Foraging Mallow

I'm not an experienced forager, and I've never actually taken any classes or learned from an experienced forager. Everything I know about foraging I've learned off the internet. That's why I don't take any risks, such as picking wild mushrooms. I don't know enough to be sure that I won't be poisoned. I stick with plants that are common, easy to identify, and most importantly, don't have any poisonous look-alikes.

Which is why mallow is a great wild edible for beginners. It's super easy to find and identify, and it's a weeds, so it grows pretty much everywhere. You've probably seen it before; it grows quite prolifically along the sides of sidewalks. I find that it likes edges and corners the best, but again I don't have a whole lot of experience. It's highly unlikely that you'll find a single mallow plant growing alone; the usually grow in large clusters close to the ground. This is nice, because you only really need to find a few large mallow patches to harvest a decent amount. As far as I know, only the leaves are edible. It does have one really similar look-alike, but it's edible too, so it doesn't really matter.

It even grows in empty pots.

Mallow can be eaten raw, but it's a bit fuzzy, so I wouldn't recommend it. It can be cooked like any other green, in soups, casseroles, etc., but it's best to mix it with other greens. For more recipe ideas, check out this site. I'm not a huge fan of the taste, so I've decided to dry my mallow and turn it into a powder. Apparently this powder can be used to thicken soups. I've never heard of greens thickening soups, but it's definitely a healthier option than other thickeners, so why not try it out? It'll probably also be nice in smoothies, and much easier and faster than always washing and stemming your greens before blending them.

I don't have a dehydrator, so I sun-dried my mallow. To do this, first wash the leaves and spin them as dry as possible. Remove any stems. Spread the leaves out on a cookie sheet, on parchment paper if you don't want to clean the sheet. I like to put a wire cooling rack on top of leaves to keep them from blowing away in the wind. Leave this out in a sunny spot for a few hours, until dry. Obviously, the hotter, sunnier and dryer the day is, the faster the leaves will dry.

Powder the leaves by pounding with a mortar and pestle, grinding them in a coffee grinder, or by blending them  in either a food processor or blender. I think the coffee grinder would be the most effective.

You're going to end up with a lot less powder than fresh leaves, so pick a lot!

This is all I got from the entire pan, about 1/2 cup.

Happy foraging!

Foraging for Cattails

Pretty much every website that I've looked at regarding cattail pollen collecting says that the best time to collect the pollen is in spring. Well, it's July now, and the cattails have just started producing pollen. :P Obviously the people writing these websites live in a much warmer part of the world than I do.

Anyway, I collected a bunch of cattail pollen a few days ago, and I'm going to use it to make cattail-acorn bread later on, after my 1 month raw food trail run. Speaking of which, I'm finding it very hard to enjoy my salads when my family is eating BBQ chicken legs right in front of me. I've decided that I love chicken and I really wish the farm I buy meat from didn't charge so much for them and have them available so infrequently.

But back to cattails. Cattails are a great thing to forage, since they have something to offer all year round, and they provide lots of different edible parts. You can eat the flower spike, the roots, rhizomes, the heart of the leaves, and the pollen. And apparently the mature brown part can be used as tinder for fire and the leaves can be used for weaving. Cattails also produce more starch per acre than any other crop. However, the only thing I was collecting was the pollen. I might try collecting the flower stalks next year, and maybe some rhizomes, but the roots apparently help to stabilize river banks and stop erosion, and they also filter toxins from the environment, so if I do decide to collect some roots, I'll be careful not to collect very many.

 So to collect cattail pollen, obviously you need to find some cattails, the more the better. I found this field beside one of the biking/walking trails in the middle of the city. Go figure. If you're not lucky enough to find a big field of them, you can still probably find some cattails growing in ditches. I collected pollen from the cattails growing in the ditches around my house in addition to what I found in this field.

You'll want to look for these; cattail flower stalks full of pollen. When you find one, carefully bend the stalk so the flower head is upside-down, then shake the pollen into a bag. 

 If you manage to find a bunch of stalks as heavy with
pollen as this one, you should be able to fill your bag in no time!

The pollen can replace some of the flour in baked goods. Happy foraging!