Chicken of the woods grow behind my house, those are what I forage the most. I eat these types of mushrooms by tearing them into strips and frying them with a little oil, salt and pepper, served over rice or noodles.
Other wild edibles of Kentucky, and perhaps around you too, are Paw paw fruit trees. Last fall I found one paw paw growing among a young, new patch of Paw paws behind my house. The paw paw fruit never grew to a proper size to eat, but when it was so ripe it turned brown and black, I ate a piece and found it to be very tasty, like caramel or something.
Of course other wild edible fruits in the woods are berries. They are very easy to identify unlike mushrooms, but some berries can be questionable, however, I have found that I can trust the look of wild black berries and wild raspberries in the woods. Because there is a lot of land behind my house that I explore, I always find blackberries and raspberries to forage and eat. One year I foraged so many berries that I was able to make 10 half pints of jam. Another berry I love and forage around my house is dewberries. They look like blackberries, except they grow on a small vine that crawls across the ground. Typically they are larger than a blackberry.
Another berry I like to forage for is huckleberry. It looks like similar to a blueberry plant but the berries are darker and tiny. Of course, the huckleberries around you may be different, considering I'm listing wild edibles I eat in Kentucky.
Many people have heard of this fruit because of Huckleberry Finn, but many have not explored the woods to eat this berry. And it's certainly not a berry we find in the grocery store, much like other wild foods.
The berries listed are typically harvested around July and August. Whereas the Autumn Olive, which as the name implies, is harvested in the fall, around September. I have not tried the Autumn Olive, but realized I have many of these plants growing around my house.
Elderberry is easily identifiable, usually growing along the side of the road like Autumn Olive plants (from what I've noticed). Elderberry is bitter, and eating these may require a lot of sugar or some kind of processing.
Persimmons is another wild native fruit that all animals, including me, love to eat. The persimmons around here are very small compared to California and Asian persimmons that are large. I have noticed two different varieties of persimmons I have foraged where I live: one being a flavor like pumpkin pie (which is a similar flavor to the Hachiya and Fuyu persimmons); and the second being a flavor like orange icy pops.
foraged persimmons from kentucky
black raspberry forage in kentucky
blackberry and dewberry (right) forage
There are so many wild greens that are edible as well like ramps, dandelions, and chickweed. This young gentlemen, Sergei in the photo below, has a book on wild edibles titled "Wild Edibles" and apparently it's quite popular, so it seems to be a worthy purchase for those that want to take on this challenge of eating wild edibles. What he does with his wild edibles, I'm not quite sure, but I thought that he and his family were raw vegans, so I can imagine a lot of the greens are used for salads, smoothies, and juices. I would eat the greens all these ways including frying them.
Of course nut trees are plentiful, typically around property lines, but some remain in the woods for the squirrels to eat. Some of the wild nut trees around here are hickory and beechnut. There are many others such as Walnuts and pecans that I harvest from on peoples' property lines.
Where I live, there is a lot of logging for nut trees, so the woods has
become a place of destruction. I am afraid that some of these wild foods
like Paw paws may become extinct the more logging that is done. Because
of clear cutting, Paw paws and other trees may not survive the logging
industry due to equipment/machinery completely killing any other tree
that would not have been cut for the logging company. It seems nothing
is safe in its path. We must demand an alternative to clear cutting woods and forests, and oil businesses that also clear cut, and shopping malls and other projects that devastate the landscape. We must demand a different path to protect ecosystems, wildlife, and protect wild native plants.
Other related posts are provided below to find more
information and pictures of foraging wild edibles, including more
pictures of BIG foraging hauls of Chanterelle and Chicken of the woods
mushrooms:
Similar to what Michael Pollan was speaking about with diet, Markus Rothkranz, a health "guru", has created this short video I have posted below which discusses the healing properties of wild edibles further as Pollan had.
For the last month, James and I have been foraging several types of berries and mushrooms, in the woods behind our house. We have picked Dewberries, huckleberries, raspberries, and blackberries. The berry picking has come to an end; mostly because of the daily, heavy rainfall.
While foraging for berries, we also harvested Chanterelle and Chicken of the woods mushrooms. These mushrooms are easy to identify, especially Chicken of the woods. Because we have had so much rain in Kentucky, it has been one of the best years for mushrooms. Every where I look is a new and interested mushroom.
Below is a picture of today's haul of Chanterelle and Chicken of the woods mushrooms.
For a look at the other mushroom harvests, go to my previous posts here and here.
