FORAGING IN NATURE’S SUPERMARKET

[Music] that's ewell gibbons off on a week-long camping trip he and a young friend mark fulford will live almost entirely off the land on wild foods like dandelion cattails and white pine needles we'll go along with them and we'll discover more about how to find food in backyards fields and streams today when discovery goes foraging in nature's supermarket [Music] discovery 70 the award-winning program for young people with bill owen and virginia gibson [Music] hi and welcome to discovery if you've ever wondered how the frontiersmen and other early settlers got along before there were farms and stores in america you might be surprised to know that there's a man here in the hill country of central pennsylvania who still lives that way from time to time his name is ewell gibbons joel gibbons not only knows all about the wild foods in nature's supermarket but one of his great pleasures in life is finding cooking and eating them that's why although he lives in that remodeled old farmhouse up there you'll very seldom find mr gibbons at home as often as he can yule will pack up his camping gear and take off on what he calls a survival trip ewell and his friend mark fulford who's 15 often spend a week or more on one of their trips and they've managed to survive quite well in the process [Music] it gives a person a great feeling of independence and self-reliance to be able to live creatively with nature if a person approaches nature in the right spirit in a spirit of cooperation and love she'll provide all your needs if you know when and where to look the object is to live off the land the rules are simple the only food you can take from home is sugar salt flour and cooking oil everything else must be found along the way much of the secret is in knowing when to look how to look and what to look for just as fresh supermarket foods change with the seasons so the time of year determines what wild foods can be found but there's always something available except in the dead of winter when snow covers the ground one of the first things mark finds is a burdock plant in japan the burdock is grown as a garden vegetable in this country burdock grows as a weed in vacant lots as well as in the woods and farm fields although there's more available in the country many kinds of edible wild foods can be found in backyards and city parks as well yule gibbons once reached through the fence at the white house and found four edible plants in the president's garden he recently made a tasty meal out of wild foods gathered entirely within new york city growing in vacant lots parks and even out of the cracks and sidewalks now yules come across some sumac bushes and he gathers some of the hard red berries they aren't edible in themselves but they do make an excellent drink that tastes a bit like pink lemonade the sumac and the wild parsnip which mark is digging here are both found in cities as well as in the countryside in the meantime you will gather some white pine needles boiled over the campfire they'll make a pine needle tea which tastes good and contains more vitamin c than orange juice mark has found a viburnum tree some of these trees do not produce good fruit but the one mark has found has fruit with a flavor about halfway between a raisin and a date for variety the foraging should include not only the fields but the streams as well [Music] the freshwater crayfish or crawdad is related to the lobster that lives in salt water crayfish can be found in streams and ponds from one end of the country to the other many people use them for fish bait but ewell considers them a choice delicacy [Music] later mark and you will try their luck in another kind of fishing [Music] this little bluegill also known as a sunfish is as tasty as any fish around and like the crayfish they can be found in almost every part of the country the forager cannot afford to spend all day waiting for a trout or bass but he wouldn't pass one up either [Music] now it's time to eat the foragers have found everything they need the main dish will be bluegill fillets mark prepares the vegetables the burdock root boiled tastes something like a potato the leaf stem peeled resembles stewed celery when it's cooked the wild parsnips and wild carrots taste very much like their tame namesake from the vegetable garden the sumac berries are soaked in cold water the berries removed sugar added and the result looks and tastes like lemonade ewell calls it roost juice because of the latin name for the sumac roost labor [Applause] for dessert black haws and hickory nuts [Music] it all tastes pretty good but it's more than just the food itself which makes foraging so satisfying i like the comforts of my home and the convenience of it as well as the next person and i wouldn't care to live this way all the time but i do occasionally love to get out and meet nature on her own terms it gives a feeling of self-reliance and satisfaction that can't be acquired in any other way i doubt if there's very many people in the world who had more fun than mark and i have had today [Music] one of the most important things about foraging is knowing what to look for and making sure that the foods you find are safe and edible so we asked ewell gibbons to take us on an expedition scouting for wild foods in the fields and woods around his house we saw dandelions watercress sheep sorrel and found one plant that yule calls the supermarket of a swamp we'll take a closer look at all of them in just a minute our foraging expedition with huell gibbons began in his backyard there's almost certain to be something edible in your backyard or at least in a park or vacant lot nearby just be sure to pick an area that hasn't been sprayed with weed killer or pesticides [Music] the first wild plant we looked at was once grown by the early settlers in america the jerusalem artichoke here's the way the plant looks when the hue when the tuber is ready oh yeah you recognize it by this sort of look for the little flower heads i have to do a little digging huh yeah the pubers are underground all right we'll dig one and see what they look like [Applause] this is called a jerusalem artichoke and outside the fact that it doesn't come from jerusalem and it's not an artichoke it's pretty well named this is really a tuber-bearing sunflower and that's exactly what the latin name for it means helianthus tuberosus means uh tuber-bearing sunflower quite edible either raw or cooked can be used in salad or just eaten raw they're quite crisp when they're raw and when they're cooked they're a bit like uh potatoes try one of the although i have made complete meals on them when other things were a bit scarce you will showed us a number of other plants near the house which can be used as wild food the dwarf mallow the tiny buds when boiled taste something like okra sheep sorrel a common lawn weed which goes into a wild salad and the most common of lawn weeds the dandelion the crowns the part between the leaves and root are tasty in the fall but bitter during the summer nearby we found a healthy bed of watercress exactly the kind you might buy from your grocer it grows in many woodland streams ewell's favorite wild fruit is the persimmon these are wild persimmons it's an excellent fruit but uh you better let me select the ones off the tree because they have to be thoroughly ripe as soft as cake dough and if if they're not if they're even the least bit green well they'll cause your mouth to pucker up until you well you look kissable but uh it won't taste so good the best way to get the right here take this and bill uh the best way to get the ripe ones off the tree is to climb up the tree and give it a shake and then the ripens fall off and the green ones hang on [Applause] you know lots of people are afraid that i'm destroying plants really a person who knows how to gather wild food can always gather food without destroying anything in fact many of my activities help the plants you know there are other people who think that nature is all fierce competition and violence and dog eat dog but i find a great many unexpected kindnesses in nature why do you suppose this persimmon puts this beautiful sweet pulp around its seeds it does it so it can offer us a free gift of passing animals and they'll scatter its seeds and help to propagate and disseminate the species it grows these persimmons so i'll come down here and gather them and eat them now the persimmon tree could get along without me and i could get along without it but both our lives are richer because we have a relationship with one another nature's harvest lasts the year around but as we traveled across the countryside we began to notice the great number of wild fruits and vegetables which reach their peak in late autumn the wintergreen the leaves make a nice tea and the berries decorate wild salads and the ground cherry or chinese lantern plant inside the husks dried in the fall we found a delicious yellowish-brown berry that tastes something like a tomato then you will offer some advice on foraging you have to be careful about what plants you choose the ground cherry is related to the deadly nightshade a poisonous berry also called belladonna so it's very important to know the poisonous plants from the edible ones finally you will gather some ordinary cattails a plant he calls the supermarket of the swamp because of its many uses as wild food later that evening yule told us what he meant and why foragers appreciate the cattail so much the reason they call the cattail the supermarket the swamps is because it produces so many different kinds of food it produces food through all the year and this time of the year about the only thing you can get is the rhizome and the sprouts this is the rhizome it's really an underground stem that runs from one cattail to another and you can peel it down like this [Applause] and it has a starchy core in the center this can be dried and ground up to make a very good flower almost like wheat flour you can make it into biscuits muffins pancakes or anything else but the best way to handle it when you're out in camp is to just take a piece about that long a number of pieces and just stack them around your campfire and let them roast in the campfire turn them once in a while then peel them while they're still hot and put them in your mouth and eat them there they taste like a sweet potato we can't show you the rest of them in the swamps this time of year it's the wrong time of the year but i do have some slides here and i can show you what they look like and here is our first slide here are the cattail bloom spikes just at the right stage when you should gather them this is you these are usually gathered about may or june in this part of the country and here is the what many people think is the best part of the cattail the classic asparagus this can be either raw or cooked and cooked it is a very sweet mild vegetable with no bad or bitter taste whatever and raw it goes very well in salads or you can just feel it and eat it our foraging expedition was over and you will invited us to a wild dinner of some foods we had found jerusalem artichokes dandelion round cherries and even fried groundhog we'll see the ways they're all prepared in the gibbons kitchen and we'll do that in just a minute [Music] the kitchen of the gibbons farmhouse is warm and comfortable and preparing a wild dinner on the surface at least doesn't seem too much different from the way your mother might get dinner ready at home well you see jenny the rules are different when we have a wild inner wild party as we call them because they are they are when they're on a survival trip on a survival trip we insist on eating all wild food and nothing but wild food but for one of these kind of dinners where we as long as we have the main ingredient of every dish a wild food why that that's perfectly within the rules and we try to serve in a civilized manner you'll that looks like a chiffon pie it is a chiffon pageant it was made out of the ground cherries that we picked out in the field you see we just take the ground cherries are picked out of these husks of course and then they are cooked separately and then combined with eggs and sugar and other ingredients and this is in a graham cracker crust which is not very wild but we will put some wild nuts on the top of it after we get through and you i think you'll find it quite good looks good can i taste it sure go ahead mmm it's good enjoy these chiffon pies i make chiffon pies out of nearly every wild fruit in the world i've even made them out of jerusalem artichokes looks like you've prepared some salad greens but some of them don't look too much like what we normally see at home well some of them are not but this should look familiar because this is the same kind of watercress that you find in those little sandwiches at wedding receptions and it grows wild here we get it down in the stream here and this is sheeps are all that has a lemon-like flavor and it has a very peculiar shape so you can easily recognize the leaf notice the shape of the leaf here it has a halberd shape something like an arrowhead except a tang stick out instead of coming back it has a lemon-like flavor and it's quite good it really adds something to a salad this is wild garlic which must be used with extreme discretion because it is strong and this is the winter green berry this is picked in the woods this is the kind of plant it grows on right here very pretty and when you mix these two together you will notice that it's as beautiful as anybody's christmas decoration and it tastes just as good as it looks now the rest of our wild dinner is beginning to take shape one of the meat dishes calls for what yule describes as a strong stomach and weak prejudices it's fried young groundhog in some areas it's called woodchuck we're also going to have jerusalem artichokes they look like potatoes after they're boiled these fat dandelion crowns are boiled and served with salt and butter the tea smells delicious you've probably heard of it it's made from the roots of the sassafras plant our wild dinner is ready frida and ewell gibbons are quakers so each meal at their home begins with meditation or prayer [Music] the meal begins with a cold scandinavian style soup made from wild black raspberries and dewberries slightly thickened and with a spoonful of sour cream on the top [Music] then comes a crayfish cocktail very much like a crab or lobster cocktail the only difference as you'll see it is that the crayfish are easier to catch the main dish is the fried groundhog it's served with wild grape juice there's a persimmon hickory nut bread and it's very good especially with two kinds of wild jam strawberry and wild plum [Music] the cooks seem to enjoy the meal most of all finally the best part of dinner dessert the ground cherry chiffon pie is topped with whipped cream and frozen wild strawberries some people ask me if this all this rich food isn't fattening but i tell them wild food is never fattening if you gather it all yourself because it takes quite a bit of work to gather it the we use this as a method of entertaining and you know many of our guests are very surprised to find that wild foods will make up into such delicious dishes and not only delicious but good looking civilized looking dishes i'm sure that a lot of them when i ask him to come here think i'm going to ask him to run through the woods with me and graze but you know it's a very good method of entertaining because a party can never be dull when every dish on the table is a conversation piece but nature means more to me the wild food means more to me than just uh a method of entertaining or even nutrition and certainly it's not just a stunt to me wild food is a means of having a creative encounter with nature and living more intimately with nature of course the menu for a while dinner changes with the seasons and there are literally hundreds of wild foods waiting to be tried if you know what to look for and where to look next time you go outdoors see how many of them you can find foraging for wild foods in nature's supermarket can be a rewarding and enjoyable adventure we'll be back in just a minute whenever ewell gibbons isn't out scouting for wild foods or preparing them in his kitchen he writes books on the world of nature if you'd like to find out more about living off the land and ask your librarian for these books by your gibbons stalking the blue eyed scallop beachcomber's handbook and this book stalking the wild asparagus we hope you've enjoyed today's program on foraging in nature supermarket be sure to be with us next week for another exciting program as discovery continues to discover the world bye bye bye the discovery production unit's domestic transportation and promotional consideration provided by united airlines [Music] this has been a jules power production in association with abc news you