foraging

One of my first adventures in Salt Lake City was attending a foraging class. How fun, right? There's so much around to forage: mushrooms, berries, fruits, nuts. I'm looking forward to spring, we were shown where there are Ume trees. How wonderful it would be to make umeboshi plums. 

This oyster mushroom was foraged by my cousin. She got half of it, then when back for more. Overall, the multi-trip forage yielded about 5lbs of oyster mushroom delight. Much smaller oyster mushrooms sell for $5.99/lb at a local market. 

Beautiful Oyster Mushroom.

We experimented cooking it with different oils and butters to find out what the best flavor is. (olive oil, sesame oil, grapeseed oil, salted butter, and vegan butter) Butter was by far the best flavor, but they were all fun and delicious. I would be okay with vegan butter. The oils may have been helped with more salt. 

On a field trip to a local park, I picked a bunch of inky cap mushrooms. You really need a large basketful to have enough to share generously.

Inky Caps.

Inky Caps.

The caps get gooey, so we only ate the stems. I wish I had sauteed them right away instead of waiting until the next morning, but it was a fantastic first forage. 

Elderberries are delicious. I want to make muffins and syrup with them. They're like little candies, so delicious and tart. These I did not harvest, but I did the painstaking job of removing them from their persnickety stems. Totally worth it. 

Elderberries.

I had the most fun foraging pine nuts. We spent an hour pulling the nuts out of pine cones from the trees. Unfortunately, I didn't weigh our harvest. Not all of them have an edible nut inside, but finding out is part of the fun.

Foraged Pine Nuts.

Does it count as foraging if you pick from the garden? Maybe not, but it's still fun. These plums came from a tree in the backyard where I am staying. 

Plums.