Things to do with your kids during a quarantine

Here is a great idea for families to do together while being stuck at home. Of course adults can do this without any kids present also. I am proposing a scavenger hunt of sorts. I’m going to send you a photograph of the different edible plants that I have growing in my very own yard right now. Some of these you’ve probably not heard of before so I’m also including a website where you can look them up and see what they are supposed to look like. Let’s see how many of these you can find in your own yards. I might suggest that you pick some of them grind them up and throw them in your next pot of soup. If the kids do this themselves they’re more likely to eat it :-)Also you can look up lots of different recipes to use these plants on your own but for me and easy way to use them it’s just how you would normally use other greens. Some of these you’re going to like and some of them you will not. Some of them are great in tea and some of them in soup and some of them, like the violet looks so pretty in your salad and you can eat the flower. ( you can also eat the blossoms of most fruit trees... check before you eat though)

See how many of these you can find.

I am only going to give you the names so you have to do a little detective work, find cooked and raw recipes, find out the nutritional value of what you have in your yard. ( look them up on the USDA website... you will be surprised, I bet) Then make some tea, add to your favorite recipe that includes greens, toss them in your favorite soup.
dandelion, henbit, chickweed, dead nettle, cleavers, violet, wood worrel, wild onion. Here is a great website that has these pictured and tells you a little about them.

Wood Ears

Look what my son found on his walk through the neighborhood!  He sent me a photo and asked, " are these edible?" To which I replied "Yes!!"  Wood ears... It has been a while since I have stumbled upon any.  On my way to work, I saw the tree that had been cut down and was now sporting several pounds of these delicacies.  I picked a bunch, brought them home and threw them on the dehydrator.  They shrunk down from several pounds to several ounces.  They are perfect to store now and delish when re hydrated

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Making Pecan Milk

Well we have a huge pecan tree in front of our house and I picked 60 pounds of pecans and hauled them to the pecan cracking place just in time before they closed for the season.  Wouldn't you know it, that tree dropped another 30 pounds at least and we are left to the old fashioned way of cracking them by hand.  I have a cracker but even then end up with a lot of little pieces that I just can't get out of the shell without spending a lot of time.  I was remembering a video I saw of a native American who was telling how they used to take hickory nuts ( which are a bear to crack and then even harder to extract the nut) and instead of cracking and eating the nuts, they ground them, shells and all and boiled them, ran them through a strainer and made milk which they added to rice instead of cooking in water, thus adding both protein and fat.  I decided to see if that might work on pecans and devoid of any recipe, I combined what little I could remember about the process with hickory nuts and also remembering to boil a few times, raw acorns to get rid of tannins, and set about making pecan milk.
Next time I think I will soak the ground up nuts/shells a bit first and pour off the water.  Anyways here is what I did:

I washed the shells first, then rinsed the cracked shells /meat and then ground them by putting them in a mesh bag and taking a hammer to them and then grinding in a blender with a little water.  I ran the whole thing through a mesh bag and tasted it.  Kinda bland and I could taste a little tannin so then I thought maybe I should boil the whole thing so I took the meat/shells/milk and put it in a pan on top of the stove and boiled them for a few minutes and then strained again.  To the jar I added just about  1/2 tsp of sugar.  I made rice with it that night and it tasted pretty good.  I think I might add a touch of vanilla and a touch more sugar if drinking it plain. 

If anyone has made this before and has a tried and true method for doing so, I would love to know about it.

Mouse Melons

Can you imagine a little mouse picnic?  This would be on their table.  some know them as wild cucumber... and that is why I am going to pop these in my pickle jar.  They grow wild at my house and I let them because I think they are so cute.  They also remind me of Christmas tree decorations as each one hangs on its little thread which is connected to a longer thread with a bunch of other little melons hanging from them.  Little green balls everywhere.

Pickin' up pawpaws... puttin' 'em in my pocket....

we ran into some pawpaws while walking in the woods the other day.  What a find!  If you have never had one, you certainly won't find one in any store... you will either have to plant a couple ( great idea!) or find a friend who has a tree.  They have a very short shelf life so you will never find one in the grocery.  They are delish!  kind of like a mango and banana with the texture of pudding.  You wait till they fall off the tree and are nice and squishy.  We ate several just as they were and then decided they might make a great pudding so we ran the rest through a sieve and used some in the pudding and froze the rest into cubes using a couple of ice trays so that we can use in the future in a smoothie or two.

pickled unripe peach slaw

I don't know about you guys but since I am a very very low maintenance gardener, I don't spray my fruit trees and just use the ole 'cross your fingers' method of hoping for a harvest. We rarely, if ever eat a peach off our loaded peach tree ( squirrels ) and our apples have brown spots on them.... so our friends, Nathan Pickard and Kristen Piccard brought over this jar of pickled unripe plums the other night and they were delish! Anyways it got me thinking about other unripe fruit that I could certainly find on my fruit trees and get to them before the bugs and squirrels. I am experimenting today with a recipe for unripe peach slaw. We'll give it a try tonight after it marinates for the day. I am excited. this way you can actually get two different kinds of harvest off the same tree with totally different uses. Google some recipes.

I julianned my peaches and apples, added a little unflavored yogart, ground ginger and turmeric, lemon juice, honey and hot pepper.
Tasty!

Mulberries

We have a towering old mulberry tree at our house.  When we first moved in around 25 years ago all the mulberries were blue and about 10 years ago the ripe ones are all white.  Very strange.  Anyways this year we had a bumper crop and I just hate to see them go to waste and I don't much care for them so here is what I did. 
1.  Spread out old curtains under the trees to catch all the berries.  Made that job of separating them so much easier.  We did this several days a week. 
2.  gather up the good ones and freeze some of them for pies ( I always use them with other berries, never alone ) and freeze the bad ones for my mother in law's parrots.  they love them!  Took some across the street for the neighborhood chickens too.
3.  My new favorite thing.... throw them in the dehydrator and dry them.  They come out crispy/crunchy and slightly sweet.  A perfect topping for my morning yogart!  I love it.