Spring is a time for foraging. What to know about bagging and eating food from the wild

There is a place I know, way back in the woods on a trout stream I sometimes fish, that is carpeted with leeks each spring.

Or used to be, anyway. I haven’t been back up there in quite a while.

It was not too big a carpet, more like several medium-size ones, but they were large enough so that if you picked bag of leeks, there were plenty more to keep the colony going.

Several times I took those leeks home and made leek and potato soup. A few times I chopped them up and threw them into a salad. They were very nice, but the big kick was that I was eating something that I had identified and collected and prepared myself, like I was some old self-reliant pioneer and not just an everyday guy who got all his groceries from the supermarket.

Yeah, I know. I wasn’t, but it felt like that for a few minutes.

In springtime, new life is emerging everywhere. A lot of that new life is useful to us, if we educate ourselves just a bit. So, springtime is a time for foraging.

I am not much of a forager, and almost all that I do is just incidental to fishing and hunting. Those things – they are not hobbies; they are a lifestyle – lead to all kinds of adventures and mind-expanding experiences, if you are open to them.

I happen to be open to experiences that relate to food, and I don’t mind getting off the beaten track as far as that goes. Finding something good to eat while out in the woods or on the streams is part of that.

Years ago, I came across a couple of women picking fiddlehead ferns in moist bottomland along Oriskany Creek. I didn’t know you could eat those things. I’ve never picked them, but last year I bought a bunch in a supermarket.

They were okay. I don’t think I’d buy them again, but I might not have prepared them properly.

There are many wild foods to choose from. Dandelions, of course. I haven’t picked them in years, but I love them, wild or commercial. Like most other wild foods, you have to get to them early, before they blossom. They can be rather bitter otherwise.

Mustard greens are another. A bunch of use were fishing the Chenango River years ago and we came across huge field of them. We filled a couple of shopping bags with them, and took them to Del Mazza’s mother, who cooked them up us. They were sensational.

I love mushrooms, but I am not schooled in identifying wild ones. We were fishing Orwell Brook for salmon – well, we were snagging Orwell Brook for salmon – and having no luck when Ralph Polito pointed out a bunch of puffballs. Well, even I can identify a puffball, but, still, I wouldn’t dare eat one unless someone like Ralph said it was okay.

We bagged up a big bunch of them, took them home, cut them into thick slabs, and fried them in butter. The name does not do justice to their excellence on the table. I’m not going to tell you they were better than any steak I ever had. I will tell you that in my memory they were just as good.

When we were kids, we’d occasionally collect black walnuts. It was a job getting those husks off, then we’d crack the shells open in the vice in my grandfather’s workshop. It was tough and messy work, but those walnuts were just tremendously tasty.

Of course, it took a couple of weeks for the juice stains to wear off our hands, but we didn’t care. There are many other wild edibles out there, but you have to be careful and knowledgeable. There was a hickory tree I knew about, and one day I picked up a load of nuts that had fallen from it. I gave them a try.

How was I supposed to know the tree was a bitternut hickory? I’d say they were edible, but only if you were starving to death. According to one source, they are “unpalatably bitter.” Correct!

Cardoons are another reliable wild food. What our family calls cardoons are burdock, you know, the big, elephant-eared plant that produces the burrs that were the inspiration for Velcro. Again, according to one source, “real” cardoons are something else, from a different member of the thistle family.

No matter.  I don’t pick them every year, but now and then I get inspired and go after them. I remember cutting bushels of them with a gang of us down at our hunting camp. My grandfather was the boss – he almost always was, either in reality or in his own mind, and he usually did a good job of it – and he loudly and consistently told us all how we were doing it all wrong.

Well, he really wasn’t all that annoying on that occasion, and those cardoons were great. I boil them until tender, then fry them in olive as is or batter them and fry them as patties. There are other recipes, too.

You might come across all kinds of great things while hunting or fishing or hiking in the spring, not all of them edible. Trillium is one of them, or is three of them. I know a spot were there used to be plenty of them every year, but that’s a place that, again, I haven’t visited in quite some time. Beautiful flowers. I do believe all varieties of trillium are protected in New York State, and you can’t pick them or transplant them.

So, spring is the time for foraging. There are many wild edibles out there, and wild flowers and other plants. You have to be knowledgeable and careful in enjoying them and harvesting them.

Write to John Pitarresi at 60 Pearl Street, New Hartford, N.Y. 13413 or jcpitarresi41@gmail.com or call him at 315-724-5266. 

NOTEBOOK

OLA annual meeting set  

The Oneida Lake Association will hold its annual meeting April 24 at the Millard Hawk School, 74 School Drive (off Rte. 11) in Central Square.

There will be a variety of exhibitors, and speakers from the Oneida hatchery, the Cornell Biological Field Station, law enforcement agencies, and more, including raffles.

Doors open at 6 p.m. and the program begins at 7 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Outdoors column: Spring is a time for foraging. Safety tips