Touring - Wild Foods?

Anyone else have an interest in wild foods on tour?

Any good discoveries?

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Here are a few of the more interesting ones I've found so far:

Sea vegetables. Almost all of them are edible, and some are quite good.

The tougher varieties can be sliced thin and used like noodles in soups. One trick is to roll them up first, then cut slivers off with sharp scissors. It works great.

Mushrooms. Including fire morels, and a variety of different boletus species, chanterelles, Hericium erinaceus (Lion's Mane -- which is excellent and can be very substantial), the edible amanitas, and others.

Dock -- these make great cooked greens, and are also good in salads -- and they are plentiful in some areas.

A variety of other greens are also often available.

Manzanita berries are great, and last for many months.

Madrone berries and toyon berries are often ripe at this time of year.

Blackberries are incredibly abundant in some areas.

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There is something about finding and using these (and being familiar with them) that brings one closer to the natural world.

Fish, dandelions, evergreen tea, apples.

Be aware, however, that in the Rocky Mountains -
Grizzly bears love the huckleberry patches in late summer.

Nice treats, yes. I wouldn't depend on them on my bike trip for major calories. I'm particularly fond of chantrelles.

I'd be worried about harvesting anything from the sea w/o first knowing the local water quality. I'm in South Puget Sound and always worry about the water here and Hood Canal as well as Victoria, where they send raw sewage into the ocean. Even with all those currents, around Victoria, I can't but wonder just how safe it could really be.

You've got to know what you really doing before eating a wild mushroom. If you eat the wrong type, you can get very sick or even die if you eat the poisonous type.

Lots of wild chickens, pigs, and goats in Hawaii. Chickens are the easiest to get if you're good with a slingshot.

Oh, I should add that I never actually killed any of these animals, but I have eaten plenty with those who did :)

Kids are pretty tasty in a stew.

If you hit western Washington or Oregon at the right time you can gorge yourself on blackberries. Yum! If you're down here on the central coast of California, find out about something called "miners' lettuce". It grows all over and it's really good. You could base a salad on it. I don't know much about it - like where else you can find it - but I know we have it here. I'm a teacher, and everytime we go on a nature field trip, the naturalist finds some miners' lettuce and we all eat some.

Thanks for all the interesting replies here.

Others are also most welcomed....

don't forget, if you ride by a farm

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/Pork

roadkill squirrel, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, mustard greens, apples, oyster mushrooms, other stuff

I have never roadkilled a vertebrate w/ my bike (I did biff a bluejay once), but have taken home several birds w/ my old pickup truck. That one deer got away...

not much wild foraging for major calories off the bike, just for flavor, as FB said.

http://www.wildfoodadventures.com/euellgibbons.html

acorns; chestnuts; abandoned fruit and nut trees, and orchards; black walnuts; insects [haven't tried this much, but have heard that some of them are quite good and nutritious. In Africa, some people collect insects near streetlamps, using sheets]; grubs [bears and raccoons like them and get a lot of protein this way; some of the North and South American Indians and Chinese (among others) have used them quite a bit, and apparently they can be good if prepared properly]; seeds [collection devices, like sheets of cloth, sometimes help -- a lot of wild seeds are very small]; mesquite [very very useful, when available -- both the sugary pulp and the nutritious and substantial, protein-rich seeds]; mangoes and avocadoes [wild or abandoned in some areas]; pine needles [all can be used for teas, and are good for vitamin C; some are better than others (sugar pine is good)]; pine nuts [digger pines are among the best (large and plentiful seeds); piñon pines also have large nuts and were valued by Amerindians, and lodgepole pines -- many of other species also have edible nuts, but they tend to be much smaller]; cattails [one of the most useful wild plants]; wild grapes [vikings used them, along with many Amerindians, and they are plentiful in some areas]; tubers, bulbs and roots [brodiaea and wild onions are sometimes abundant, but usually small; some lakes have plants with wild-potato-like tubers]; nettles; nasturtium; cactus

:)This is my first time entering the Touring Forum so please forgive me if I sound ignorant or am repeating someone else's post.

I have a great love of the outdoors and am returning to my interest in edible wild plants that I had in the 1970's. I do more mountain biking than road riding and hope to do some touring/bike camping when certain areas of my life settle down a bit.

Niles H. you seem to have a good grasp on what's available to eat from nature's wild bounty. I was just wondering if you take field guides with you when you tour, or do some research on the area you'll be riding in before hand? When you're touring do you plan meals based on what's available from the wild? Do you use 'wild foods' at home?

Sorry if I seem so direct in my questions but I think this is a really interesting and fun topic.

We had wild food for Christmas dinner. My brother shot, gutted, and cooked the feral pig.

Mrs Ziemas and I are big mushroom hunters, and luckily she has an encyclopedic knowledge of European mushrooms.

We eat a lot of wild blueberries too, with the occasional wild strawberry.

:)This is my first time entering the Touring Forum so please forgive me if I sound ignorant or am repeating someone else's post.

I have a great love of the outdoors and am returning to my interest in edible wild plants that I had in the 1970's. I do more mountain biking than road riding and hope to do some touring/bike camping when certain areas of my life settle down a bit.

Niles H. you seem to have a good grasp on what's available to eat from nature's wild bounty. I was just wondering if you take field guides with you when you tour, or do some research on the area you'll be riding in before hand? When you're touring do you plan meals based on what's available from the wild? Do you use 'wild foods' at home?

Sorry if I seem so direct in my questions but I think this is a really interesting and fun topic.
I'm glad you share the interest.

It is a fun topic.

It seems to enhance touring, and tends toward being more in tune with the natural environment.

Do I take field guides? Yes, sometimes.

Do I do some research beforehand? Yes, often.

Do I plan meals besed on available wild foods? Not exactly, but in a way. I plan on having certain sorts of wild foods available (according to season and place). Specific meals aren't planned, but I make use of what is available (something like improvising from day to day according to what is found), and have some sense of what will be available.

Do I use them at home? Often.

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One good strategy that evolved is to concentrate (at first at least) on the most useful foods in a given place. Otherwise, you can spend an enormous amount of time and effort in learning about all kinds of things that are either very scarce or rare, or very meager in quantity or quality.

You can make better use of time, and make better progress, by taking the most useful ones first -- the ones that are most available and are high in quantity or quality. (And you can skip the rest if you wish -- how far one wants to take it varies from place to place and individual to individual -- whether it's half a dozen of the best, a dozen, twenty, or a hundred or more....)

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Local field guides are sometimes very useful. They can tune you in to the local conditions. Some of the more general field guides can also be useful, but they tend (with some exceptions) not to tune you in to specific local conditions very well, and there are often many species covered in those books that occur only elsewhere, outside the local area.

Some are much more useful than others.

Steve Brill's book is one of the very best I have seen (especially for the east coast, but also for other areas).

For California and the West, Christopher Nyerges' books are among the best I have seen.

There are many many others, and they range from barely intelligible to utterly clear and useful. It helps to go through a few and see which ones have the best and clearest presentations, and communicate most clearly for you.

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The book Into the Wild describes a young man's journey into the wild. He died in large part because of a bad guidebook. He mistakenly 'identified' a plant, and poisoned himself while far from help.

Mushrooms call for extra caution, especially the amanitas. The vast majority of fungal fatalities are at the hands of the amanitas. Some of the deadly ones are almost identical to some of the choice edible ones. There are also variants that are even harder to identify and tell apart. Even experts have made fatal mistakes. I've done a lot of mushroom hunting, and strongly (very strongly) recommend sticking with the 'foolproof' ones, and leaving the rest alone, especially if you are a beginner.

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Another source of good information is Native Americans (or other native peoples). There are books (and teachers) to learn from. Nancy Salcedo's book on California native places is one; there are a number of others. The University of California Press has some excellent books.

Local or regional colleges and universities are another good source. Anthropology departments, botanists, ethnobotanists and others sometimes have good books and information.

There are some botanical gardens that are also useful.

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Native peoples were often very very very much closer to nature, and you can learn a lot from them.

Don't forget about Termite Grubs.....and before someone says "EEEEEW! Yuck!", they taste more or less like Peanuts, but they do squirm a bit. ;) They can be found in rotted logs, just rip them open with a good knife or hatchet. Great protein source though.

You've got to know what you really doing before eating a wild mushroom. If you eat the wrong type, you can get very sick or even die if you eat the poisonous type.

I think Euell Gibbons put it best when he said you don't try to determine if a mushroom is edible. You only eat mushrooms you KNOW are edible.

funny, i was thinking about this before i read the thread. i'm now officially pumped to eat wild purslane and dandelions. also, i made some pine tea today. it tasted okay, it could grow on me. but, it certainly warmed my heart, and supposedly helps cure a cold.

Don't forget about Termite Grubs.....and before someone says "EEEEEW! Yuck!", they taste more or less like Peanuts, but they do squirm a bit. ;) They can be found in rotted logs, just rip them open with a good knife or hatchet. Great protein source though.

How do you know this, Tom? No, wait, please don't tell us.....

How do you know this, Tom? No, wait, please don't tell us.....

Wilderness survival courses.....remember, I used to get into some extremely remote areas for my livelihood.

Fact is, if I have dry socks, a knife and a piece of flint, I can do quite well in the wilderness.

lso, i made some pine tea today. it tasted okay, it could grow on me. but, it certainly warmed my heart, and supposedly helps cure a cold.

I guess it's seasonal but if you soak sumac flowers in cold water you get a lemonade-y kind of beverage. You want the flowers to be fresh-ish though, if they've been rained on a bunch, a lot of the good flavor gets leeched away.

I Love Wildfoods, or "Bush Food" (as its known in Australia)

after doing a bushfood course 2 years ago, my knowledge of the local edibles in my area has grown and expanded, I find it incredible that aboriginal peoples lived completely in harmony with the Aussie bush, the earth is an incredible garden

There are heaps of local native and naturalized bushfoods that are edible, so i won't bore anyone with the list

I suppose the most important species are those which are common pretty much everywhere in ones chosen area of exploration

Gotu Cola grows pretty much everywhere, it's an edible medicinal

All species of Grass are edible, but we can't always digest, so just chew and spit to soak up the nutrients

Lomandra spp. are all edible, but only the white tender bits after you tear a peice off, Grows EVERYwhere water is

the flowers of "Farmers Friends" are edible and so are "Billy's Goat Weed"

The Orange berries of the "Coxspur" vine are fruiting right now in Australia, they are edible

for more info in Oz check out

Wild Weeds of Australia and New Zealand
by Tim Lowe

Bushtucker Field Guide
by Tim Lowe

Fennel can be excellent, and is abundant is some areas. The very young, tender stalks can be eaten as-is, like celery. They have a mild, slightly licorice-like, pleasant flavor, and a tender, succulent texture.

When slightly older, the stalks can be peeled and then eaten in the same way.

The young leaves can be added to salads, and used in other ways.

The seeds have a good, strong flavor, and are useful for cooking, baking, teas, etc.

Other parts of the plant can also be used.

Nice treats, yes. I wouldn't depend on them on my bike trip for major calories. I'm particularly fond of chantrelles.

I'd be worried about harvesting anything from the sea w/o first knowing the local water quality. I'm in South Puget Sound and always worry about the water here and Hood Canal as well as Victoria, where they send raw sewage into the ocean. Even with all those currents, around Victoria, I can't but wonder just how safe it could really be.

I ate sea lettuce and mussels regularly on Whidbey Island for two decades without ill effect, as well as chanterelles and other mushrooms, eight varieties of berries, nettles and various greens, fiddleheads and some insects.

In the Puget Sound, you should check the red tide hotline before gathering from salt water. Anywhere you gather wild food, it's a good idea to consult local gatherers, especially about mushrooms, because local conditions vary.