Cooking from your own gathered ingredients

Has anyone had much experience with this? With spring sort of here, I'm starting to think I'd like to combine a bit of outdoors time with some gathering and later cooking.

I have a recipe for a May wine cocktail with sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum), I've made dandelion salad before and wouldn't mind giving a try at wine, I found a recipe for nettle quiche! All these sorts of things. If we want to be a bit more prosaic, I'd even be happy to go out to a strawberry patch and pick up a storm.

Is anyone else interested? Even better, does anyone have some good ideas of where we can find these and similar ingredients?

I'll go to a strawberry patch. I used to do that as a kid with my mom.

There are a few strawberry patches (Upick) around Johanniskirchen/Ascheim area I think... have seen ads for them in previous summers, but never been here.

PYO - Strawberry Fields thread
Picking Mushrooms in/around Munich thread

Hope that helps.The PYO fruit fields I mentioned there in Johanneskirchen has strawberries at the beginning of summer, then later has blueberries and raspberries. Makes for great fruit crumbles!

Sounds interesting, so far I´ve only been mushrooming in which I am quite experienced and I have also made sloe-gin and elderberry liqueur and I consider myself a good cook.

Be sure to wear gloves that you plan to throw away. That stuff is mean.

at home i'd do this and it was fun. esp the picking/gathering bit. i'd love to try to meet to do this sometime (but as usual i prob will have to work:) )

I was going to link to the Nettles and Bärlauch thread, but noticed that Showem started that one herself, so presumably knows about it already...

Still, must almost be Bärlauch time now.

I do know where to go to find Bärlauch. That stuff is great fresh. Still looking for a nice patch of nettles though.

Bärlauch - yummm. Want some. (I feel like homer simpson now)

The Waldmeister (sweet woodruff) should be left for at least a day after picking before you make Maibowle with it, it only develops then. You can get it at Viktualienmarkt pre-wilted at that one stand with the fantastic jam, can't remember the name, but the one with that really characteristic fellow who'll bend your ear for a half hour if you let him on cooking this and that -- definitely worth the price. I'd rather do my gathering at V-Markt period, really, and go hiking without lugging stuff back. But that's me.

Ye of the screwed-up-knee shall offer no opinions on carrying half a grocery bag of leaves home.

Tsk. I let others do my carrying for me at this point, and I am a considerate Arbeitgeberin.

That sounds interesting, would be up for it.

I remember that there was loads of Barlauch in the Englische Garten near the See Haus last year. I just loved the smell of it.

When it comes to nettle, my Granny uses it sometimes instead of spinach and at Easter we put it in the Easter stuffing.

Yum, cant wait to get home for Easter.

you can eat (sorry, don't know the english term) loewenzahn at the moment. it is very nice in the salad. you should only plug it while the yellow blossom is not out yet and hidden in a green ball.

dandelions

Does purslane grow wild in Munich? Makes a very nice salad. In Lebanon we used to do a lot of forging: chicory, wild thyme, wild fennel, capers...In the US I find wild blackberries, blueberries, mulberries and purslane on my bike trail sometimes.

http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/Plants.Folder/Purslane.html

portulak in German. Yes it does -- I ended up with exactly that in my windowbox last summer but didn't know it was edible. A seed just musta flew in sometime or been dropped in by bird poop. Next time I'll take a nibble.

Cultivated purslane will remind you of feldsalat. The wild stuff tends to be a little more sour. Both are nice.

Is indeed dandelion as somebody said, coming from "dents de lion", meaning lions teeth in French, same as loewenzahn in german.

Foraging and gathering food massively appeals to me, but I'm also a bit of a dodgy geezer, so simply nicking produce from peoples allotments is much more up my alley.

Well, if anyone can suggest where to ask, I'd be happy to do the ground work of finding out where it can be done quasi-legally. Meaning, I don't know if picking mushrooms in the forest is legal, but it's got to be more legal than picking carrots from the garden of one of those hobbit houses.

So if someone knows an organisation to ask where to find the goodies, I'll ask them.

Mushroom picking must be OK, you see lots of people doing it, and Germans are not very good at breaking the law, so must be legal

I've been reading about growing mushrooms in my cellar, and it seems really quite easy. I'd be a bit scared to pick wild ones without somebody with me who knows their stuff - my woman's aunt knows shitloads about getting stuff from the wild, and gets some incredible mushrooms.

Well, maybe we can convince Uncle Nick to take us out with him, once it's mushroom season. I know a bunch come up in the fall, but are there any spring mushrooms?

Here's a thread with some info gathered on shroom collecting.

May be cheating, but I saw large stalks of dandelions at my local veggie stall. Looked a lot like celery, fresh and green.

Gather @ Aldi.de

Mushroom picking is legal (except for National Parks)
I' ve been mushroom picking with my grandma since I could walk.

There is a kind of edible mushrooms that grow in May
and the rest of them late summer and autumn.

You can also make Dandelion "Honey"

May should produce a few morelle mushrooms. Bit of a sod to find them, but they are highly prized.

I've been in contact with Uncle Nick and we might try and organise something after Easter. This weekend looks to be good weather, but I'm busy.