Foraging may provide the freshest fare

By GARRON MARSH

With food costs on the rise and concerns about the quality of imported foods making headlines, many people are paying closer attention to where their meals come from.

But many local residents know that if they know where to look, the freshest around won’t cost them anything at all.

For Tahlequah residents Murv Jacob and Debbie Duvall, the areas around Tahlequah abound with fresh food nearly year-round.

“We start out with wild onions at the beginning of the year, around February or March,” said Duvall. “They are good with fresh eggs, a lot of Cherokees will eat it this way. After that, the morel mushrooms show up in the spring.”

Jacob and Duvall seemed to have an intimate knowledge of the variety of foods available each season.

“They’ll [morels] show up after the first thunderstorm after the first 60-degree night,” Jacob said.

According to Duvall, during this part of the summer poke is growing and many berries are starting to ripen.

“When you eat poke, you have to boil it first, drain away that water and boil it again before eating it,” said Jacob. “Poke is poisonous if you eat it raw.”

Duvall noted that in the fall, the nut crop becomes available – everything from pecans, walnuts, hickory nuts, and more.

“We”ll go out by the lake in the fall and pick up 100 pounds of pecans,” said Jacob. “Just when the leaves drop - that’s when the pecans are ready.”

Possibly to the chagrin of local squirrels, even acorns are on the Jacob-Duvall menu.

“White oak acorns are good in the fall,” said Jacob. “Red oak acorns have too many tannins, but with the white oak acorns, you can just peel them with a knife and eat them. They taste really good.”

Another of Jacob’s favorite foods ripens in the fall.

“Persimmons are my favorite,” said Jacob. “They’re not a real popular food around here , but every other animal in the woods loves them.”

Tahlequah resident Pat Moss has an encyclopedic knowledge of the edible plants in Cherokee County (and lots of other places, too). In a brief interview, Moss rattled off a list of 50 plants found growing locally that can be eaten, and noted that there are plenty more.

According to Moss, the following plants are only a partial list of those that can be found and eaten locally: Persimmon, Solomon seal, bear grass, poke, watercress, wild onion, wild lettuce, dock, lamb’s quarter, cochoon (or co channie), wild apricots, wild plums, wild cherries, black haw, maypop (passion flower), huckleberry, elderberry, possum grape, fox grape, mulberry, dandelion greens, sheep sorrell (oxalis), blackberry, dewberry, wild strawberry, wild potato, pig potato, water lilly root, hickory nut, chinkapin, honey locust pods, prickly pears, wild Jerusalem artichoke, burdock, bean vine, wishee (maitake mushrooms), hickory chicken, morel mushrooms, owl heads, anitlog, deer antler (mushrooms), puff ball, beefsteak, elm chicken/oyster, white oak acorns, wild asparagus, redbud flower, sumac new growth, hackberry and paw paw.

While there isn’t sufficient space to really go into detail about each one of these plants, as Moss did, it should be noted that a number of these plants were not only good food sources, but some medicinal properties as well.

But eating plants is not the only option out there said Moss.

“If you’re talking about plants to use for teas, there are at least as many as in this list [above],” said Moss. “And when you start talking about animals, fish and insects, that’s a whole other list altogether.”

Moss explained that he acquired much of his knowledge during his childhood.

“I basically learned it by growing up poor,” said Moss. “Some of it I learned from Cherokee traditions, some from the old cowboys out on the rodeo circuit, and some from the black community where I grew up. When I was young, Mom and I would walk along the railroad tracks looking for good things to eat. There would be these older black women out there as well, and they would show us things to use.”

As Moss pointed out, it is likely that if one looks in the right place, there is nearly always a food find waiting.

“I think if someone did the research and made a calendar of what is in season and when, they’d find that there would be something to eat every day of the year,” said Moss. “I fell that if people knew this kind of stuff they’d be a lot closer to their local environment and to the earth in general.”

Contact Garron Marsh at gmarsh@tahlequahdailypress.com.