Challenge for May

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance
#1

Build Fluency in one wild edible plant!

Urban Scout’s cool fluency idea regarding eating wild food as March’s Challenge:

...I would say the first thing would be to find ONE plant that you can eat, and spend the week eating it with every meal. This would limit your process and build fluency in just the one plant. I would further suggest making at least one or two of the same meal each day, as a way of building the "technique: Same Conversation."

So for May, a challenge: exactly what he said. :slight_smile:

Feel free to post if you want to take on this challenge this month, any progress in deciding on a plant, harvesting it, cooking, and how it went, what it taught you, and anything else you want to say!

Bon appetite!

#2

Dan I owe you and everyone else who is doing these monthly challenges a big apology. I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time in the hospital. My wife had to get both hips replaced. She has lupus and that caused both hips to fail. Wait for an article about lupus and rewilding. Believe it or not, her lupus is one of the things that has brought me into rewilding.

However, I did do a bit of this month’s challenge. I went after rose hips. It’s been a great experience and here are the things I have learned.
• You need to clear out the seeds in them. They have these little hairs that can really irritate your stomach. Luckily I didn’t have to experience that, I learned it from some one else’s experience.
• Even if the rose hip is all shriveled up you can eat it. You just have to rehydrate then in some water and they are fine. They loose a bit of flavor but not enough to really notice in most cases.
• They make a decent tea, but I don’t like tea, but if you get a bunch of them together that aren’t shriveled you can take the outsides and crush them in water to give the water a bit of flavor, the longer you let them sit the better the flavor, or even better clean out the seed and then blend the rest in a blender with some water. Just thought about mixing those in sprite. I’ll have to try that when I find some more.
• They supposedly make a good jam, but if you are foraging them from the wild you need A LOT of them and so I have yet to gather that many.
• Domesticated rose hips are much larger than wild ones. I don’t know about flavor yet since I can’t find any domestic rose hips available this time of year.
• I like them completely raw. You just scrape the outsides off with your teeth, to avoid eating the seeds. It’s kind of a vitamin C pill but with some sweetness that makes it taste really neat.
• I’m not sure you will ever actually get full foraging rose hips. There is not much flesh on each one, so to make a meal of it would take many many hips.
• I’ve found that at least where I live the best place to find wild roses is by the rivers.

I’m a bit harried right now and I haven’t thought of anything yet for June’s challenge. Dan, do you have any ideas? My wife is getting better, though we just a minor setback, but that shouldn’t be too big of an issue.

#3

Interesting observations. I wonder how you removed the seeds? I’ve seen lots of the wild multiflora rose hips but not had a good method to remove the seeds to do anything much with them. Yeah, those hairs can sting the inside of the mouth too :o

I went with Dandelions in May. Don’t really recall too much off hand, but did learn the yellow part has no bitterness, and the whole thing is edible. Never tried the coffee, too lazy, I guess.

Have an idea for July, will post. Have one for August?