Every August, you can find black cherry trees covered in drooping clusters of shiny ripe fruit, like thousands of threaded beads. These cherries are smaller and more tart than the domestic varieties.  They grow in elongated racemes and appear to be more like berries on little stalks.  However, you will find that each “berry” contains an unmistakable cherry pit.

They are not as sweet as regular cherries, but their tannic tartness makes them ideal for making jam, jelly, syrups and wine.  However, despite their being considered unpalatable, I really enjoy their sweet/sharp flavor straight from the tree, and will happily spend time munching away on them as a refreshing snack, whilst out walking.

The bark of the young tree is used for its medicinal properties, mainly as a cough remedy and sedative.  However, avoid eating the leaves, as they contain cyanide, which reaches toxic levels once they are crushed or begin to wilt.  Many cattle and horses have died from ingesting them.  The pits are also poisonous, although they have to be crushed in order to release their cyanide content, so fear not, if you accidentally swallow one or two. They’ll just pass on through.

Unless you have a cherry pitter, removing all those pits can prove to be very time consuming.  You can try rolling the fruit between two cutting boards to loosen up the pits, but this can be very messy.  All in all, you won’t get a lot of fruit at the end of the day, so I’d recommend having some apples on hand.  I’d recommend crab apples, but they are just as labor intensive as the cherries.

If you can pit sufficient cherries to make a cherry and apple pie, you won’t regret it.  However, these wild cherries are not as sweet as regular cherries, and may require more sugar in the recipe (according to your taste preference).  Pitted wild cherries make great accent fruits in fruit salads, green salads,  and chicken and tuna salads.  I’ve used them to make a sweet and tart sauce for fish, which I’m sure would work just as well with chicken & pork.  For a wicked dessert idea, try soaking them in rum or brandy for a while, then pour them over ice cream or even waffles with some whipped cream.

We recently made some venison kaftas for a wild foods feast.  Fortunately, black cherries were in season, so we made a black cherry sauce to accompany them.  It was a big hit.

If you are lucky enough to be able to harvest some black cherries, try making a sauce.  The recipe is fairly simple and easy to make. Depending on how much you reduce the sauce, you can make a useful black cherry syrup, which can be added to seltzer for a refreshing drink or taken straight as an very effective treatment for coughs and bronchitis.

See Lisa Caccamise’s recipe here

The post This Season’s Wild Edible Plant: Black Cherries appeared first on Suburban Foragers.

What we gain and what we lose with the conveniences of modern living

Faster than Fast:

“It takes a village”

My husband Emilio grew up in the Dominican Republic, and he can’t remember a dinner he ate during his youth without his nuclear family. Even when his mother had to raise 5 boys alone, she woke up early every morning to make their lunch, and was home to make dinner every night. And at least once a week, they gathered for a meal with his large extended family, all who lived locally, and ate food from the family farm. In his family, there is a reverence and commitment to eating together.

I was born here in the American suburbs, and I can remember plenty of disjointed, hurried, slap dash meals that had nothing to do with “Gathering Together”. We were always rushing thru meals for various reasons. The only time we made it a point to eat together as a family was holidays. On these occasions we prepared our families’ traditional dishes such as matza brie for Passover or my Aunt’s Christmas mac’n cheese.

The decision to eat together as a family can be a matter of culture, religion, tradition, family choice, physical distance, and/or economics. Some cultures hold much more strongly to the idea of eating together as a family, however this, like many traditions can be lost within a few generations.

What is the price of convenience? What have we traded?

Most of us are guilty of pulling a microwave dinner out of the freezer, popping it in the microwave, and then scarfing it down in front of the TV. This is in no way uncommon in this country. And this can be done alone, or with family, or roommates. I have created meals like this or similar, including a pot of instant mac n cheese, hot dogs, and other fast foods that can be prepared in minutes in the home kitchen.

Is this easy and convenient, oh yes.

What do we gain? Time. The first thing we gain is time. That is VERY convenient. But what exactly are we all doing with this extra time?

When I was in college, a quick and easy meal meant more time to work. So that was an advantage for me. Working 40 hours a week or more, I rarely had time to cook. (Not that I knew how. I still remember my friend and I in our dorm kitchen trying to figure out how to boil and egg. We exploded 4 before we figured it out). And I had STUFF TO DO!. Work or homework or the party I HAD TO GO TO. I had places to go! And eating was an inconvenient thing I had to do to get it over with so that I could go and do something “better”.

I remember one summer internship I was working 8am to whenever I passed out, and my hatchback was littered with fast food wrappers. Absolutely papered with them. I really didn’t have time for anything else.

If we gain time with fast food, what do we lose? The social bonding of a community working together for a goal that benefits everyone.

(For any of you Weston A. Price people who are also yelling “nutrition”! I’ll get to that another time).

Gathering around a wooden table with knives and cutting boards, and bare hands, talking, laughing and telling stories, all contributing together to the community meal.

These days in my life, my meals are all about preparing and cooking food with friends and family, and eating Together. My understanding about what food means in my life has changed profoundly.

While most weeknights it is just my husband and I, we do prepare meals from scratch and cook together. Long, slow cooked recipes he learned from his mother back in DR.

On the days that I am lucky enough to have the time to eat with friends, I gather together with my fellow Suburban Foragers and Eastern Light Project friends and we prepare meals as a group, and eat together as a group using a combination of foraged and local farm foods.

Sometimes this takes form as a Suburban Foragers cooking Workshop. Sometimes it is just an enjoyable Sunday afternoon. And most recently it is Joyful Thursdays, where we gather at Cropsey Farm to cook food for the hard working farm team and some of the volunteers. It is a wonderful way to encourage community, and to give thanks for all their hard work.

The days when I can gather together with friends and family, and prepare food together in a group are my favorite. We gather an assembly line of cutters and dicers and cookers and slicers. We cook as a group, eat as a group, talk as a group, and clean up as a group. This is my favorite way to experience food. It is peaceful and thankful, social and nourishing to the body, but also our more esoteric parts. Those bits and somewhat undefinable pieces that are commonly considered neglected by our modern societies’ irreverence for the lost wisdom of slower times.

Whatever your village is up to, find the time to gather together.

The post Blog: Gather Together: A Journey Thru Food appeared first on Suburban Foragers.