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| Wild onions by the side of the road. |
Years ago, when I was a little girl, my grandmother told me she used to gather dandelions with her family from the side of the road in New York City; hard to believe but true, because I asked her how that could be done.
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| Small apple orchard at the local park. |
She explained to me that roads were a lot less traveled back then; fewer cars meant less exhaust, and besides, my grandmother said, most people still had horse carts or used the trains. She and my grandfather were avid canoers, too. They met through a pre-arranged date for just such an excursion. She said they often went swimming in the East River back then, when it was clean enough to do so.
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| Wild mushrooms on someone's front lawn. |
She said that they made salad from dandelion greens, and home brewed dandelion wine. When she was a little girl, her mother bought a rabbit from the market and kept it in the bathroom tub. She loved the little bunny, and was horrified to come home to a meal of rabbit stew simmering away on the stove, which she refused to eat. She thought the bunny was her pet because she named it.
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| More wild mushrooms growing near the sidewalk. |
Since then, I've been aware of the environment around me as food. As Girl Scouts, we learn all about edibles during outings: which birch tree was the original root beer, that then we peeled with our pocket knives and smelled, wild onions, wild carrots, and mushrooms, which are trickier because some are poisonous.
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| Someone gathered a nice collection on a park bench. |
I've always wanted to gather some items to cook, but so far I've been too shy to do so. It's
weird enough picking flowers and walking these days, let alone taking
out a camera, then collecting specimens in a bag. Talk about being in the spotlight! Today
though, the spotlight shines on these local beauties I found. Please don't eat anything you collect in the wild without consulting an experts' opinion first.
Happy hunting!
