Squirrels

There are certain oak trees around the city - I can think of three - that must either be out of the foraging range of any squirrels or must produce acorns that the squirrels don't like. Either way, the upshot is that when all the snow melts, there are still lots of acorns to be gathered, so I grabbed a bunch this morning. I might need to find replacements for my last crew of acorn shuckers since they all complained of raw fingers afterward.

On another squirrel note, my landlord, a famous squirrel hunter, has been lax lately and a squirrel has found her way back into my walls. Luckily I think we sleep the same hours, because although I hear action in there in the middle of the day, it's quiet at night. I wonder what it looks like in there. It's probably bigger than my apartment, and for a lot less money.

There are two native species of vascular plants on Antarctica.

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There is an isolated patch of stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) along the Charles River in Boston. They can be seen in the early spring, but soon they get covered up by the desert false indigo (Amorpha fruticosa) that grows all along the banks. At the end of fall, when all the indigo has been cut back, the nettles make a brief reappearance. Many edible spring greens make a fall reappearance in fact. There is still enough warmth so that their leaves do not freeze, and the leaves of the tall trees and the shrubs that have been shading them all summer have dropped away, so they come out again to gather the last of the fall sunlight and fatten their roots. And so even in early December, even after a little snow, I can still go out and gather some nettles, some curly dock (Rumex crispus), dandelion greens (Taraxacum officinale) and ox-eye daisy greens (Leucanthemum vulgare). While the ground is not yet frozen, burdock root (Arctium lappa) and evening primrose root (Oenothera biennis) are available too.

By the time March rolls around, evening primrose rosettes are back out, making January and February the only two full months of the forager's lament. I alleviate the lament by stocking up for the winter months by jarring, drying, and freezing. Whatever I jar usually ends up in the freezer because I'm always too rushed to do a good job with the sterilization process. Too many things going on in the summer in the city to do a good grandmotherly job jarring up the apple sauce. I bought a cheap food dryer on craigslist last year, which makes drying tea herbs and apples for winter usage easy. Somehow I even cut corners on drying my apples and I noticed some fruit flies on them a few days later. They are in my refrigerator now. Although I'd like to embrace additional aggressive eco-stunts including “unplugging the fridge”, given my ineptitude with jarring and drying, I'm not ready for that yet.

Rather than spend too much time lamenting the frozen ground, I prefer to catch up on the things I've missed because of foraging too much – reading, watching movies, studying up on mushrooms. Just the other day a friend forwarded me an article on dumpster diving [link to http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/12/for_local_freeg.html] and this got me thinking: I don't need to forgo foraging afterall in the winter, I can turn to a much more urban version of it – jumping into grocery dumpsters late night and digging out the perfectly good food that gets thrown away in quantities I don't like to think about every day. One of the things that attracted to me to foraging in the first place was that foraged food is free. Dumpster food is neither Local nor In Season, but it is a sad waste that occurs on a massive scale. I am a little worried that when I do my first dive, there will be so many viable munchies I won't know what to do with myself (I sometimes have this feeling when I find a neglected apple tree loaded with fruit – I sigh and wonder when I'm going to have the time to chop and jar all of the apples that I'm stuffing into my backpack). I am really hoping I do not find OK meat. I'm a vegan usually, but my policy is, if an animal product is getting tossed, I eat it. It's bad enough that people eat factory-raised meat, but then to have it thrown out, ugh. I hope not have to face the dilemma of 'should I take those packages of ham?' Please let my first dumpster be filled with slightly bruised bananas, day old whole wheat bagels, and celery.

Seeding the garden

Lest anyone think foraging in New England is over, it's not. At mom's over the weekend, we made some burdock oyaki (fried mashed potato pancakes stuffed with burdock/carrot/soy sauce mixture). I also gathered and dried a bunch of mint, and almost went for some mussels, but stayed vegan thanks to high tide.

I went "seeding" this morning along the Charles because I'm going for a "natural" garden in the style of Fukuoka next year, where I encourage all the great weeds of the area to grow in my garden. So, I gathered seeds of milkweed, burdock, evening primrose, and lamb's quarters, and put them in my garden.

Beech trees, nettles, black robes

Some highlights from my recent trip to The Netherlands.

* An hour at the Sauna Deco. I asked the lady at the front desk if they had bathing suits in addition to the towels for the spa, which was "co-ed" but primarily men > 50. She replied, "NO! we are totally nude!".

* Black robes worn by the entire thesis committee for the defense I was a part of. This was good because it hid the fact that I was wearing brown cords and looked like hell compared to everyone else in their suits and ties. The Q/A session was pretty funny, one questioner heavily citing his own research, and someone fainting on stage towards the end of the session.

* Tilburg forest filled with beech trees, black berry brambles, and nettles. And some weird running competition that I asked an older couple about and they replied things like: "Chops" and "Clogs" and "Warande" and I of course said yes, yes, yes as if I had any clue what they were saying.

* The coffeehouse scene is weird. People go in there and roll huge joints and really make a big thing about it. It's kind of like, listen, you're just rolling a joint, take it easy. Man, they go to town though, with their props and all. Flower shops selling tulip bulbs also carried pot seeds. I almost bought some but didn't want any trouble getting back into the good old U S of A.

2 Hauls

While everyone was in town this weekend (Brian, Shannon, Alex) we still found some time for foraging. Shannon, west coast forager famous for almost poisoning a dinner party of botanists, joined me both times. The haul on the first day out was a grocery bag full of oyster mushrooms. The haul on the second day, at the end of a walk in the Fells, was 2 bags of quince fruit, ripe and not too buggy. Sometime in the next 36 hours (before Holland trip) I need to find some time to chop them up. Call it global warming or something else, but foraging is still going strong. Burdock, plenty of greens (a bunch of beautiful ox-eye daisy rosettes), and evening primrose roots too still abound.

I'm going to get in trouble for tapping Cambridge maple trees next winter.

Oh well.

Cantaloupe Dune

Two foraging highlights from my research retreat weekend in Gloucester.

1) A cantaloupe plant growing on a beach dune with a viable cantaloupe that I took. I ended up eating the whole thing later that day (it was salty, as expected for fruit growing on a beach) since the meeting started at 2 and no food was served until 8 -- that's a long time for a 95%vegan to go without food.

2) Big bands of kelp on the shore. I ate some of that raw and took a bunch home and dried it. It's already successfully gone into one soup.

Also grabbed some autumn olives and wild mustard greens, which were growing abundantly along Atlantic Road.

Retreat was very nice, even if the staff were a tad freaky. The Addams family or something going on there.