Mulling my foraged treasures from this year
Posted by: TammyI was enjoying the great fall weather here in New England for an hour or so today. In between serious website work, I went visiting a local college campus to check out their surplus store. The store was closed but I found several fantastic shag bark hickory trees that had rained glorious amounts of nuts upon the ground. I grabbed a cloth shopping bag and went foraging!
I don’t buy many nuts simply because my husband is deathly allergic. I use nuts only at Christmas time for fudge and I thought I’d make my dad a batch of maple/nut ice cream topping for a present this year seeing as I have my homemade supply of maple syrup. As I foraged for the small nuts, I was so happy that Mother Nature would supply me with my nut needs at no charge! Picking up those nuts gave me time to ponder the other wonderful things I’ve foraged for this past year like the black berries in Vermont and blueberries in Pennsylvania (both camping trips).).
Our blackberries became blackberry syrup. I canned it up and it will help to stretch our maple syrup supply this winter. I already popped open one jar on pancake night and it was fantastic! I honestly never thought that nothing but maple syrup belonged on a pancake or waffle, but I was WRONG!
The blueberries became wild blueberry jam. If you’ve never had wild blueberries then you’re missing out. Not that domesticated berries are bad, but the small wild version has a tartness that domestics lack. Yes, it takes a lot of work to pick enough of those small gems to make a batch of jam, but it’s worth it! I put up 14 half-pints of jam for this winter.
I have such a level of satisfaction when I look at the jars of syrup and jam on the pantry shelves. I have about 20 lbs of hickory nuts for the holiday season, as well. It feels good to know that I was able to provide for my family right from what Nature supplied.
- Tags: blackberry syrup, foraging
October 4th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Tammy, what do these hickory nuts look like? do you have a picture you could add to your post? I never heard of them and now you made me curious, LOL.