Foraging

A friend invited me to go foraging today for wild plums.  First of all, I don't really like plums.  My mom used to buy them for my sister, but I always thought the texture was disturbing.  But foraging sounded like way too much of adventure to pass up.  We traipsed slightly off of the trail in South Boulder along side a stretch of houses that average over a million dollars each.  (Which is not all that hard to do in Boulder)  I felt slightly sheepish as the bikes and runners whizzed by while filling my bright green HEB bag.  We didn't find many to begin with and started on the rose hips when my friend spotted a little grove across the way (and under a fence).  And along the way, we discovered the mother lode of wild aparagus.  Now you have to understand that the knowledge of wild asparagus patches are a closely guarded secret around here.  We had to promise eachother to keep the secret for a spring round-up so don't even ask, I'm not going to tell.  But it's somewhere near some wild plums.

The plums are amazing and worth the wealth of stickers we picked up as well.  Slightly sweet, and tart, and wild tasting.  They are a bit bigger than grapes and not disturbingly squishy at all.

Don't they look amazing?  Now I have to figure out what to do with them, I didn't really plan that far ahead.

Oh, and just in case you are curious about what kind of people go foraging...well, there's me and I'm not quite sure what kind of category I fit into, and there's my friend who has a PHD in plant genetics and happens to live in one of those houses near our foraging site.  And then there's those that I have met who do it out of principal.  The founders of Celestial Seasonings started their company foraging ingredients for their teas.  So I guess I'm in good company.