Foraging for food
If you are of a “certain age,” you remember Euell Gibbons as a kind of guru of edible plants. Even if you did not purchase his well-illustrated books to stalk your own wild asparagus, you may remember his stint as an actor in an advertisement for a particular breakfast cereal — “Ever eat a pine tree?
Many parts are edible, you know.” His Southern accent hit the adjective-noun, pine tree, with a vowel sound we of the North do not possess, somewhere between “pawn” and the whine of a chain saw.
A generation ago, foraging was not an unusual approach to feeding oneself and one’s family in the Crown of Maine. Even now, most residents acknowledge that they have had some foraging experiences. Their whole family may have headed onto the bottomlands to bring home fiddleheads, gathered strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries, or sautéed up a few puffball mushrooms to join a steak on the dinner plate. Nowadays, however, our children eye us suspiciously over their electronic screens if we suggest the experience as a productive and entertaining use of their free time; perhaps we should not have exposed them to Hansel and Gretel at such a tender age …
And as our days get filled with other demands, it becomes less likely that we can find the time to consider foraging as a “shopping” option.
All is not lost, however. You can still have the adventure of foraging for “found items” at the Presque Isle Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings at the Aroostook Centre Mall parking lot. Just breakfast can fill a reusable bag and provide a week’s worth of menu selections. Eggs from Delphinium Blue Farm can be cooked up in your favorite form and served with fresh bakery items like doughnuts and fritters from The Country Bakery. Or toast your favorite bread and slather it with jam from Joseph Zook’s family. Or make French toast drenched in Maine maple syrup from Sunrise Farm. Jackie and Phil also sell ploye mix, made from buckwheat grown in Aroostook County.
Those French pancakes would go well with some “real” bacon from Chops Ahoy. Nothing like the preservative-laden, paper-thin product you may have had in the past, one taste will drive that Oscar Mayer advertising ditty right out of your mind.
Fresh strawberries from Goughan’s Berry Farm can have the same effect. These are berries that taste like fruit despite their amazing size (you already know about the flavorless “eye candy” from the West Coast, right?). Slice these juicy gems into a bowl with a little freshly made yogurt from the O’Meara Family Farm cows and maybe a drizzle of honey from Steve Miller’s bees and your tongue will be happy all the way to lunch time.
So let’s consider lunch. Maybe Philly steak sandwiches made with grass-fed organic beef from Orchard Hill Farm. Maybe some fresh tender greens in a bodacious summer salad. Maybe …
Now that we have you in the foraging mood, we will leave it to you to build a lunch menu from the variety of selections available at the Market. See you there!
This column is written by members of the Presque Isle Farmers’ Market. For more information, visit their website at https://sites.google.com/site/presqueislefarmersmarket/home.
