Whole World a Sweet Organic Garden When Foraging

From the Clarion-Ledger (MS).

"I was on my morning run the other day and saw something that almost stopped me in my tracks: a persimmon tree laden with fruit!

The reason this struck me so was that last fall I was looking forward to foraging some of the delicacies along my 5-mile run/walk/jog and/or bike route, and the weather didn't cooperate and the trees didn't bear much.

The previous year, Annette and I had picked bunches, and she used a tomato press to crush and strain the fruits and make a delicious jam and homemade persimmon bread. Yum!

But, beware. If you eat the fruit before it's ripe, your mouth will pucker up with a sour/tart flavor that's almost impossible to wash out.

The secret to not allowing the persimmons to have a bitter flavor is to wait until the fruit is so ripe it's almost dripping off the limb. It looks almost rotten. Then, it's meat is almost pure sugar. Of course, you're competing with deer, raccoons and every other scavenger on the planet when they are ripe like that.

So, for now, I'm warily watching the persimmon tree in hopes that my patience will bear fruit!

Foraging seems to be big deal in urban areas these days. It's not so unusual in rural areas - or wasn't when I was growing up. I'm by no means a Euell Gibbons (Stalking the Wild Asparagus, et al.), but when I was a boy, I learned to gather wild onions for broths, pick sumac and dig sassafras for tea, and could, in a pinch, whip up some dandelion greens to eat (you can use them in place of collards for a nice casserole with mozzarella cheese and bread crumbs).

Over the years, I've lost several copies of my "bible" for foraging: Peterson's A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants.

The ultimate forager may be someone who eats anything invasive (or opportunistic!) in the local ecosystem, thus ensuring a balanced local ecology of flora and fauna.

One such forager is Jackson Landers of Virginia who writes a blog called The Locavore Hunter (http://rule-303.blogspot.com).

As New York Times writer James Gorman notes, Landers "has hunted and eaten feral pigs, two species of iguana, armadillos, starlings, pigeons and resident Canada geese. He says that all of these activities will be chronicled in a book, Eating Aliens, and perhaps a television show as well."

Many rural people of my acquaintance are familiar with the preparation - from shot to pot - of deer, raccoon, squirrel, possum, etc. (Where my dad grew up during the Depression near Vaughan was called "Possum Bend" for its gustatory abundance; they lived off what the land provided, animal, vegetable and mineral.)

But it's worth noting that, in addition to what's growing in your organic 4x8-foot Jim's plot, there's a real wealth of healthful foods available for the picking in your yard or just out your front door.

The whole world can be a sweet organic garden when foraging."