forage

There is not much that is more satisfying than growing or harvesting your own food.   Delicious food, for FREE.  I love free.  Sadly, this year, our garden was pretty much non-existant.  Due to moving right during prime planting/growing season, all we got done was some seeds in containers.  Besides some mutant carrots and a bit of lettuce, nothing else did well at all.  Grand plans are in the works for next year's garden, but for this year, I needed to get my free food fix by doing a little wild foraging.

I'll admit that I was more than a little disappointed when I realized that there were very few blackberries on the north coast. I know, I know, they're invasive, but a delicious version of invasive (so therefore more acceptable in my eyes).  I love blackberries and picking them reminds me of days on Saturna and in Point Roberts when I was wee.  Plus, blackberry pie?  I mean, come on, most delish by far.

Get in my bucket!

The lack of blackberries, however, was happily made up for by the plenitude of blueberries that can be found in the north.  A few weeks ago, I ventured up Shames Mountain (the local ski hill, just outside of Terrace), for an afternoon of picking with some friends.  The whole hillside was full of blueberries and huckleberries just ready to be plucked. Big bonus with blueberries: no thorns.

Mini-forager and scenes from the mountainside.

It seemed like it was going to be a daunting task, but once you got into it, it was a bit addictive.  More berries!

Blueberry picking, however, is more labour intensive.  They're so small so a lot of effort is needed to fill up a bucket.  Luckily, picking them is a bit addictive.  You keep seeing more bushes and more berries that just seem to be begging to be picked, that it's hard to tear yourself away. After a solid couple of hours, we all had full buckets to bring home.  Well, almost all of us. The 2 year old member of our picking party would diligently pick a berry, put it in her bucket, and then immediately snatch it  out to eat it at once.  She probably ate her weight in berries that day. Too cute.

Free food is gooooooood.

Full buckets at the end of the day

Yum.  Free is so good.

PS.  If I was in Vancouver, I'd go do this awesome foraging day with Museum Eats.  So you should go do it for me. :)