Forgaing

On an early date with my boyfriend, I jumped over a fence in Central Park and began picking and eating berries from a bush.  He was, understandably, not pleased with my decision to eat wild berries from the park.  Over the years, he has gotten used to this.  The truth is that I have been doing this for as long as I can remember. From wild onions and honey suckle stamens to black raspberries and wineberries and far beyond, I learned from a young age what I could and could not eat while running around in the out of doors.

That said, I do not eat ANYTHING that I cannot identify.  I also steer clear of all mushrooms that I come across in the wild as eating the wrong mushroom can result in sickness, psychotropic trips or even death.

Two of my favorite things to snack on from nature are mulberries and wineberries.  Neither berry are available in any market that I have ever been to, owing largely to the fact that they are too delicate to transport successfully. Both are incredibly delicious and grow easily in and around New York City.

Mulberries

Based on the nursery rhyme "All around the mulberry bush the monkey chased the weasel...", I thought that mulberries grew on bushes, but as it turns out they grow on trees.  These trees are fairly common in the part of Brooklyn that I inhabit and are easy to pick and enjoy.  There's a tree on my block and as soon as I start seeing the pavement discolor, I know that snack time is nigh.

Mulberries are sweet and are pink to dark red when ripe. I eat plenty of only slightly ripe mulberries as when they are ripe, they tend to fall or are eaten by birds. Either way they are a tasty treat when you come upon them.

Mulberry stains, Varying degrees of ripe mulberries

Wineberries

Apart from hopping over fences in Central Park in front of new boyfriends, I take just about every opportunity that I can to acquire wineberries.  I have snuck out of parties with a spare jar to collect them, I have stopped my bike to collect them, I have even made mental maps of all of the places that I see them in NYC so that next year I will be able to score some. Wineberries look a lot like raspberries save for they are more orange in color and they have a smooth, shiny skin. This year, I spent a good chunk of time at a family party collecting them, even garnering the attention of some caterers who probably thought that I was crazy.

Wineberries do have a somewhat wine-y taste, somewhere between a raspberry and a good glass of cabernet, sort of a sour raspberry if you will.  They are native to Asia but now grow wild throughout the Northeastern United States and elsewhere. Their season is short and (as far as I know) there are no poisonous look alikes.

This year, apart from eating as many as I could gather, I am making a cordial with about a pint of wineberries.  Assuming that it is as delicious as I hope it will be, my process will be forthcoming.

A pint of winberries, wineberries from the top, wineberries on the bush

While there are countless other edibles that I come across in this fair city that I call home, mulberries and wineberries have to be two of my favorites.  They are easy to spot and extremely satisfying to find and eat.

DISCLAIMER: Do not eat anything from nature that you are unsure of.  There are countless excellent resources available as well as classes given in NYC city parks on the art of urban foraging.