Last week on the vineyard brought a ton of foraging. I'm getting better about picking only things that I know people will like (although my friend Jody didn't seem to like the watercress soup, but everyone else did enough so that we sucked down at least 10 gallons of the stuff). So, for example, I didn't prepare anything "knotweed". I stuck to pokeweed, daisy greens, milkweed, and watercress as the bulk foraged items.
Here are my milkweed pickers.
And here is the haul.
I cut off the white part of the stem and boiled the rest for 10 minutes and.. no bitterness! I think I have, at least for the time being, satisfied myself that it is the white part that has produced the bitterness confusion in the foraging literature.
On the ferry boat home, I got a phone call from a friend in Cambridge saying she had possibly found morels in her back yard. The next day I verified that they were in fact morels and proceeded to eat them for lunch. Thanks Julia!! So, Cantabridgians, keep your eyes peeled. Look in your mulch, and even look where the foundation starts and the mulch begins. The deformed one (which I split into two to make the "haul" look more impressive) was coming right out of such a crack.
