Add More Wild Foods to Your World (But Less Maggots)
SEPTEMBER 5, 2007 - Whenever I've just been up north I think more of wild foods. Right now I have sliced pine mushrooms from our Skeena River cabin drying on my living room floor, and a handful of chanterelles too (though they don't keep their flavour as well.) A few days ago I investigated how they were doing in the pantry.
"Oh man, there's ants all over here. Do you think it's because we used fruit boxes to lay them on?" I asked James, though I was afraid that ants ate mushrooms, and were devouring our precious crop.
As I flipped them over to dry the other side, the answer turned out to be much, much worse. "Ew, sick!" I screeched. The ants were eating a couple of maggot things that were hiding in the mushrooms this buggy year.
So I hurled them out the window and gingerly turned over the rest, luckily without any more surprises. I suppose I know now the rest of the mushrooms are safe, since the ants did their job and cleaned them out. Though this is the last time I take James on his word that "a few bug holes" are okay as long as you're cutting into them to check. Mushrooms: white. Maggots: white. You won't catch them all.
So, have I got you into wild foods yet? Maybe not. But this is the reality of food, you just usually don't see it. Let's forget all that and think of the end product: dried pine mushrooms are an exquisite, expensive thing much prized in Asian cuisine.
Other wild foods were in less profusion this year with all the floods, and the marauding bear who had eaten everything before we got to Skeena country. But I still managed to pick wild huckleberries and blueberries for snacks, gross-out free. Just juicy delicate berries that would never stand up to the rigours of being shipped to a supermarket, and they taste all the better for it.
To learn more about wild foods near you, I recommend the website of Sunny Savage, who lists upcoming conferences and workshops across the continent, from the Pacific Northwest to New York. Speaking of Manhattan: writer Adam Gopnik just tried to eat within the five boroughs for New Yorker magazine - and gave our book Plenty a mention. -ADS
