Morels!

It's mushroom season again!  In the spring the morels are popping and this week I found my first morel!!!!  My friend called it and adult Easter egg hunt and she was right!  I was sooooo excited to find one. 

 

Isn't she pretty!  And she was a good size too.  (I don't know why it's a she just sounded right)

 

Ok so she was the first and only one I've found so far.  Lucky for us I took friends and Super D with me on my hunt. 

 

With all of us we found over 30!  Morels are one of the easiest to identify mushrooms. 

 (Do your research before eating any mushroom! Eating a mystery mushroom can KILL you so be 100% sure of what you have!)

 

And they are delicious!  We sautéed our up with asparagus.

 

Good luck Hunting!  I will be out in the woods again soon looking for more.  With spring all sorts of wild edible are getting ready to be picked. Keep your eye out for them as you hunt :) 

Third times a charm right? Not.

   I attempted twice now to pick and can poke.  I know I've mentioned poke on here before...
Lands Bounty is from when we first learned of how to eat and prepare poke.  DO YOUR RESEARCH! Never eat poke raw and NEVER eat the ROOT!
Poke aka Poke Salat is a southern dish that has been enjoyed for years.  Depending on who you talk to they all prepare it a little different.  After much of my own reading and research this is how we eat it. 

First, Pick a lot! It cooks down a lot like spinach and if you plan to can it you will need three times as much as you need.   Go to above link for pictures of the plant.  I pick them smaller leaves and when they are young is best but I continue to pick smaller leaves from large plants too. 
If we are just going to eat it I wash then boil it.  About 10 to 15 min.  Then pour off the water.  Many recommend that you boil it twice or even three times.  Do your research and decide.  After the first boil it tastes best sautéed in some butter or bacon grease.
My attempt of canning poke did not go well.  After picking and washing a ton of poke I loaded it all into the biggest pot I had full of boiling water to cook..

After it cooked down I used my pasta fork there to move it to my next biggest pot of boiling water.  I put it though a very short second boil and packed it into jars.  I didn't worry about water from the second boil getting into my jars.  The first boil is what boils out all the toxins in poke.

I packed my jars full of poke added 1/2 teaspoon salt and put into my pressure canner.  Here's where everything went wrong. When my jars came out of the pressure canner they had no liquid left in them.  So I figured it was the canner.  I had issues getting it to the right pressure.  I tested my canner and it seemed to work fine so I tried again.  And again failed...
So after two days wasted I gave up on getting any poke canned this year.  I will try again next year. 
So still in denial that my canner was at fault I attempted to can some green beans and again did not get good results.  Seemed to suck the liquid out of my jars. So I think my canner needs new seals as it doesn't want to get to pressure very quickly.  I will not be using it until I get new seals for it.  Hopefully soon.  So this all gets chalked up to Live and Learn.  :) 

Sassafras Tea

Nothing says summer like Sassafras Tea.

This is a Sassafras sapling.  Sassafras is a type of tree, not just my oldest daughters alter ego, it used to be used commonly for tea and making root beer.  The roots of the tree smell a bit like root beer.  I have more pictures here from a post I did our first year. The Lands Bounty
Like with anything you pick from the wild be sure of what you are getting.  Don't use my site alone to identify and do your research.  Sassafras does contain a chemical that the FDA determined was dangerous which is why root beer is no longer made with Sassafras. I talk about it more on The Lands Bounty post.

Okay on to tea...Girls and I picked a bit of the leaves for our tea.  I just get a good handful and tear them up a bit and put them in a pot with water and heat.

I bring the water to a boil then turn off the heat.  Let it steep for a bit.

We like this tea cold so I stain and pour over ice.  I usually pour while it is still hot so that it dilutes is a bit. 

This batch was very green but I can come out a more yellow color too.  We decided the tea smells like fruit loops.  We usually sweeten it just a bit.  It has a very light, sweet, vanilla like flavor. 
Enjoy!

Hunting again...

A couple weeks ago after all that rain we got we did get a day to go mushroom hunting again.  We checked out a new trail we had never been on.  It's part of the Devils Backbone Wilderness in the Mark Twain National Forest (Which we are pretty much surrounded by). 
We had a fun surprise at the trailhead....

We opened this box to check it out.  It had a paper to sign in on and told what trail we were taking and had two little mice to welcome us to the forest...

  I admit I jump a bit but they were pretty cute, This is Sugar Bug begging to pick one up. I tell you she is fearless!  They seemed right at home and let us borrow a pencil to sign in with.  They were still there when we left. 

On to the hike..

We found two of these cool stick bugs.  These ones were yellow and red but we have seen them to be green or brown too. Like this one we had on the trailer.

We did find some mushrooms too. I have no idea what the one above is but the one below is a puff ball.

  This was our haul for the day.  We've gotten better about not picking everything but just got samples of ones we didn't know what they were.  The girls did awesome coming home and working to identify them..  We did have some edibles and had a good lunch of ramen and wood ear.

 

We haven't had a chance to get out again but hopefully our weather will cool off again and we can hunt some more before the year is over. :) 

Spring Edibles

Good Morning! Well it's a beautiful morning here in the Ozarks!  The sun is shining, it's the perfect temperature, the birds are singing and the roosters crowing. 

Soooo, yes I have not made my weekly posts like promised. Life just got in the way again!  But really I'm not complaining.  I have a new job to help bring in a little extra $ so we can get things going on the homestead here.  We are in good shape but just not as far along as we'd like to be.  But on to the good stuff......

This meal I made a couple months ago but these things are still growing strong now.  Wild onions and chickweed. 

This is chickweed.  It hasn't flowered yet but has tiny white flowers when it does.  This is a weed to most people and grows pretty much year round here.  It is a tasty green and also used to make teas and healing salves. Once you get this on identified it is easy to find.  Search the images and look at lots of pictures then go hunting. :)  It grows close to the ground but can get tall in some areas.



http://plantscience.psu.edu/research/centers/turf/extension/plant-id/grasses/wild-onion-1/wild-onion-2/view

This is wild onion.  It comes up mostly in open fields in the spring.  It looks just like green onions from the store although usually a little smaller.  This picture I got from Penn state website as I forgot to take a picture of our onions. But they all look the same :) 

Now that you have wildcrafted your veggies lets get to the meal.  (Wildcrafting means harvesting wild growing plants for use)

Burritoes with homemade tortillas

So I made pinto beans on the wood stove on a cool day.  The wood stove and dutch oven (cast iron pot the beans are in Thanks mom!) work much like a slow cooker which is how I would have done them before our move. 
 I soak about 2 cups or so of beans over night or sprout them.  To sprout them soak overnight drain off water and set in a sunny spot with a loose cover.  The next couple days just wet them down once a day draining off extra water until you see little sprouts coming from the beans.  Sprouted beans are healthier and cook faster.  But like most sometimes I don't remember to do that before I want to have a meal with them.
 Cover the soaked beans with water and bring to a boil. Simmer until done.  Or dump them in the slow cooker with water and turn on. Low or high. Low takes 6-8 hour. 
When my beans are about half done or close to done I add:
about a tablespoon or so of...
Cumin
Smoked Paprika
Oregano
Garlic Powder
Then a teaspoon of Cayenne.  or more if you want it more spicy. 
Chopped onion (not the wild) is also a good addition.

Next

Tortillas

3 Cups Flour (can be wheat or white or mix, I usually use wheat but use white to roll them out)
2 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Salt
4- 6 Tablespoons Oil (use olive, a veggie oil, butter, coconut, or mix just what flavor you want? I usually use butter)
1 1/4 Cup warm water

Mix your dry ingredients.  Cut in the oil. Stir in water.  When it's hard to stir knead in any remaining flour.  Sprinkle your counter with flour and tear off a lime size ball of flour and roll out the thinner the better but you don't want it breaking in the middle either.  Get a skillet hot and place tortilla in it. Cook a min or two per side until it starts to look dry and brown slightly.  If you want larger tortillas use bigger piece of dough or smaller for smaller tortillas.  Just make sure you have a skillet large enough for the tortilla to lay flat.
As you can see in the picture above I don't get them perfectly round but these taste sooo good.  They keep a couple days if you have extra. 
Recipe above makes about 8-12 tortillas.   We rarely have extras :) 

Make your burritoes with all your favorite toppings.  Don't forget the Chickweed and wild onions.  We usually brown a little meat to go with ours and I use the same seasoning that I so in the beans on the meat. 
  This is a very yummy and cheap meal for us.  I never pay more than $1 per pound for the pinto beans.  So in all this meal cost me about $7 for my family of 4. 
$1 worth of beans (although I had left overs of beans)
$2 worth of Flour and tortilla ingredients
$1 Worth of Spices
$3 Worth of Salsa. (my family likes salsa, after the garden gets going I'll make my own but for now we buy it and it costs a bit)
Free Veggies! 
 Of course cost will go up with more ingredients but this is what we spent..  I'm estimating all cost biased on what my local store charges for groceries.  I did base it on the name brand stuff that is more expensive than what I actually buy because I figure that is what most will have so you can pull this off a bit cheaper if you look for deals.  But really Under $10 to feed a family is a great deal!!!

Have a good dinner!  Enjoy!

Fall! Whoo Hooo!

 Fall has arrived to our neck of the woods. I love fall!  This is what it is supposed to look like in October.

Not snow on the ground which was quite likely when we lived in Colorado. :)  October here also means a birthday.  Sassafras turned 14 this week!  We got to have a great party outside in the beautiful weather with a great game of kickball in the field and of course cake. I think she had fun!

   The cake says "Sing your heart out"  My girl loves to sing! 

Mr. R gave Sassafras a bar of soap. He said he liked to give kids something they can use.  But give him credit there was $ hidden inside :)

Sweet ma and her girls!  They are growing way too fast!

We partied late into the night.  My poor little niece just couldn't stay awake any longer.  Sassafras enjoyed her party with new friends and family!
  Along with fall means we spend more time outside in the woods.  Well hiking through the woods means poison ivy we've learned.  Poor Sugarbug got a really bad case a week ago.

My girl was miserable!  This was just her face and arm but she had a rash over her belly and legs too.  We're not sure how she got it so bad.  We've been careful to watch for it and when we've had to walk through it we wash quickly but it is really a silent attacker.  You can't see the oil or smell it if you get it on you it is easy to spread all over and the rash doesn't show up for almost two days.  Nasty stuff that we are learning to deal with.  So far we've all had a spot or two of it.  Sugarbug had the worst case so far though.
The pay off to walks in the woods- Mushrooms! 

Yes that is a massive mushroom!  We believe it is a Hen of the Woods.  And it is edible and good.  I made mushroom soup with that and still had a gallon bag full to freeze and some for our lunch meal the next day! We have gotten good a identifying several edible mushrooms that a good eating to add to our meals.
Soon we'll have chickens to add to our homestead.  Enjoy your fall weather!

Crazy Mushroom People

A friend dubbed us the Crazy Mushroom People.

I think I'm beginning to see why.

 

We went mushroom hunting again!  I think we are slightly addicted and love tramping through the woods.  We are getting better about spotting them and knowing what we want to look for. 

Beefsteak Mushroom- Super D tried said it tasted acidy.  (AGAIN DO NOT TRY A MUSHROOM THAT YOU ARE NOT 100% SURE IT IS WHAT YOU THINK IT IS! PICTURES ARE NOT ENOUGH FOR IDENTIFICATION. Local names of mushrooms are different in different areas most use the Latin names to identify. Don't use my pictures alone to identify a mushroom do your research.  I can not be responsible for you getting sick or worse!)

 

These are our pear shaped puffballs.  We got a whole basket full.  They were wonderful.  A light mushroom flavor.  We sauteed them in butter and onions flavored with a little garlic and added cheese.  Yum!

These are our Giant Puffballs.  These were almost the size of a soccer ball.  They are edible when fresh but these where a little too old.  When we cut them open they were yellow and green on the inside, when young they are pure white.  We'll keep our eyes peeled for more of these!

  We saw these monsters on the road while going 50mph down the highway!  Of course we had to stop.  No idea what they are we couldn't identify them but they were cool looking.

Mushrooms come in more colors and shapes than I ever could have imagined!  The red one is small but so cool looking.  It was a very delicate mushroom and slimy feeling. Below is a coral mushroom.  Edible and good.  This is what we were on the hunt to collect. 

 

We were successful!  That mountain of coral will feed 3 families!  The purple ones are  Purple-Gilled Laccaria and they are absolutely delicious.  We really like them.  They taste like your classic mushroom only better.  I'm sure our mushroom adventures aren't over anytime soon.  I only shared a couple of our 100 pictures we have already.  Glad you could join us.  :)

Hunting Mushrooms

      There is nothing better than walking through the woods on a cloudy, misty day.  No heat to deal with and the bugs aren't usually out yet if you've had a good rain.  But that doesn't mean the animal aren't busy and tracks show up better in the muddy areas.  The best part is mushrooms are popping up everywhere.  I never knew there was such a variety of mushrooms in the world. We had two days of mushroom hunting and collected probably over 150 mushrooms most of which we couldn't identify but some we did. 
   Again as with anything from the wild please do your own research before you eat anything!!  Mushrooms can be especially dangerous as you must be very careful to know what you are eating making a mistake can be fatal.  We used books, pictures, and internet to identify our mushrooms and did not even taste anything we were not 100% sure about. Pictures will not do it alone as so many of the mushrooms look alike and may look like a poisonous counterpart.  You have to study descriptions and often take spore prints of the mushrooms to determine what they are. I can not be responsible for someone eating a poisonous mushroom.
  That said we have had alot of fun exploring and learning about what the earth has to offer us. 

The Mother Lode of Mushrooms!

                                                       In the end all our mushrooms filled that 5 gallon bucket.


Here is our prize mushroom.  Super D found this while hunting.  No deer but I think this was better.

                           This is called a Bearded tooth mushroom and it was good to eat!  These are rare to find and this provided enough for six people.  It was meaty and super yummy fried up.

                             These are a honey mushroom but there are several varieties and we were not successful in figuring out which one these were.  Some are edible and some aren't so we didn't chance eating these.

       These are a Pale Jelly Roll. They are not edible but pretty cool to look at.  They wiggle like jello.

     Ever see a blue mushroom?   These are the Indigo Milky.  They leak a blue milk like liquid when damaged.  They are edible but we didn't get the chance to eat these yet.  I'll report on taste next time.

    How about a purple one?  We never did figure out what this was.  But it was a cool looking! 
Can't wait to go hunting again!

The Land's Bounty

               DISCAIMER!  I am not a professional on plant identifcation!  These are simply my experiences and I can not be responsible for your choices.   Please make informed choices and do your research before eating any thing from the wild.   Be sure of what you are doing!

        No the garden is not producing yet, ours still has a couple weeks before we get any produce from it.  This year our garden is very slim. But next year we will have a much bigger garden that I’m sure will grow each year.  But even though we haven’t planted much the land has provided us with an abundance of good food.  We have been eating nettle, poke, sassafras, fish, elk, goat and blackberries.  We have had several meals that consisted of food we gathered or Super D hunted.   One such meal consisted of ground elk, boiled poke, and sassafras tea.  Everything we’ve gathered from the land we did our research for to know how to pick it, how to prepare it, and the benefits of it. 

Poke is a plant that grows in this part of the country, most consider it a weed.  It is NOT safe to eat raw.  It will make you sick.   Some do not consider is a safe plant to eat at all.  You will want to do your own research to make your own choices.  Here’s how we prepare and eat it.  We pick the smaller leaves as this plant can grow very tall.  It cooks down to almost half it’s original amount like spinach so pick twice as much as  you think you need.  Then get out a big pot fill with water and get it boiling.  Add the poke and cook for about 5 mins.  Make sure you drain off the water.  From all I read the poison that can make you sick is boiled out of the plant when you cook it. Most sites even say to drain the water and boil it twice.  We haven’t been boiling it twice and no one has gotten sick from it.  When it is full grown it has berries that are not edible!  The stem and berries turn a reddish purple color.  Poke pictured below.

Sassafras is a tree that at one time was used for tea and to make root beer.  The FDA has since outlawed it’s use for root beer.  They claim it contains a dangerous compound but upon further investigation they tested this compound alone on rats in extordinary amounts and found it did harm.  We decided that it was not a threat to us. We have picked the leaves to make tea.  Super D calls it root beer tea and really likes it.  (This man has never drank tea willingly until we moved here)  It does slightly have a root beer taste but not as sweet.  We even dug up some of the root and made our own homemade root beer.  It is very good!    We have Sassafras trees growing all over the border of our property. 

Small seedling trees that pop up close to bigger trees.

Roots I dug up.

Root shavings that we boiled to make our homemade root beer.

               Stinging Nettle is also considered a weed by some.  It is also an herb.  From what I’ve learned it is more nutritional than spinach!   This grows so very plentiful in by the rivers here.  It seems to like sandy areas to grow.  It is a plant that the locals and most avoid as when you brush up against it it has tiny little needles that stick to you and sting like crazy!  It’s also been called fire weed for this reason.  It has a powerful sting.  But if you pick it with gloves very carefully and boil it the chemical that causes the sting is broken down.  Nettle can be added to soups and cooked to other recipes.  I also pick it to dry and use as an herb in teas and infusions.  Sorry I don't have any pictures of Nettle yet.  Will work on that to add. :)
          There are many other herbs that grow around here but these are the ones I’ve learned about so far.  As I learn more I’ll share it!              We just got a book on mushrooms for a new adventure.