This year my family has been studying wild foods here in Central Oklahoma. We started off the season this summer with blackberries and sand plums, both native to our area. I got four gallons of berries and one of plums. We made a jelled syrup from the plums, but the berries we jammed and some we just froze. There was also a fresh cobbler.
This week I ran across a pear tree along someone’s driveway, and a sign beckoned all comers to take as much as they liked. While pears aren’t native, I believe, this one is prospering and healthy. We took two bushels. But the local persimmons are native, and ripening now, and I got an easy twenty pounds in just a half-hour. We did several things with the pears: diced and canned with a bit of sugar, some jam, and there will be pear sauce next (like apple sauce). The persimmons are pretty much good only as jelly.
We have also experimented with acorns. The big thing is leeching out the tannins, which are toxic in large amounts, hard on the kidneys. The lore says you have to boil them and keep changing the water until it quits turning brown. Then they are dried and ground up like meal. Not real tasty, but somewhat nutritious. At least we know how to handle them.
Eventually we will begin discovering other wild foods. There are a couple of good reasons for this. One, your body responds well to stuff which grows where you live. Barring outright toxins, your body is more likely to accept without complain stuff which is exposed to the same environmental mix as your body. Two, as the economy continues to decline, you may be lucky to get food of any kind. Knowing how to identify and prepare what exists in your area — find out what the primitives ate way back when — may be the difference between survival and starving to death.
