The Score: 45 down, 55 to go

Our fridge is full of baggies containing edible odds and ends we need to cook up. Our front porch hosts a few baskets containing edibles we find in the yard. On our trip to Connecticut this weekend, we weeded Thag's mother's ivy specifically to collect the edible weeds growing in it. We stopped the car to collect on the side of the road. We are busy with edibles and are still having trouble keeping up with all this season has to offer.

So...

31. Morel mushrooms--absolutely divine--5

32. Dryad's saddle mushrooms--pungent and chewy--Thag--4, Ooga--1

33. Cattail rhizome flour--labor intensive to process, but sweet and nutty in flavor--5

34. Mint--no description necessary--5

35. Jewel weed--slightly slimy and a bit limp after all the boiling, but mild in flavor--3

36. Sheep sorrel--sour and lemony--easy to use in a variety of recipes--4

37. Wood sorrel--lovely little heart shaped leaves, tastes very similar to sheep sorrel, easy to find--great salad green--4

38. Clover greens--easy to find, hide well in a salad, tough if old--3

39. Milk weed shoots--easy to gather, should be peeled, cook like green beans, get 'em young--4

40. Thistle stalk--use like celery--deep, yet subtle, in flavor--good in sauces--4

41. Black locust flowers--sweet and fragrant, utterly heavenly--5

42. Thistle petiole--use like thistle stalk, but more work intensive--3

43. Burdock petiole--a pain to process, requires two boilings, gentle flavor, easy to incorporate into any veggie dish like a stir fry--3

44. Sumac shoots--we don't think we did these right--supposed to be sweet and juicy--we found them slightly bitter--until further notice, 2

45. Chickweed greens--easy to find, nice lettucy flavor, can be cooked or eaten raw--4

Cattail Rhizome Pancakes--Rhizomes Completed

One of the things we are learning is that it helps to have the right equipment. In this case--a grain mill.

To process the dried rhizome cores, one grinds them up, easing the separation of the starch from the fibers. This is where the grain mill comes in. Alas, we have none. So we used a food processor, which worked okay. The next trick is to filter the fiber out of the mixture without losing any of the starch which is a very fine dust powder. We used some clean panty hose for lack of a jelly bag which worked fine. We stored the mixture in the fridge until we procured a jelly bag which gave us a bit more.

We were left with a pitifully small quantity of flour--less than 1/8 cup. We mixed the flour with a pinch of baking soda and water to the consistency of pancake batter. We fried our silver dollar cattail pancake in hot butter.

It was fantastic. An unabashed 5! Well worth the extraordinary effort we put in--even more so if we had had better equipment. According to Samuel Thayer, processing dried cattail rhizomes is a lovely way to spend a winter evening when all the other edibles are hibernating. I think we just might do that.

Cattail Rhizome

Samuel Thayer said it could be done, so we went out and tried it. And boy was this fun! The starchy core of the cattail rhizome can be processed to retrieve a flour. The gathering required a mucky walk into the cattail marsh. I tread carefully. Beneath a soggy lattice of cattail leaves and fallen branches was a sucking mud that I wondered if I could eject myself from if I got stuck.

The process took a bit of finesse. I started by finding an old stalk and following it by hand through the cold, opaque waters and into the sulpherous muck. Feeling around, I would eventually grasp onto something that felt more like a rope than the surrounding sticks. Then I'd reach beneath with my knife, careful to cut the rhizome and not my fingers. Then I gently pulled on the cut end. Somewhere, several feet away, the few tentative early leaves of an early cattail stalk would dunk below the surface like the tail of a duck. A few gentle tugs and it would emerge in my hand at the end of a foot or two of alien-looking tentacle.

When done, I was mucky, smelly, and happy.

The next day we were leaving for Boston, and I was unprepared for the time that processing the bagful of uneartly things would take. I mangled the first few roots, losing most of the starch as I fumbled with the technique of pushing off the spongy rind with my thumb. It was one o'clock in the morning when I finished with the sticky pile and set it to dry on a baking sheet. The house was quiet and I felt at peace. It was the end of a week of break from school. The work-a-day world felt far away. I had spend every hour of the last week with my growing daughter and wife. I had gathered wild plants every day, taken long woodsy forays finding fiddleheads, wild leeks, and hawthornes. I was tired, but my whole body felt light anyway. I imagined what a life like this would be like.

I still can't see how to feed myself exclusively off the wild. But these starchy roots made me feel a little closer. Here was something that promised real caloric value. I've eaten so many tasty greens. But, they've been just that--greens. Not something that could keep a family alive for months on end. If there were a giant swamp to camp by like some of the ones over by Keene, maybe one could survive off of a stew thickened the starch here. I feel like I am learning myself closer to my own emancipation from civilization, one plant at a time.

How do cattails taste? They taste like freedom.