Prepare a dish - PEP BB foraging.sand.dish

Another dandelion salad - as I enjoyed the last one so much! This one was a bit less colourful but just as tasty.

I prepared the salad with the foraged dandelion leaves, home-grown lettuce (still small) and turnip greens. I also added a few foraged borage flowers, some celery flowers, some sage flowers and some petals from some marigolds. I dressed the salad lightly with balsamic, cider vinegar, olive oil and black pepper.

Roughly the same method as my last salad.

I made a simple (but delicious) salad from foraged lamb's quarters and added foraged purslane and cauliflower leaves from my garden and parsley. I made a lovely lemon vinaigrette to go on top. Yum!

I foraged one packed cup of wild Wood Ear Mushrooms and cooked them in stir-fry!

While walking to the back pasture, I saw that one of the tallow trees along the path had a plethora of what looked like edible wood ear. Having never foraged fungi for myself before, I consulted a mushroom-nerd friend and did enough reading and photo comparison online to confirm my identification. Wood Ear is considered an entry-level forager's mushroom, and there are no known dangerous lookalikes, at least in Texas. For more information: https://www.foragingtexas.com/2015/05/woods-ear-mushrooms.html

I collected about a packed cup and rinsed them. Then to avoid toughness in my stir-fry, I boiled the mushrooms in salted water for seven minutes, at which point the texture was pleasing to me, though the only flavor to them was clean water. I chopped the mushrooms into fine, short strips and tossed them into an oiled pan with lightly steamed cabbage and various seasonings (minced garlic and ginger, turmeric, lots of black pepper, salt, sesame seeds). This was good on its own, but I then added some rice, fresh green pepper, chopped almonds, and beaten eggs to round out the meal. This meal served two with leftovers.

I foraged Chanterelle mushrooms and made a rice and Chanterelle side dish.

I made saag paneer out of wild sheep sorrel and it was amazing.