Welcome to the Forager's Corner, dear readers, where you shall entertain a list of edibles not often found on the plates of the ultra-sophisticated. Ever since a small chee-ild, the outdoors has fascinated my thoughts and palate, and I can honestly say that I have put things in my mouth not many urbanites have. You can tell me your story tomorrow, tonight we're talking about My Mouth, Not Yours.
Diet was tightly controlled by that Mom person, until we moved to Clarence, New York, otherwise called The Unknown back in the fifties. There lies beneath Clarencian soil a shelf of rock that extends up to Lake Ontario and needs blasting, so until recently, nothing needing a basement was put up. Refined dynamite techniques now create million dollar monster homes on Lanes named Clover, Candlewood, and Deer Run. All the shops are spelled shoppes and the letter /e/ is stuck onto words for an Ol' Timey effect. I honest to god know a pleasant enough person who lives on Candycane Lane. What complex architect planner names a road Candycane unless he/she were screwing the local confectioner? It's all I can figure.
Once we moved to Clarence, I was out in the fields across the crick once Mom decided I wouldn't fall in it. First find shown to me by Mom were the tiny wild strawberries, and you need a lot to make a thimbleful. Red and black raspberries grew on scrapland alongside the road, and wild grapes twined around broken stone fences. Pretty recognizable stuff.
Well, it started me on a Euell Gibbons life of scavenging where if we were lost in the woods, I'm a good one to be lost with. You go and lift rocks in the stream to catch crayfish, snip fern heads for greenery, and tiny sunfish from the quarry to fry in a pan. I was a regular Amazon Annie; a Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. I climbed trees and scooped algae out the crick to throw at my cheeseball girlie girl cousin. Still don't like her, she left her two boys with her first husband to run off to Florida with Guy Number Two, and for that you deserve algae down your back. Who's with me? She always thought she smelled better than me and was probably right as I only got a bath once a week with Spic and Span. Still, you don't leave your kids.
I learned to pick mushrooms (don't try this at home, go to the supermarket), violet leaves, ubiquitous dandelions, partridge berries, chickweed, and purslane. Never tried to catch a bird or mammal, and I soon stopped bothering the fish, they were so friendly and pretty. My aunt and uncle next to us did slaughter chickens. They had a freezer you could fit a Lincoln in, and went to the farmer to get one hundred hens to put up. I helped with the guts, which, guess what, fascinated me.
Us kids stayed away from the treacherous part, and only saw the chicken after it looked pretty much like a chicken you see in the meat department. We learned internal anatomy in five minutes, what you kept and what was tossed. The amazing part was that every once in a while, there would be an unformed egg inside, just held together by a membrane. It reminded me of the man who cut the goose who laid the golden egg open to find the source.
My aunt and uncle only did chickens once, I think it took a toll on all involved. The farms around there raised beef, pigs, and poultry, it was considered pennywise to be self sufficient. There just wasn't money, and they imagined it would feed their family, which it did. We even lived near a restaurant a few miles down that raised their own turkeys out back.
As a reward, my aunt gave me one egg. I carried it home proudly, my mother gasped and threw me into the tub. It scalded her that they only coughed up one egg for my work, what the hell were we going to do with one egg? What's with these people? Six would have been realistic, considering the chicken vestiges in my hair. My parents again chalked it up that my aunt and uncle were "funny," it took me years to realized not funny ha-ha, but funny as being in the back of the refrigerator too long to whit, "this milk has gone funny."
My son told me of a movie he had to watch in high school about the rat hunters of India. These very hungry people were expert at sling-shotting rats which were then deposited in a pile on top of a fire. When done, they would skewer the toasted rats out of the coals and enjoy rat-on-a-stick. Today I taught the sixth graders that Guinea pigs are a staple food in South America. They fainted. I have yet to eat rat or Guinea, and usually keep my adventures to the Plant World these days.
Pax vobiscum.
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