Wild Edibles - Part 3

I hope you were encouraged to see what plants were growing in your back yard.  Looking through this new lens of foraged foods is pretty exciting.  

Pictured below, among ALL that poison ivy, are a few leaves of dandelions.  I think most people know they are edible, but in case you forgot, those pretty yellow, flowering weeds in your yard can also be food.  The leaves are best eaten before the plant flowers, but the flowers are also good battered and fried.  I've also used the petals as an addition to zucchini bread and in cookies, just because it's fun to eat flowers.

 This is called Dock.  Plants found closer to water are known to be less bitter.  Steam slightly and use like grape leaves.  It's a great green to wrap foods in for cooking.  It's rich in protein and vitamin A.

 This is a Green Brier - these grow all over our fence and I hate them.  They can be invasive.  However, the very tendril tips look like a pea plant, and guess what? They taste like peas too.  The root-stocks of many species can be used as a gelatin substitute.

 This beautiful flower is from a Black Locust tree.  Oddly, only the flowers are edible on this plant.  They taste and smell like honeysuckle.  It seemed like such a treat to eat one after tasting so many bitter or zingy plants.

 We found Wild Grape Vine.  The leaves are edible. You can boil and eat them or use them for wrapping and cooking foods.  Wild grapes are also edible.

Heading up the hill, Santiago the Turkey still touring with us.

 The last plant on our foraging expedition is Mallow.  I've seen these pretty plants before - perhaps you have to?  You can eat the tiny leaves.  Each plant bears a few pods.  When opened, they reveal the below. These can be eaten just as they are or pickled and used like capers (much safer than the marsh marigold). You can also eat the root of this plant.

We headed to the tee-pee and fire circle to eat a salad of foraged greens mixed with some spring lettuce mix.

We have owned this book for quite a while, but I just looked at it with slight interest.  Taking this class definitely gave me the push and confidence I needed to go exploring on my own.  Knowledge is soon forgotten if not practiced, so I plan on keeping up with this whole learning thing.