This years bounty and eating a little Wild.

This year has been amazingly bountiful in New England as far as wild plant food goes. The nut trees have been dumping acorns, walnuts and hickory nuts by the bucketfull, so much in some places that I have watched people slip on them like so many marbles dropped on a floor. I have observed many other plants as well, such as Indian Cucumber, grapes, jewelweed, and more. Almost everything I am familiar with seems to be doing very well.

To take avantage of the excess I have been trying to eat more wild plant food. I boiled some acorns and had them for breakfast with an apple (which I picked from the old orchard at work). My intern made wonderfull acorn bread that she shared with us, and one of my co-instructors brought back a raccoon struck by a car after he eased its passing (ended its suffering, for the less squeemish). He cooked it up and we ate it for dinner.

My next step is to save some acorns for further use this winter and try to keep wild things in my diet. Not easy since my time is short and I anticipate some failure to keep it up but its worth a try.

Andy

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