Michele B. Decoteau | Bay Area Community Exchange

Suburban Foraging 101: How To Find Free Food

20-09-2011

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Food is out there – just hanging on vines, dangling from trees, and lying on the ground. And it is going to waste. How can you gather some of this food? Forage. Suburban landscapes are rife with edible food that no one realizes can be used and preserved.

Note: Before you saunter up to a grape vine or productive tree, make sure you have the owner’s permission. If there is no clear owner, gather cautiously and be prepared to give up your harvest if the owner appears. Never gather anything you cannot clearly identify either. There are many berries that have look alikes that can be dangerous.

Here are a few ideas of places to start looking for this food and enjoying the bounty:

Apple trees

Many areas of the northeastern states were once pasture lands and had apple trees. Check out leafy pathways and old trails that when explored could yield old fruit trees such as apple or pear trees. Most older houses, even modest ones, had a few fruit trees here and there. Urban landscapes often yield an old apple tree or two if you look on the path less traveled.

Apples can be eaten fresh, dried or preserved. Since wild apples often are less than perfect, using them for apple sauce or apple butter is also ideal. You can turn them into apple sauce by peeling, coring and chopping them. Cook them gently and add a splash of water if necessary. Taste after the apples have broken down to see if you need to add sugar or honey. The applesauce can be used right away, canned or frozen for later use.

Grapes

There are a few different types of grapes that are growing wild along the edges and in nooks of suburbia. Concord grapes are an excellent place to start. The fruits are large and easy to pick. Remember they have seeds that are fairly large so don’t bite into them without expecting seeds big enough to almost be a pit. Concord grapes make excellent jam. You not only have to take the seeds out, but slip the skins off as well. Chop the skins up very finely and add that to the grape pulp when you measure your fruit for jam.

In addition you can use the leaves for stuffed grape leaves. Just rinse the leaves and use as you normally would use grape leaves. Grape leaves from the store are usually canned in brine, or salt water. Remember to adjust your recipes.

Nuts

There are a variety of nuts that can be just gathered from the ground at the right time. Walnuts, hickory nuts and butternuts are but a few of the nuts that can be gathered by foragers who know what they are looking for. Most can be simply shelled and eaten but generally will taste better with a little dry roasting. Just heat them up in a dry pan until they begin to smell warm and nutty. One note, hickory nuts can be deceiving so double check that you are getting tasty varieties and not bitternut hickory which lives up to its name.

Have you ever foraged for food in the wild? Tell us what you found in a comment!

Three Easy Ways To Preserve Blueberries

By: Michele B. Decoteau

14-09-2011

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Blueberry season is at or just past peak in most parts of the country and this means low prices for blueberries at the market or your favorite pick your own farm.

Blueberries are an easy crop to pick and all ages can participate since the berries are at all heights you don’t need to reach up or down to get them. If picking your own isn’t an option, pick up berries at the super market when they are at peak season and have a low price. Stock up with more than you can use right away, and use these handy methods to preserve them for the winter.

Freezing

Freezing is the easiest way to story extra blueberries. First, rinse them an pick them over removing stems, flowers and unripe berries. Give them a rinse and lay them on a drying rack or fluffy towel to dry.

Once dry put them on a baking sheet or tray in a single layer so they aren’t touching. Pop this in to the freezer at least overnight. Then scoop the berries in to freezer bags or reusable containers. Check your favorite recipe and bag that amount for easy use. Generally recipes for cakes and muffins use a single cup of berries so that is a good place to start. Label and store. Put the date frozen and the amount on the bag so in a few months you can quickly know what you have.

Canning

Canning blue berries is quite straightforward. They don’t have skins or leaves that have to be removed nor do they have pits or seeds to take out. They are wash and go for canning. Jam is an easy place to start. If cost is an issue, check yard sales for canning jars and equipment. Jars and rings, the bit you turn, are reusable. The lid, the bit that is on top of the jar, is not reusable so plan on purchasing them.

Not sure where to begin? Try asking your mother or grandmother or an older neighbor. Many people canned more frequently during times of economic stress and of these folks can give you guidance. If this isn’t an option, try The Blue Canning Book from Ball. It is the best guide to preserving your harvest and has very clear directions for beginners.

For any canning project it is always helpful to have a jar grabber, lid magnet and large funnel. These can be purchased as a kit at most big box stores for very little money.

Freezer jam is a good place to start if you don’t want to purchase much extra equipment. Also don’t think of canning as just jam. Pie filling and syrup can also be made from blueberries.

Drying

Drying blueberries is quite an art. The skin of the berry needs to break first and the easiest way to do this is to freeze the berries first. Once the berries are frozen, defrost them right on your dehydrator trays. If the holes are too big, use some parchment paper or wax paper first. This will slow the process down a bit, but blueberries don’t take that long to dry since they are already small.

Enjoy the harvest as long as you can – berries are a delicious treat all year long and when you save them yourself, you know exactly what is, and isn’t, in the foods you eat.

Have you ever preserved fresh fruit or veggies? Tell us about it in a comment!

Top Image Credit: Flickr – kckellner

5 Unusual Ways To Use Honey At Home

By: Michele B. Decoteau

13-09-2011

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Although honey is best known for its delicious stickiness, it has other uses as well. Still-edible honey has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs centuries later. What makes this golden liquid last for hundreds of years? It’s all in how it’s made.

Honey is made by bees. Honeybees are the makers of the honey that humans consume, but there are a few other species that make it to feed their larvae as well. Honeybees just make a lot of it.

Bees collect nectar from flowers. Nectar has a high water content and low sugar content. The bees carry this in their honey stomach and transfer it to house bees when they return to the hive. The house bees add some enzymes to the nectar and deposit into a honeycomb cell in the hive. The bees will then work to evaporate the water from the nectar until it has a very low water content – usually below 18 percent. It is this very low moisture and high sugar content that gives honey the following special properties:

1. Wound care – Honey is naturally antibacterial and this can help cuts, scrapes and burns heal faster. The low moisture content inhibits bacterial growth and forms a moisture barrier giving your body protection while healing. If you cannot find an antibacterial ointment, put a few drops of honey on the pad of a bandage before applying to a wound.

2. Acne treatment – a dab of honey will inhibit bacterial growth. Often acne will irritate skin and honey will sooth skin by attracting moisture.

3. Care packages – When you are sending cookies or brownies to college students or service men and women, honey will keep your cookies moist. Honey is a humectant meaning that it draws moisture into itself.

4. Preservative – Honey never goes bad and this can help to preserve other foods such as fruits and cheeses and even in some cases, meats. This is an ancient idea and has newer scientific evidence behind it. Honey will produce low levels of hydrogen peroxide which can kill bacteria. Honey’s low moisture content and the physical barrier combined with the way the sugars break down into hydrogen peroxide, make honey an excellent preservative.

5. Weight loss and diabetes – Honey is a sugar but unlike most other types of sugar, honey contains many other nutrients. Check with your doctor about your diet, but if you are able to consume sugar, honey will make an excellent substitute.

To get the maximum benefits from honey, use raw, local honey, and keep in mind that heating or exposing honey to sunlight will change the properties of the honey.

Image Credits: Flickr – Siona Watson | Orin Zebest

Delicious Dessert Recipe: Bee’s Knees Brownies

By: Michele B. Decoteau

07-09-2011

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September is National Honey Month! To celebrate, we’ll be featuring posts about the health benefits of honey, bee conservation, honey recipes and more all month long. Be sure to let us know why you love honey on our Facebook page!

Combining unsweetened chocolate and honey is not an easy mix. Honey and chocolate often compete for prominence but these brownies are moist and the honey flavor is subtle. The honey helps to keep the brownies super moist and will keep them soft – if there are any left overs.

1 cup butter, the real stuff
1 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 1/4 cup honey from happy bees
1 tsp good vanilla
3 large eggs from a local farm
1/3 cup cocoa
1 cup unbleached flour
1 cup of pecans, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 350′ and grease a 9×12 pan.

Melt butter and chocolate in a water bath (a glass bowl nestled in a small pot with water it works fine). Mix until very smooth. Add honey and vanilla and let cool. Whip the eggs until frothy and add a small amount of the chocolate to temper the eggs. Then add the remaining chocolate. Add cocoa and flour and stir until just moistened. Pour in to pan and top with nuts.

Bake 35 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely before cutting and use a very sharp knife when you do.

Let us know how they taste!

Lessons In Self-Sufficiency Learned From Hurricane Irene

By: Michele B. Decoteau

01-09-2011

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Hurricane Irene came sweeping through our southern New England homestead last Saturday night and like many of our neighbors, we lost power, phones, and internet access. As the storm cleared on Monday, there were a number of lessons we learned about being prepared for disasters and weather challenges.

1. Friends: It is good to have nice friends. Friends helped in so many ways. Most of our friends also lost power and we used our cell phones to share information and to maintain contact. Others who did have power offered showers, laundry facilities and hot meals.

2. Prepare: Think about disasters before they happen. Being prepared with bottled water, food that could be eaten without heating, and having fresh batteries in the flashlights helped us shelter in place. We also had non-electronic entertainment available and amused ourselves with crafts, games and books. FEMA and the Red Cross have great lists of three day emergency kits. They do a good job covering what you need.

When you expect a disaster, charge all your electronic devices such as cell phones and laptops. Get a car charger for these devices if possible. In a pinch, you can use your car to recharge your cell phone if you have no power.

3. Gas: Make sure you have plenty of gas in your car and extra available for chainsaws and generators. Even if you don’t have a chainsaw or generator, it is nice to offer gas to your neighbor to who does and gets the trees off your deck or runs their generator to run your sump pump.

4. Hot food helps: We pulled out the backpacking stoves to heat water to make hot cocoa and instant food. Having a hot meal helped not only fill our bellies but calmed everyone down. Food that can be eaten with minimal cooking is easy to have on hand. Next shopping trip grab an extra can of ready-to-eat soup or pasta and instant oatmeal or noodles. They don’t take up much room in the pantry and can make a big difference to everyone’s peace-of-mind when disaster strikes..

Think about your BBQ grill as a back up way of cooking. If you have an extra tank for your grill, make sure it is full so you can use to cook. Clearly in the middle of a hurricane you can’t use your grill, but if you don’t have power the next day, it is handy.

5. Toilets: With the power out, our water pump didn’t work and our toilets didn’t refill. We used rainwater from our rain barrels to refill. What we discovered is that our old toilet took four and a half gallons of water per flush. After having to haul that amount of water from the back yard, we all want to get that toilet replaced soon. Our second bathroom had a newer toilet that took a mere one and half gallons per flush but uses an electronic pump to pump the waste up the hill to our sewer connection.

The power is on and now starts the clean up and restocking. Winter will be here and snow and ice will be here before we know it…and we’ll be ready!

Image Credit: Flickr - NASA Photo and Video