Foraging is a great way to add variety to your diet and supplement your food supply. Knowing how to forage is also a good survival skill. Foraging is also a good way to die.
I will probably write about this again whenever something comes into season, so I'll keep my focus narrow.
There are some basic rules, such as never eat mushrooms that have gills or any mushrooms that you aren't willing to risk your life eating. Morels are safe, but would be worth risking your life for anyway. Another rule is never eat berries in the wild unless they are blackberries, salmon berries, mulberries, thimble berries or other aggregate berries (made up of small drupelets according to Wikipedia). And if they taste bad, spit them out. Too many berries in the wild resemble blueberries, but turn out to be deadly nightshade or some other plant seeking to fertilize itself with your decomposing remains.
There are many edible greens that are easily identified, like dandelions, lambs quarters and sorrel, but there are plenty of greens that shouldn't be touched, let alone eaten. Possibly the worst half hour of my life was spent after brushing against stinging nettles. Thank goodness there was a mud hole nearby to jump into.
Today I want to talk about poke. When I was growing up we called it poke, poke greens or pokeweed. I never heard it called poke sallet or poke salad until the Tony Joe White song in 1968.
Growing up on a farm I had few ways to make money. I got paid to clean fish for my dad; I hired out to pick strawberries for the Stilwell frozen strawberry company; and after strawberry season I picked poke greens, stuffed them into a gunny sack and sold them to the feed store for two cents a pound. The feed store in turn sold them to Allen's cannery in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. Last time I checked, Allen's canned poke greens were still available in stores.
My dad loved poke greens and ate them several times each spring while they were still young and tender. Conventional wisdom held that poke greens were poisonous, but if you boiled them several times, changing the water in between, they'd be good to eat. I always had a bad reaction to them and my throat would close up. It wasn't an allergic reaction, just a nasty short term discomfort.
We had all heard stories about the tourists who died because they mistook poke roots for sweet potatoes. I never understood how they happened to dig up and cook roots from a plant that looks nothing like sweet potato. My grandmother always warned me that the roots were the most poisonous part of the plant. She also warned me that poke berries were poisonous.
I knew a number of people who said they loved poke berry jelly. We never made poke berry jelly. My mom thought it was silly. Poke berry jelly is just apple jelly with a few poke berries to add a purple tint. Why use poisonous berries when you can just use food coloring.
When I lived in the coastal mountain range of Oregon raising goats, I found poke growing along the road. I was doing a lot of foraging at that time and I decided to find out for myself if poke was poisonous. I called poison control. The woman I talked to told me there was no part of the plant that wasn't dangerously toxic and no amount of boiling and flushing would make it safe. That settled it. It also made me feel bad about the many hundreds of pounds of poke I had put into the food supply.
I will probably write about this again whenever something comes into season, so I'll keep my focus narrow.
There are some basic rules, such as never eat mushrooms that have gills or any mushrooms that you aren't willing to risk your life eating. Morels are safe, but would be worth risking your life for anyway. Another rule is never eat berries in the wild unless they are blackberries, salmon berries, mulberries, thimble berries or other aggregate berries (made up of small drupelets according to Wikipedia). And if they taste bad, spit them out. Too many berries in the wild resemble blueberries, but turn out to be deadly nightshade or some other plant seeking to fertilize itself with your decomposing remains.
There are many edible greens that are easily identified, like dandelions, lambs quarters and sorrel, but there are plenty of greens that shouldn't be touched, let alone eaten. Possibly the worst half hour of my life was spent after brushing against stinging nettles. Thank goodness there was a mud hole nearby to jump into.
Today I want to talk about poke. When I was growing up we called it poke, poke greens or pokeweed. I never heard it called poke sallet or poke salad until the Tony Joe White song in 1968.
Growing up on a farm I had few ways to make money. I got paid to clean fish for my dad; I hired out to pick strawberries for the Stilwell frozen strawberry company; and after strawberry season I picked poke greens, stuffed them into a gunny sack and sold them to the feed store for two cents a pound. The feed store in turn sold them to Allen's cannery in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. Last time I checked, Allen's canned poke greens were still available in stores.
My dad loved poke greens and ate them several times each spring while they were still young and tender. Conventional wisdom held that poke greens were poisonous, but if you boiled them several times, changing the water in between, they'd be good to eat. I always had a bad reaction to them and my throat would close up. It wasn't an allergic reaction, just a nasty short term discomfort.
We had all heard stories about the tourists who died because they mistook poke roots for sweet potatoes. I never understood how they happened to dig up and cook roots from a plant that looks nothing like sweet potato. My grandmother always warned me that the roots were the most poisonous part of the plant. She also warned me that poke berries were poisonous.
I knew a number of people who said they loved poke berry jelly. We never made poke berry jelly. My mom thought it was silly. Poke berry jelly is just apple jelly with a few poke berries to add a purple tint. Why use poisonous berries when you can just use food coloring.
When I lived in the coastal mountain range of Oregon raising goats, I found poke growing along the road. I was doing a lot of foraging at that time and I decided to find out for myself if poke was poisonous. I called poison control. The woman I talked to told me there was no part of the plant that wasn't dangerously toxic and no amount of boiling and flushing would make it safe. That settled it. It also made me feel bad about the many hundreds of pounds of poke I had put into the food supply.
Poke plants are easily recognized by their leaf shape and purple-hued stalks.
Poke berries ripen at the height of summer and look tempting. They are very juicy and will stain anything their juice touches. It only takes a few berries to cause serious toxic reaction.
We have one huge patch of the perennial weeds every summer. The berries are safe for birds and they attract the elusive pileated woodpeckers, so we let them stay.
Stephen
All photos are copyright 2017, Stephen P. Scott
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