Foods, Forages and Ferments

[Geralyn]

Maybe with THIS broad a subject I can keep this Topic as active as my interests are and entice you all to add to it!  I love pictures and with phones there is hardly an excuse to not contribute, eh?   lol    By "forages" I mean what I can find in the garden or the field and how I can use it for food and fodder. I tend to find Jehovah's plants and mushrooms in the "wild" very attractive so I will add "wild thangs" at times.   I have a worm compost pile since I usually throw out 5 pounds of trimmings every couple weeks I need wigglers to convert it so I don't draw unwanted critters (creepy 4 legged ones!) to my urban "farm".   If I can convince my city people I hope to add chickens at some point.   Maybe they could be called "emotional support animals"! Hmmm....    

 

To start with I'll  post a carrot salad and the forage greens underneath it, a mix of this and that from the garden.   

 

NOT your Gramma's Carrot Salad JWT.txt

[BLEmom]

I like taking nature photos. Here are some mushrooms but I don’t know what they are. 😊

[Geralyn]

They are  Trametes Versicolor or "Turkey Tail"  for casual ID.   So pretty!

[Juniper]

If you want to start foraging plants this video is a great beginner guide, and is also a good reminder for those of us who have foraged before

 

 

[Geralyn]

THIS is not a good fig year!   Last year this bush had a thousand figs in the spring and this year?  maybe a hundred (so far).  I still have last year's figs cut up and frozen for recipes but that does not end my love for the Fig Tree...   First, this fig is offspring of a plant from my first Georgia home.  A small but pretty leafed plant would pop up in the yard a foot or so and every lawn day it would get mowed down!   I didn't think the landlord would care of I potted it up (it survived!) and almost 30 yrs later this monster has flourished and been split off into two other bushes.  Of course, the figs are a blessing too.  In the green stage figs can be cooked and used as a veggie (Italian dishes, sauce, cheese  Yum!)  My favorite nibbling is figs that are a bit underripe with a bit of tanginess and close or full ripe figs get quartered and frozen.   Not done yet!    In the fall the leaves dry on the bush, very crisp, (if the weather is dry enough) and I experimented with them in herbal teas another WIN!

 

Here is where my favorite preservation method came into the picture, FERMENTATION!   I love to make my own Sauerkraut.  Most cabbage comes without the natural dark leaves (from the store) and I seem to only grow softball sized bug-eaten heads so I have experimented with dark veggie leaves from other cruciferous crops and even a useful wild crop "Plantago Major" leaves thin sliced give my Kraut a pop of color and extra nutrition.   Some people like flavored kraut (German spices seem the "norm") but I have just been a plain kraut person since I can recall.  Late last summer I had no greens growing fresh to add the pop that I  enjoy to a new batch so my mind wandered to the only thing I had at hand, FIG leaves!   Yes I sliced and added some fig leaves and was truly amazed at the fragrant sweet tanginess that showed up!  A nice change to my routine recipe and another thing to be thankful to Jehovah for!

 

One caveat for people who are sensitive and allergic to saps and latex, the fig tree is pretty sappy!   While many in my fermenting group were excited at a new thing there were 2 women who shared to having pretty strong reactions to it's sap, even in the leaves, which is one place I don't really see the sap unless it is baby leaves.  The lure of figs is such that one of the women still would 'eat the figs' but only it they were peeled, which is easy but you must handle one of the sappiest places on a fig.  Each fig base emits a white sap and I usually slice that part off myself before freezing it or if I eat them fresh I pinch off the base.  One of the group mediators shared her knowledge of the fig sap being used as "rennet" for separating curds and whey when making cheese!   Another uses the leaves in recipes as ingredient wraps!   

 

The fig tree ~ a beautiful and generous gift from Jehovah!

Edited May 23, 2022 by Geralyn