Foraging for Food

[karstopography]

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Accumulating a nice amount of picked out native pecans. They are all going into the freezer until needed. I’m no speed demon, but picking out these is a good excuse to be outside on a nice afternoon.

[AKgardener]

I just realized at the end of this summer I’m pretty sure I have red currant in my back yard and cranberry. I’ve been to scared to pick them just in case there not I’ve seen my neighbors do it but again that’s on there side . But if so yah haha

[bower]

@AKgardener post a pic of the berry and leaf next season if you want a positive ID.
There are only two poisonous red berries that I know of around here - one is the "Woody Nightshade" vine which has purple/yellow flowers similar to tomatoes. We had these growing in my bro's backyard as a weed, and it was alarming they twined up the red currant bush and then lost their leaves early, so if you weren't looking closely I suppose you could pick em by mistake. They are single berries though iirc, vs the cluster of berries that is typical of cultivated red currant.
The other poisonous red here is Mountain Holly, but you wouldn't mistake it for a currant or other edible very easily.
I guess in a backyard situation, you might also have some ornamental turn up from ??? who knows, like the nightshade here. But currant leaf and smell is really distinctive once you know it.

Edible reds here with smooth single berries include partridgeberry and cranberry - close to the ground; red currant both wild and cultivated, the wild being a smaller bush, and squashberry which is a tall bush in the Viburnum family.

[karstopography]

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We have pretty red yaupon holly berries growing in abundance here this time of year. The dried leaves of yaupon holly make an excellent tea full of theobromine (think dark chocolate )and also with some not insignificant caffeine.

The berries I’m not sure about their edibility. The latin name, Ilex vomitoria, isn’t very encouraging. The indigenous Karankawas and other peoples brewed tea from the leaves and consumed enough to make them vomit so that is evidently how the plant received its name. I might just stick with the leaves.

I’ve had wild cranberries in Massachusetts. They are tart! There’s some other wild red berries here growing on other unidentified hollies that are similar to yaupon but I’m unlikely to sample those either. Red Turk’s cap fruit is still around, but it is late in the season for those. That’s a mallow like okra or roselle. The fruit have really grown on me over the years and have an apple and vanilla like flavor. I eat a few any time I take the dog around the lot.

[AKgardener]

I had pictures but I accidentally deleted them I’ll take more when are in bloom .. we have wild raspberry bushes in our yard as well

[worth1]

It's juniper berry picking season if anybody is interested.
The trees in my area are loaded with them.
I'm considering a sausage.

[karstopography]

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Began a prickly pear mead today. Chopped up the remaining de-thorned Kimble county tunas I had parked in the fridge since November, trimming away anything woody. Put it all in a blender and made a prickly pear smoothie. Ran all that through a very fine sieve and ended up with a quart of nothing but prickly pear juice. 2.5 pounds of honey, 2.5 grams of Champagne yeast, and water makes up the remainder.

I’ve got some prickly pear syrup with citric acid in it to add in once the mead has finished fermenting as it should finish dry. Looking to have a semi-sweet fruity mead as the finished product and maybe 11-12% ABV or so.

[bower]

It's juniper berry picking season if anybody is interested.
The trees in my area are loaded with them.
I'm considering a sausage.

The junipers that grow here are bushes no more than knee high, but they do have the blue green berries same as yours I expect.
Juniper is a very strong spice. Doesn't take much, for sure.
I have done some dyeing with juniper twigs and leaves. The leaves make yellow but the wood makes a powerful orange color. However the fumes when steaming are a bit noxious. You wouldn't want to do it in the house.
Strong antifungal activity is ascribed to the juniper in all parts, afaik.
Maybe a good treatment for windows or other vulnerable wood structures.
Not to mention gin, of course.

[worth1]

They're literally falling off the tree and are actually sweet.
Got enough for my Schweinebraten.
Peak of ripeness.

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[karstopography]

@worth1 I’m supposed to travel out to Kimble county the first week of January. I have Juniper berries and pencil cactus fruit on my to be foraged list.

We have red cedar (actually a juniper) berries here now and they are sweet, but there’s something I don’t like about their flavor, unlike the ones out on the edwards plateau, Texas Hill Country.

[worth1]

@karstopography
I'm glad I picked when I did because I almost waited too late.
The tree I had my eye on at the house the fruit are all gone.
The ones I did pick were out around Dripping Springs.
Most if not all the wild berries picked around here are like honey.

[bower]

I'm amazed to hear they are sweet @worth1 . I don't think ours are ever sweet. Also ours are a blue-green color. Yours are a gorgeous blue!!! Very nice.

[worth1]

I'm amazed to hear they are sweet @worth1 . I don't think ours are ever sweet. Also ours are a blue-green color. Yours are a gorgeous blue!!! Very nice.

Imagine someone making a pie out of these things.

[karstopography]

@worth1 I see recipes where people use these in chili con carne.

I plan on making a mead with some, then some sauerkraut and maybe a marinade for venison or duck.

[worth1]

The old Red rooster came out of the kitchen.
The Old Red hen said you've been drinking again.
No I haven't I'm making chili again.

Don't lie to me you old fool.
You're stinking of gin.
You've been drinking again.
I'm using juniper berries they smell like gin.
In the chili.
Yes in the chili.
It smells like gin.
You've been drinking again.
You've been drinking again.
You smell like gin

[bower]

We used to make gallons of berry wines every year, and did a couple of experiments with herb flavorings. The big surprise was that we got very strong flavors with a small amount of herb added to the berry mash. Two I remember - the gooseberry and yarrow wine, which my brother and I got into and drank quite a bit before Christmas - he said afterwards that all of his friends had influenza over the holidays but neither he nor I had anything worse than a headache. Yarrow flavor was pretty intense, we didn't repeat that. Some years later a friend and I made wine with elecampane root in it. I don't remember the berry. This too had quite a strong taste of the herb but it was fairly pleasant.
If I ever had to repeat the experiment though, I would use really much smaller amounts to flavor.

[karstopography]

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What remains of my meads. The magnolia petal is on the left and from two “vintages” 2021 and 2022. I know I like the 2022 one, I can’t remember the 2021 all that well. I should drink that one before too long. I believe I put in some linden flowers with these magnolia petal meads. They have been the best, though, in my opinion.

My son likes the mustang grape the best, but we are all out of that one. Mustang grape mead is the most intensely flavored one. Not like any “European” species of grape wine I’ve ever had. He wants to make another one of those.

The blackberry is from September of 2021, that’s when it was bottled. I have not tried that one since I can remember. The blackberry meads, if I remember right, pick up some, too much bitterness from the seeds, the first one made in 2020 did anyway. If I ever do a blackberry again I’ll use just juice, no whole fruit with seeds.

The beautyberry is pretty good, different, I’ll try one soon and see what a little bottle aging has done.

There’s some lees, settled out dead yeast, to varying degrees in all the bottles. I think way back when more “good” wine had lees in the bottles and the wine had to be carefully decanted before serving. “Downton Abbey” had a scene where I think it was Mr. Bates was decanting a French bordeaux. The yeast I select all are known to be good for long term contact with wine and the lees continue to influence the flavors as the wine ages. It is impossible to age a wine in a wood barrel, at least for a positive outcome, in the tiny amounts I’m making as the math is all wrong. Too much wood to wine ratio with a gallon sized wood barrel. The wood to wine contact would quickly make the wine undrinkable.

[bower]

Some lovely colors there @karstopography .

[bower]

The friend who taught me to make wine gave me a trick for a dry wine - you hold back 1/4 of the sugar in the recipe and add it after the first decanting. That way all the sugar is consumed and turned into alcohol.
After a few experiments we came up with a combination of blueberry and red currant to make a dry wine that would pass for grape.
We also made gooseberry wine, which was always cloudy and needed a fining.
Bakeapple wine (aka cloudberry) was beautifully clear and golden color, but the hint of bitter probably due to the large seeds, as you found in the blackberry.
Funny how you don't get those tastes when making jam or jelly, but the alcohol in the ferment really draws out the tannin and other strong flavors.

[worth1]

Not a fan of dry wine of any kind period.
From the beginning it hurts my throat and continues all the way down and causes heartburn.
It's been that way all of my life from childhood.
The only exception was homemade wine from back then which didn't bother me in the least.
I tried somebody's homemade wine from their own grapes some time ago and it was gastly.
Instant headache.


Next, alcohol is a solvent, we should all know this but if anyone didn't they do now.
That alcohol will suck every bit of bitterness out of anything that is bitter and leave it in the product you're making regardless of what it is.
Even a pasta sauce cooked with seeds in it for too long.
Much of this from heat extraction.
I've had almost everything that could be made into wine that grew in the Ozarks and elsewhere.
My absolute favorite was wild elderberry wine made by one particular woman.