Foraging in Nature’s Grocery Store
This is Passport to Texas
Delicious traditional foods take center stage during holiday meals. And that food doesn’t have to come from a market if you know where to look and what you’re looking for. Savor the flavors of an earlier time in Texas when you forage for and cook with native produce.
10—I almost prefer fall over spring in certain ways because a lot of complex foods – the fruits and beans and seeds and things like that — really ripen in the fall.
Scooter Cheatham is a naturalist and co-author of The Useful Wild Plants of Texas, the Southeastern and Southwestern United States, the Southern Plains, and Northern Mexico, a multi-volume set of encyclopedias detailing the various uses for plants that grow around us. And fall is a great time to forage for some of the edible ones.
20—The Mexican persimmon’s a substantial fruit. Many grapes are still ripening, Mexican plums are ripening. Malvaviscus, Turks’ Cap’s…many species of grass. The seteriars are getting ripe now. That makes a really nice little seed cracker. Dallas grass of Paspalum dilatatum is ripening. Lynn’s made some really good crackers from those.
Before you start snacking on feral foods, make sure you’re 100% certain of what it is. Although you can eat any wild food once, if you don’t know what you’re eating, you may not get a second chance. Join your local chapter of the Native Plant Society to learn about native nourishment.
You can also log onto www.usefulwildplants.org for more information. Tomorrow…getting nutty about hickories.
That’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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