Foraging

In this area of Oklahoma, there are three great things to forage for.  Maybe four.  We have morel mushrooms for a very short period, sand plums, wild blackberries, and lambs quarter.  Morel season has come and gone, the plums have about another month before they are ready, and lambs quarter is found all summer long.  Right now it is blackberry time. 

Now you can't text or surf the web with these blackberries, but you can make the other one into an amazing cobbler or jam!  I love blackberry cobbler and jam, so we have been out picking them for the past few days.  They are ripening slowly this year, but the temps are supposed to stay in the 90's for the next several days, so the ones that are just pink will be getting ripe very quickly.  I can't believe people used to treat them as a nuisance plant.  They are quite invasive and I would never try to cultivate them, but I would love to have a very thickets of them on about 5 acres.

Not quite ready

 Found one!

This is all we found today, but a lot more are ripening!

Wild Blackberry article

Sand plums are tiny little things, but they are tasty!  They also make a great jelly.  I hope to find some good thickets of them this year.

Sand plums-courtesy arbucklequ.com

Sand plum info

The morels are really good.  We usually mix them in stir fry or coat them with flour and fry them.  I just wish they had a longer growing season.  You need to be sure you know what a morel looks like as well as the false morel.  The latter is not to be eaten!

Morels

Morel FAQs

You may be less familiar with lamb's quarter.  It is an edible weed.  It makes a great spinach substitute!  I have made creamed lamb's quarter, lamb's quarter enchiladas, and mixed it in my stir fry.  It grows wild just about anywhere.  The young leaves are best, as with most greens.  They are also very nutritious.

Lambs quarter in our yard!

Lambs quarter info
Lambsquarter kid's page