Free food from hedgerows & countryside

[Zetetic]

I'd like to start preserving local blackberries in kilner jars for myself and for presents.

What other free food is easy to preserve?

Crab apples
Sloes
Lots of wild plums/damsons round here
Elderflower and berries
Rosehips

Bulrushes are pretty amazing plants too. You can peel and eat the roots, and the soft insides of the stalks. Plus the heads are great for starting fires, and you can make stuff with the leaves.

Mushrooms and roots.

Chestnuts. We get loads from the garden and they last us all year for making stuffing for sunday lunch. I just take off the shells and bung in the freezer. they chop easily from frozen.

Be very careful with mushrooms. People have died from eating wild mushrooms that were incorrectly identified.

Rowan berries can be used to make jelly.

nativeplantwildlifegarden.com/grow-your-own-edible-native-plants-for-new-england/

YY I wouldn't touch mushrooms, apart from puffballs, which are so fecking obvious even I will eat them

I'll leave the mushrooms as I'd be bound to get it wrong. sickness not envy

Thanks for all the other ideas. I will have a look at a couple of storage jars and then experiment.

I think you're right to eschew mushrooms as you're not an expert. They're enjoyable but arguably not worth the risk of making the wrong choice.

I'm in a different country so will have to prep alone for this one... However our spiritual leader Ray Mears swears by pine needles in a tea. Full of vitamins by all accounts.

Like the Moomins going to sleep for the winter on a tummy full of pine needles :)

Do you have cloudberries, MrsT? I shall die of envy if you do.

I love cloudberry jam. No one else like 'jam with shrapnel' so it's all mine.
I've got a number of books, one of my hobbies is historical cookery and that often includes ingredients sourced from the wild.
Mushrooms, no. Not unless you know what you are doing. But you can grow your own, I do.
www.amazon.co.uk/Food-Wild-Ian-Burrows/dp/1780090676/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1447166946&sr=1-1&keywords=food+from+the+wild

Why yes we do, Stratters... northernbushcraft.com/guide.php?ctgy=edible_berries&region=bc The last large patch they found was a ways away from us. No bogs near us

I just bought this book, about Haida Gwai for someone's Christmas. Thinking I should buy one for myself.

I do wish you could grow them, they don't take kindly to cultivation. S'not fair.

You'd need a bog at elevation. Not an easy thing to create in a vegetable garden.

Sounds like a roof garden sort of thing.
Although I roamed over Saddleworth moor for years and never found a cloudberry.

I know :(

And I don't think the Wolds count as 'elevation', so I'm stuffed even if I do manage to recreate 'boggy'.

You're on the Wolds? How very Tiffany Aching of you.

They are supposed to grow, very rarely, found here. I have no idea where though, I do look

Wrong Wolds lovely, Lincolnshire Wolds, not quaite as glamorous :)

That's clearly why you don't deserve cloudberries. On a lighter note, my DUncle was famous for attempting to pass off shots of cloudberry liquor on unsuspecting visitors. Every new BF I had would be warned. It was a rite of passage. He had very good single malts so I think the liquor was a test.

I have heard much about cloudberries - in particular, cloudberry liquor - but to my sadness have never tried them. Should I make the effort?

Thinking about mushrooms, the last wild ones I collected were pretty fly blown and even blackberries don't always look like the ones you can buy - at vast expense - in the supermarket. It's not bothered me because, like fruit straight from a tree, it goes with the territory and you learn what's OK and what is not on a different basis. However, I imagine that many people are going to have to become accustomed to new shapes and looks from eating more 'natural' produce.

(I'm not even going to get into the subject of only eating fresh what's seasonally available rather than items which are greenhoused/stored in some way/ flown in at massive cost from other countries.)

You can eat BULLRUSHES? Cripes. I never knew that.

Not for preserving, but dandelions are edible, and really nice. Like rocket.

xpost. I'd have tried it MrsTerry - especially if he was a malt man.

Yep, you can peel the stalks and roots and boil them. You can even make flour wit them.