Category Archives: Wild Foods & Foraging

The Paleo lowdown on eating fruit

Posted on 8 March, 2017 by Will Nicolson | 1 comment

It’s a question I’ve been asked time and again since becoming something of a health authority: is fruit paleo? An excellent question, and one which I usually don’t have enough hours in the day to answer in sufficient detail. This, in case you’re wondering, is not one of those times.

Can you eat fruit on a Paleo diet?

The short answer is: yes! While many “hardcore” Paleo punters wouldn’t be caught dead beside a bowl of fruit, it’s totally unreasonable, and in many cases unhealthy, to completely remove fruit from your life. Phew! Am I right?

But that affirmative isn’t your one-way ticket to a daily fruit binge. We know that our Paleolithic ancestors certainly ate fruit – the berries or drupes that they came across in the wild would have provided valuable nutrients and minerals to fill in the nutritional gaps of their predominantly protein-based diets. But what we also know is that those fruits were not the same as those we find on our supermarket shelves today.

If you’ve ever walked through a forest glade and noticed a patch of wild strawberries growing in the sunshine, you’ll know what I mean. Wild strawberries have almost no resemblance to their monstrous cultivated counterparts, and this is due to thousands of years of genetic selection. Some time after the agricultural revolution, around 10,000 years ago, humans began to alter those “wild” fruit species that our Paleolithic forebears foraged. People realized that by only selecting and growing those fruit variants that were larger, sweeter, or more edible, they could develop a whole new “species” of superfruit. This selective style of cultivation continued throughout the millennia, to give us the fruits we are sold today. Yes, even the organic, non-GMO fruit!

In many cases, this was an essential part of allowing humans to eat and enjoy a certain kind of fruit in the first place. For example, the uncultivated, wild version of bananas are actually virtually inedible. Their seed to flesh ratio is so high that it’s almost not worth bothering to eat them, but every now and then a sterile banana is produced that doesn’t have any seeds. It was those sterile bananas that people loved to eat, and they therefore started taking cuttings of the sterile plants and reproducing banana trees without all the seeds. Because they’re all sterile, the only way these trees can be reproduced is by vegetative propagation – taking part of the original tree to create an exact genetic copy of it.

I happen to love bananas, so I’m not going to begrudge those enterprising farmers for playing around with nature. But what these genetic selections means is that cultivated fruit is completely different to the wild fruit our ancestors ate. It’s generally sweeter (so far higher in fructose), less nutritionally dense…and there’s a whole lot more available today than there was 10,000+ years ago!

With this in mind, for the Paleo eater, fruit should become less of a “health food” and more of a nutritious treat. That orange juice with breakfast or fruit smoothie for lunch, by the way, is not what the doctor ordered.

Not all fruits were created equal, however, so if you’re going to get your daily dose of fruit, which is best for your health?

Which fruit is best to eat on a Paleo diet?

There’s a few ways you can approach the healthiest fruit:

how much sugar does it contain?
how nutritious is it?
how much chemical residue does it contain?

Ideally, you’d only eat those fruits that are low in sugar, high in beneficial nutrients, and low in pesticides and herbicides. Often it’s hard to tick all three boxes, but here’s a short overview to get you heading in the right direction.

Sugar content of popular fruit

Generally speaking, your berries and sour citrus fruits have the lowest fructose content, while things like apples, grapes and mangoes have the most. Probably no great surprise – fruit that makes your face pucker up is generally low in sugar!

Avocado (yup, it’s a fruit!): 1 g sugar/cup
Lime: 1 g sugar/medium
Lemon: 2 g sugar/medium
Raspberries: 5 g sugar/cup
Kiwi: 6 g sugar/medium
Strawberries: 7 g sugar/cup
Grapefruit: 9 g sugar/medium
Watermelon: 9 g sugar/cup
Orange: 13 g sugar/medium
Banana: 14 g sugar/medium
Blueberries: 15 g sugar/cup
Dates: 16 g sugar/medium
Apple: 19 g sugar/medium
Mango: 23 g sugar/cup
Grapes: 23 g sugar/cup
Raisins: 86 g sugar/cup

This is just to give you an idea of which fruits are better than others on the fructose scale. On any given day, you’re better off sticking to berries like raspberries, strawberries, cranberries and blackberries, citrus fruit, and maybe the odd kiwi, plum, or watermelon. Fructose is highly inflammatory, and can contribute to conditions like fatty liver disease and diabetes. Generally the less fructose you consume per day, the better.

How nutritious is your fruit?

This is probably the most difficult aspect of prioritizing your fruit. Different fruits contain different ratios of various nutrients, making direct comparison rather difficult. If you’re suffering from cramps or headaches, you could be lacking in potassium, meaning from a nutrient standpoint a potassium-rich banana might be a good choice. If you’re worried about cancer, however, dark-colored fruits like blueberries or strawberries might be a better choice as they have more antioxidants. It really comes down to what your body is lacking. For fruit-specific nutritional content, you might want to check out this database.

Otherwise, a very committed researcher from William Paterson University ranked 47 fruits and vegetables based on 17 different nutrients considered critical for fighting heart disease and cancer. You can check out their handy ranking system in this article. You’ll notice that there’s far more vegetables on the list than fruit. That’s not a coincidence. I’ve stressed time and again that vegetables should form the backbone of produce in your diet, as they’re generally more nutritionally dense and lower in sugar than most fruit.

Those fruit that did make the nutritional cut are tomato (yep, also a fruit!), lemon, strawberry, orange, lime, grapefruit and blackberry. I’d also be inclined to add avocado to that list – it’s certainly a nutritional powerhouse.

All these fruits also happen to have relatively low sugar content. How convenient!

Is your fruit doused in chemicals?

I’ve written about this very topic in my guide to shopping for fruit and vegetables. Based on comprehensive data compiled by the Environmental Working Group, the Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen lists tell you which produce is best to buy based on potential for chemical residue, and which is worst. Based on their findings, avocados, pineapples, mangoes, papayas, kiwi, honeydew melon, grapefruit and cantaloupe have the lowest risk of chemical pesticide, herbicide or insecticide residue. Unfortunately, lots of your favorite fruits didn’t make the cut, including strawberries, cherries, apples, nectarines, peaches, grapes and tomatoes.

You’ll notice that those fruits which made the Clean 15 all have thick skins which you don’t typically eat. Those that were included in the Dirty Dozen have thin skins that blemish easily and are almost always consumed (except for the oddballs who don’t like apple skin!). With this in mind, I have three recommendations: firstly, always buy organic when you can, as this sidesteps any risk of chemical residue. Secondly, if you can’t buy organic, go for those fruits with the thicker (inedible) skins. And finally, if you must eat your non-organic strawberries and other Dirty Dozen fruit, be sure to give them a good soak first.

Recipe: Paleo fruit salad

Personally, I take great pleasure in eating fruit. It adds a whole lot more flavor and color to my day, so I’m not willing to completely throw in the fructose towel! And when you take into consideration the above factors, there’s no reason why you should give up fruit either.

To rekindle your love of fruit, here’s a great recipe for a Paleo fruit salad I’ve honed over the years. Its filled with fruits that have lower fructose content and higher nutritional value, so it’s not only a tasty treat, but a healthy one too! Just be sure to limit your fruit intake to around 2 servings (a couple of handfuls) per day.

Ingredients:

3 plums, cut into wedges
1 peach, cut into wedges (organic or soaked is best)
1 orange, cut or pulled apart into segments
1/2 cup strawberries, chopped in half (organic or soaked is best)
1/2 cup blackberries
1/2 cup raspberries
1 banana, sliced
3 limes, squeezed
1 sprig mint, finely diced

Instructions:

Using a lemon squeezer or your own trusty hands, squeeze the juice from your 3 limes into a small bowl. Remove the mint leaves from the stem, and dice the leaves relatively finely. Add to the bowl of lime juice, and allow to sit for at least 2 hours so that the mint infuses the lime juice.

Next, cut your plums, peach and oranges into wedges, adding to a large serving bowl. Chop up your banana and throw it in, along with your halved strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Peel the orange and add in the segments – if it’s a particularly big orange, you can cut each segment in half to ensure it doesn’t “steal the show”.

When you’re ready to serve, drizzle your lime and mint dressing over the salad, give it a gentle toss to ensure all the fruit is covered and well-mixed, and sprinkle over a garnish of mint leaves if you have any left over. The lime and mint dressing provides a refreshing counterpoint to the sweetness of the other fruits, and has the added benefit of helping to preserve your fruit salad for longer.

Thanks for reading, everyone! Let me know whether you’ve tried the recipe, or if you have your own Paleo-tastic fruit salad to share with the world!

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Posted in Ancestral Nutrition, Real Food Recipes, Uncategorized, Wild Foods & Foraging

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Paleo dog food: what’s best & what to avoid

Posted on 27 December, 2016 by Will Nicolson | Leave a comment

As health-savvy humans, we have the ability to take our digestive wellness into our own hands. We can consciously think about what we eat, knowing the choices we make will affect not only our digestion, but our overall health. Unfortunately, your dog is not so lucky. As utterly loyal and trusting companions, they’ll eat almost any food you give them, whether it’s good for them or not.

I’ve lost count of the amount of people I’ve met who are in tip-top shape themselves, but who own dogs that appear to have serious health issues. While those people might have made a commitment to stay away from the doctor by eating well and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, they don’t think twice about taking their pet into the vet whenever their beloved pooch falls ill.

The fact is, you are responsible for ensuring that your dog receives the best possible food you can get your hands on. Combined with a suitable exercise routine and plenty of TLC, cleaning up their diet will ensure they can achieve optimum health, and you’ll ultimately save big on vet bills and worries. Not a bad tradeoff, when you think about it!

Your dog’s ancestors hold the key

Today’s everyday pooch has had about as much time as we humans to adapt to the typical “modern” diet. For most people (and most dogs), that means lots of grains, lots processed foods, and all manner of additives, coloring agents, and synthetic who-knows what. And like us, all of these ingredients are doing them far more harm than good.

Most canine experts now believe that humans began to domesticate dogs around 30,000 years ago. Around the same time that the agricultural revolution was taking place, as it happens. From this point on, the diet of your dog’s ancestors began to slowly but surely change, as those dogs began to eat whatever was available in and around human settlements. Dogs are opportunistic foragers, after all – they’ll eat almost anything, especially if they’re hungry.

The problem is, the digestive systems of domesticated dogs haven’t been able to evolve at the same rate that their diets have changed. Evolution just doesn’t work that quickly, unfortunately! If it did, gluten wouldn’t be an issue for our gut (which would make an estimated 18 million gluten-sensitive Americans very happy), and we could chow down on sugary treats without any ill-effects. The point is, the digestive system of your dog is still designed to process the foods it’s ancestors ate in the wild, rather than the humanized diet he or she receives today.

How to simulate a wild diet for your dog

Obviously, short of removing your dog’s collar, giving it a slap on the rump and watching it grudgingly trot into the mountains, it’d be rather difficult to exactly simulate the diet that your dog’s ancestors ate. There’s plenty of other factors to consider as well, such as different lineages, cross-breeding, and slight digestive adaptations that are bound to have occurred over 30 millennia or so. With that in mind, you need to work with the tools you’ve got, and as usual paleo is definitely best.

Before we dive in, I’d still advise discussing any planned major dietary changes with your vet. They’ll at least be able to tell you whether any of the foods you plan to give your dog are recognized as unsafe for their digestive systems. Best to play it safe, people!

After doing a whole heap of research and examining the eating habits and responses of my own family’s border collie, I was able to get a good idea of what a modern version of that ancestral wild dog diet might look like. Here’s some of the foods that make up the staples of our pup’s paleo diet:

raw meat (beef, lamb, venison, chicken…basically whatever. Grass fed/pastured and organic is best. This should comprise the bulk of your dog’s diet)
bone broth (usually around 1/4 to 1/2 cup per day, to maintain healthy bones, joints and skin)
raw, uncooked bones (beef, lamb and venison bones are best, as they provide a lot more chewing capacity and don’t run the risk of breaking off into sharp pieces like chicken bones tend to do)
organ meats (liver, kidney, heart, brain, etc. Similar to us humans, eating organ meats once or twice a week can make a big difference to your dog’s health)
eggs (only occasionally, however. Dogs are foragers, and there’s no doubt that they would have wolfed down the occasional egg when it fell out of a tree. Again, make sure the egg is at least free range, if not organic)
certain vegetables and fruit (this one is a little controversial, and experts continue to argue about whether dogs should eat vegetables or not. We occasionally give our pooch the ends of carrots, the odd blueberry, and the odd apple core (seeds removed!). She loves vegetables and fruit, and has never had any digestive issues from eating them)
probiotics (this is purely optional, but it may make a big difference to your pooch’s digestive health – especially if they’ve ever been put on antibiotics)

Keep in mind that the digestive system of your dog is designed to thrive on meat, organs and bones – basically everything they could tear off an animal they hunted down or carrion they came across in the wild. They would, however, have supplemented this primarily meat-based diet with other things, which is where your vegetables, fruit and eggs come in. Once again, put anything wacky past your vet before you give it to your furry friend!

Another thing to remember is that your dog’s stomach might get a little bit upset if you suddenly switch it from a lifetime of processed kibble to just raw food. Start slowly, introducing raw meat into his or her diet a few times a week, then daily, then make the full transition when you think they’re ready. Don’t rush, unless you want to have your carpet ruined!

For more information on this, I’ve examined the issue in further detail on our sister blog, Healthy Paleo Pets. Check out the post here!

When in doubt, observe

While we may not be able to ever really know EXACTLY what it was that your dog’s ancestors ate in the wild, we have a fairly good idea. And for any grey areas, there is always the power of observation! I make a point of closely monitoring my dog when she’s sniffing around outside, how she acts in the kitchen when I’m preparing food for myself, and how she reacts to the food I give her. If she runs outside with violent diarrhea after eating something, it’s obviously not good for her to eat. And if she actively seeks a certain type of food out, and makes considerable effort to eat it, that food should probably make an appearance on her weekly food rotation.

A couple of examples:

we took our dog around to a friend’s place a couple of weeks ago, and she was off like a rocket in the back yard. I followed her over and she’d found a large walnut tree. She then proceeded to sniff out walnuts that had fallen on the ground, artfully crack the shells and eat the walnut flesh inside. Clearly, this was a desirable food for her, and she didn’t seem to react badly to eating them.
my parents have something of a rabbit infestation on their property. Our dog occasionally manages to catch a rabbit (or find a dead one) and wastes no time in chewing it to smithereens. The only parts she seems to leave are the legs and the ears….she even eats the guts! This to give you an idea of just how much of an animal your dog’s digestive system is designed to eat. Each different part (organ, muscle, bone, skin, etc) would provide different vitamins and nutrients essential to the dog’s health.

Keep a notepad handy, and start watching your dog’s every move when it comes to food. He or she won’t get creeped out, I promise.

Foods your dog should stay away from

Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list…once again, if you’re unsure of anything, run it past your vet!

Here’s a list of some of the more common foods that your dog shouldn’t eat. The thing to remember is that their digestive system is very different to ours, so what is safe for us to eat may not be safe for them.

chocolate (everyone knows that one!)
caffeine
onions
garlic
avocado (I’m on the fence about this one. Some experts say dogs should stay away from avocados altogether, and others say the flesh might be fine for them to eat. For more on the matter, check out this article.)
macadamia nuts
milk and dairy products
xylitol
grapes and anything containing grapes (including raisins!)
salt (apparently they get all the sodium they need from raw meat etc)
yeast

Do your research, and know the limitations of your dog’s stomach. It just might save you a costly emergency visit to the vet.

Making your own dog food at home

There’s two ways you can go about ensuring your dog gets the best nutrition: thoroughly researching each manufacturer to determine whether their products cuts the mustard, or making it yourself. For buying dog food, we’ve compiled a selection of paleo-friendly dog foods and treats here. For making your own, it’s up to you what you put in their food – just make sure it is primarily meat-based.

You can also throw a whole lot of ingredients in a blender, then pour the mixture into molds and freeze for later use. Doing it this way, you can prepare as much as a whole month of meals for your dog, and just take them out of the freezer the night before. Here’s a few of the things you could consider throwing in the mix, ordered from most to least:

raw meat – try to get a mix of at least one red meat (i.e. beef) and one white (i.e. chicken). Don’t be afraid to buy the cheapest, weirdest cuts of meat at the supermarket or butcher – they’re often healthier than the typical steak, breast and ground meat you get for yourself anyway!
organ meats – again, raw. A little goes a long way here, and try to put a range of different organs in, as each contains different levels of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.
bone broth
raw eggs

Each time you feed your dog, observe how they react – and if necessary, change up the ingredients to better suit their digestion. Good luck!

Do you have a super-healthy dog food recipe that you’d like to share? Are there any foods your dog has eaten that didn’t go down so smooth? Comment away, we’d love to hear from you!

How to forage tasty wild foods in the fall

Posted on 15 September, 2014 by liivih | Leave a comment

Autumn brings to mind such lovely images, scents and memories. There’s so much delicious produce to buy and favourite recipes to make, all while getting cozied up again in knits, plaid, denim and leather that’s been stored all summer.

This fall I’d like to help you learn about some wild foods you can harvest from your local landscape, so you can branch out from the supermarket or farmers’ market and get all the amazing juicy nutrition that foraged undomesticated foods have to offer.

Where to find wild foods

I’ve had success in urban parks, along river valleys, beside country roads, and exploring trails stemming from dog parks. Once you know what to look for, your eyes start to see tasty wild foods everywhere! :)

What to collect in the Fall

I’m a beginner forager, so I’m not well-versed with the full list of what you could haul in. So far this season I’ve picked up sumac, wild apples, crab apples, may apples, puffball mushrooms, wild ginger and wild leeks (ramps). I’m also experimenting with foraging acorns, nettles and pine nuts.

This post won’t serve as an exhaustive list but I’ll go into some depth on what I’ve learned so far on how to find, harvest and process those wild foods I have experience with, for tasty, nutritious and unique meals.

Foraging for sumac and wild apples

Sumac and apples are pretty easy to find as far as foraging goes. Apples may be untended domesticated cultivars (ie abandoned orchards, or trees that are the “babies” of orchard trees that got pooped out by a bird or whatever and grew somewhere untended). Or they may be wild apples, which are sort of like the apples that would have been found here before settlers came and starting breeding only perfect, big round juicy apples. Domesticated apples are kind of like if you compare wild strawberries vs domestic strawberries – tiny, tart and delicious vs big, GMO and watery. Wild apples are more potent in their antioxidant power and have more varieties of wonderful flavours.

Crab apples vs wild apples?

You may be thinking, oh yeah wild apples! Like those little shitty crab apples that are sour and only taste good when you cook them! Wild apples are actually a little different in that they are the predecessors of our tasty big modern apples. They are just smaller and more concentrated in their flavour. You can recognize that they might remind you of apples that you know, like Gala or MacIntosh or Golden Delicious, but they’ll be like smaller gnarled cute forms of them.

Crab apples on the other hand hang more like cherries on the tree, are much smaller, and are very tart. They are more drop or oval-shaped, not really apple-shaped.

Foraging apples and safety considerations

If you’re ever in doubt of whether a fruit you’ve found is in fact an apple, you can cut it in half along its ‘equator’ horizontally. If it has a star shaped profile with 5 seeds, then it’s an apple.

If you’re harvesting near a road or agricultural area, make sure you wash them well before eating to get rid of airborne chemicals.

I’ve heard that if you find a wormhole that is heading from the inside apple to the outside, this could harbour bacteria. Feel free to just trim off any yucky parts and enjoy what’s left. It’s still a free, delicious, nutritious apple!

Where to find wild apples?

We’ve had luck in an urban park by a river valley in Toronto, a little distance from the river in more dry grassland type spaces. Also along road-sides in the country near Stratford, Ontario. You could try checking the tree maps on FallingFruit.org and see if there are any marked in your area.

What to make with wild apples?

You can experiment with apple sauce, apple butter, apple pie, stewed apples, apple jelly, apple juice or cider, apple vinegar. I’m sure that’s just a start! This weekend we made a beautiful apple crumble from our foraged apples, pears and may apples.

The recipe for wild apple crumble with homemade paleo vanilla ice cream will appear in a later post, which I’ll link to when it’s done!

Foraging for sumac

Sumac is also easy to find, you’ve probably seen it everywhere and not even realised it! It tends to change colour dramatically in the fall and becomes quite striking.

Hold on, isn’t sumac poisonous!?

You’re right, there is one type of sumac which is poisonous, and according to my readings it’s pretty bad too. But luckily it’s very easy to tell the good one from the poison one! Poison sumac has:

white berries
grows in very wet swampy areas
smooth reddish branches

Whereas the sumac you want to be foraging, which is called Staghorn Sumac, has:

red furry berries in a cone shape
grows along roadsides and everywhere else but in more dry woodland areas
furry brownish branches, thus the name Staghorn

So clearly you would need to be pretty confused to mix up those 2.

How to harvest Staghorn Sumac

Harvesting Staghorn Sumac is pretty darn easy. Just clip off those nice fluffy berry bundles and pop them in a bag to take home.

How many should you take? Well first of all, ensure you are respecting the plant and the ecosystem. You should aim not to forage more than 10% of any plant/berry/root/mushroom etc that you find. That way you will ensure the plant can continue to grow for years to come and bring joy and sustenance to other animals (that includes humans don’t forget!)

The other consideration is what you want to make. We made sumac-ade, a refreshing drink, from the sumac that we picked this fall. I found that one head of sumac berries makes one nice tall glass of drink. So that will give you an idea of how much to pick based on your party size and how thirsty you’re all going to be after all this foraging! :)

How to make Sumac-ade

A drink made from sumac is probably the laziest and easiest way you can use your foraged bounty. I know that sumac also has many other medicinal and nutritional applications, but at this particular time I just wanted to enjoy some wild sustenance right quick.

The steps are simple:

Push the furry berries off of their stems into a bowl, just with your hands. If you find the furs to be irritating, you could wear gloves.
Add fresh water to the bowl, about 2 Cups per head of berries. This could be hot or cold water depending on your goal for your drink.
Let the berries soak for about 20 minutes – you can also mush the berries with your hands or with the back of a spoon to encourage their juices to come out.
Strain the juice into a glass, and if you’re doing the cold version you can add some ice if you like!

It’s that simple! So are you wondering what it will taste like? I thought it was quite a bit like cranberry juice, except a lighter gentler version. Really tasty and refreshing, plus the pink colour is gorgeous! I plan to experiment with cocktails in the future…

Foraging for May Apples

So the confusing thing about May Apples is they are not ripe in May, nor are they apples! They are ripe in late summer – early fall (or mid-summer in warmer areas) and they are a strange fleshy fruit that has a pleasant light taste. They are ripe when they are firm and yellow, like a pale lemon yellow. Find them by noting their 1-2 umbrella shaped leaves on a Y-shaped stem, and one single fruit coming from the middle of the Y. You can eat them as is, add them to salads, or make a stewed preserve out of them if you find enough!

Safely identifying may apples

Note that to the inexperienced eye, hogweed has sort of similar-looking jaggedy edged leaves (although hogweed is MUCH larger). Hogweed is a super dangerous plant that can cause chemical burns to the skin. It’s easy to tell the difference though because hogweed is tall (3-5 feet or taller) and has large flowers that have a similar structure to Queen Anne’s lace. The may apple plant is only about max 18″ tall and has white blossoms that look like apple blossoms in the spring.

Wild Leeks (Ramps)

When Will and I learned how to forage wild leeks (also called “ramps”), our leader Peter (from Puck’s Plenty) led us up off the track into a sparsely wooded area and explained how we were standing in a wild leek patch. I was sort of confused and was looking around and asked where the plants were. Peter started pointing them out, and then I started seeing them everywhere under our feet! It’s funny how when your eye gets trained to spot something, you can’t believe you never noticed it before.

How to harvest and prepare wild leeks

The wild leeks will be in bunches, 2/3 buried like you can see in the image above on the left. You can take a spade or small shovel, and gently pry up the whole bunch of leeks (be sure to leave enough to allow the patch to continue to thrive). Then just shake off the worst of the dirt, and stick ’em in your bag! The images above show them washed (top right), and then sauteeing in grass-fed butter (bottom right) – YUM!

I just sauteed them whole, but you could also chop them up. Wild leeks have a delicious spicy taste that is divine with a pork roast or with creative mexican dishes. Next time I’m definitely serving them up with some raw grass-fed sour cream.

Wild Ginger Root

Peter taught us how to harvest wild ginger root without disturbing the plant. First identify the plant by its heart-shaped leaves (pictured below), and then run your hand down and find the main root. The roots are partially above ground so they are pretty easy to follow. You’ll see the main root that has the leaves attached, and forking off of that root will be secondary roots. You can gently tug the secondary root above ground and then snip off a few inches. That’s it! The secondary roots will grow back and you’ve got yourself a tasty aromatic flavouring.

How to find and use wild ginger root

We found our wild ginger on a moist slope near a creek. The plants are about 6″ tall. If in doubt of the plant’s identification, just snap off a little piece of root and sniff it!

We chopped ours up and used it in a stirfry. You can also simply steep it in just-boiled water to make a tea. It has a lovely scent and mild flavour.

Gem-studded mini puffball mushrooms

Mushrooms are a whole different story, as I’m sure you’ve heard. You never want to go foraging for mushrooms unless you’re very experienced (or your guide is!). Luckily Peter is a long-time forager and he taught us about one species that’s pretty fail-safe. It’s a type of mini puffball mushroom called the Gem-studded.

Where to find mini puffball mushrooms

We found our mushrooms in a damp and shadowy pine forest. They enjoy the sparse floor created by all the pine needles. Just take your knife and gently press toward your thumb to cut off the puffball part of the mushroom.

How to make sure your puffball mushrooms are safe

This species is easy to identify because of its little “gems” – the protrusions covering it. Peter didn’t mention any dangerous look-alike species. Another safety net is to cut the mushroom in half vertically – it must be white all the way through.

How to use gem-studded mushrooms

Will and I fried up our little puffballs in butter. They turned beautifully golden but kept their shape, unlike a lot of mushrooms that shrivel when cooked. They had a nice almost ‘meaty’ texture, and unique flavour. Definitely worth trying! The day after our foraging trip we even went out in High Park (Toronto) and found a few more little puffs. They seem to be quite common! We felt confident in identifying them since their gem-studs are so distinctive.

In Conclusion…

I hope this post helps you in your foraging adventures!

Hopefully you’re successful in locating some of these tasty edibles in your area, and may your body thrive on their delicious flavours and juicy wild nutrition.

Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to help you out! Please share foraging stories, recipes or tips in the comments below…