I'm Not A Cow!

Lately, I've been reading a fair bit online about Red Clover and it's versatility. To be honest, I wasn't sure. I know it's edible, but it's just a cover crop to help restore nitrogen back to the Earth and keep the soil intact while it lies fallow. It is also a fodder crop and last I checked, I wasn't livestock...

Needless to say, I had to try some. It grows in abundance outside in the fields and along the edges of the sidewalks. Surely no one would miss it, and I wouldn't actually have to go digging around looking for it. The next time I went for a walk with my son, I brought along a bag hanging from his stroller and started picking clover heads and popping them in the bag so I could make tea when we got home.

While I waited for the water to boil, I began stripping the leaves from the clover heads and tossing the flowers into my French Press. Finally the water boiled and it was time to combine and steep. I let it sit for sometime - 25 minutes or so - then dumped it into a half gallon mason jar added some ice and a bit of honey and away we went. I have to admit it wasn't the best tea I've had, but easily something I'll do again. Perhaps a lemon or lime slice might help. Next time I'll try a combination of white and red clovers.

Polyporus squamosus

When spring comes around people start looking for Morels. Apparently, they're quite tasty, I've never actually eaten one, so I don't know. It's said among mushrooming circles that aside from the morel, there isn't much in the way of edible spring mushrooms. How disappointing. There are other spring mushrooms, and they are edible, but in no way are they enjoyable, almost not worth picking - or so it is said. Polyporus squamosus is one of those "edible, but not" spring mushrooms.

Walking along the edge of a field, looking for some morels - in the wrong place - I saw a long dead Elm log sprouting a good handful of these Dryad's Saddles and I figured I'd give it a go. Some of the bigger ones were already too tough to cut, and those I left to continue on with their mushroomy lives. The others, I nipped and stuffed in my bag to take home and try.

Once home, I took them out and cleaned them off. Ran them by my AG one more time just to make sure they were in fact P. squamosus, they were, and so I stuck them in an old strawberry container and put them in the fridge to figure out what to make with them.
Before trying to figure out what to do, I took out an older tougher mushroom and decided to give it a try. Going by what everyone else says I trimmed the soft outer edges and tossed it in the frying pan with some butter and salt. And, just because, I put in a thicker piece to see how tough it really would be...

Sure enough the outsides were edible, and whoever started spreading the rumor about P. squamosus being inedible ought to be hung by their toe nails. Perhaps these aren't comparable to morels, but with just butter and salt, they were pretty good. Definitely a mushroom I'll go looking for again, and considering how easy it is to identify, it should be one every beginning mushroomer gives a shot.

Getting Here

Over the last year or so, my wife and I have tried to reduce our trash, and become a more sustainable household. It's proven to be expensive, and when you're just getting started, little expenses can make a difference. We still try to do things with the environment in mind, but buying milk in refillable jars for twice the price of milk in a non-refillable plastic jug had to go. Maybe someday when we have disposable income we can make more environmentally positive decisions, but until then we'll just have to make do. That said, we have monitored our garbage and it seems a fair bit comes from food. Not to mention when you get your food, it probably came a few hundred miles before it got to you. That head of lettuce may not be in a plastic bag, but it still bumped across miles and miles of pavement in a truck spewing noxious fumes into the air. But truly, how many people think about things like that? How many people see a jar of ketchup and think 'ketchup' instead of 'tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, spices?' With that in mind I've decided to try and harvest more of our meals from the local environment, be it fished, foraged or hunted. Being that we currently rent and don't have a garden, and no land to hunt, most of what is used to supplement our pantry will have to be foraged. Sounds daunting, but the more I look into it, the more I'm realizing that there are plenty of edibles growing like weeds outside my door.