[pct-l] Food Dehydrator Tips or Recipes?

[Paul Robison]

Excellently said.   i believe you know i was part of a 4 year project in B.C. 
where we lived off the land.  hunting meat and growing our food.  a lot of that 
was subsidized with foraging during the june and july berry flush  ...so i can 
respect that.

i think you hit the nail on the head,  responsible foraging ...  not taking a 
'clear cutting' approach...  and perhaps doing it off the trail a bit  (easier 
on the AT than the PCT)

Have you see the bags for mushroom collection that lets the spores out as you 
collect?  you actually help the species by harvesting them if you use the right 
techniques.  obviously You know lots about this with your mushroom experiences.  

...perhaps the bigger worry are the day hikers / people who don't care who just 
break the branch off to get to a berry, or take EVERY leaf off a perslain plant 
etc. etc.  


when done moderately and ethically,  especially in places like the cascades,  
there may be no environmental impact whatsoever.




________________________________
From: Scott Williams <baidarker at gmail.com>
To: Paul Robison <paulrobisonhome at yahoo.com>
Cc: pct-l at backcountry.net
Sent: Tue, December 7, 2010 6:54:39 PM
Subject: Re: [pct-l] Food Dehydrator Tips or Recipes?

Go ahead and bitch Out Post. It's an important part of any discussion of wild 
edibles. I agree with you, and try to do just that.  Our feet alone dig the JMT 
deeper each year and it's great to be able to walk the trail "ungrazed".  But 
there is a bounty out there that is just off trail, and I believe can be eaten 
without negatively affecting the trail, or the woods in general.  But it takes 
some thoughtful foraging.  Whenever I forage responsibly, I feel it's actually a 
benefit to our planet in general.  No chemicals went into the foods production, 
no green house gasses were created from the gas or electricity used in its 
transport, soil cultivation, or drying, and I get to have the vitamins and 
minerals up front and not in a pill.  Anyway, I've been doing it since the 60's 
when we tried to live off the land, and I get a great joy from adding real trail 
food to my diet.  But responsible foraging off trail of plentiful foods like the 
pinenuts in SoCal in the fall, onions in the Sierra, lettuces and mustards, 
which grow in tremendous profusion during the winter and spring, and mushrooms, 
which are the fruit of a plant that lives underground, can be an ethical way of 
providing food on trail.  By picking a mushroom you get spores all over your 
hands, your clothes and pack, and then do just what the mushroom plant wants, by 
spreading them down trail. Some are food for other creatures, such as porcini, 
which is loved by pigs and deer, but others are not, such as chanterelles.  
Before cooking, they are hot and spicy, hence the German name, fiferling, or 
pepper mushroom.  Picking a mushroom does not hurt the plant at all, and is 
analogous to picking an apple off a tree, which doesn't hurt the tree.  But when 
a mushroom bloom is on, there are simply huge amounts, enough to go around.   
Most will rot, or be parasitised by other fungus ie, lobster mushrooms, and add 
to the forest nutrients.  Oh, hell, I can go on.  Sorry about that.  They are 
beautiful however, and picking off trail of a plentiful wild edible is the best 
way to do it.

Shroomer



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