Foraging for wild foods continues into autumn

Myself, I tend to forage in springtime and not in late summer. Why bother, at this time of year, when there are so many wonderful edibles growing in my yard? 

Because that’s the thing with foraging: You have to, you know, forage for it, and that sometimes involves stepping into bug-infested areas and confronting the possibility that you are eating something that resembles a benign edible but is actually toxic. 

It also sometimes involves going on the property of other people. 

When we write about foraging in this health column, that’s usually our health angle: Wear bug protection, be careful where you step, make sure someone knows where you’ve gone just in case you fall in the woods, and always when possible check with the owners of a property to be sure they don’t mind you taking food from their backyard.

Having said that, I have learned this week of a new kind of late-summer forage: wild grapes.  I was lured from my office by a report that a woman was picking them from the vines near our office building in Lakeville. 

It turned out she was Susannah Wood, who has spent summers in Norfolk since she was a young girl. An accomplished forager, she has learned over the years to make an excellent wild grape jelly. 

This is a phenomenal year for wild grapes, she said (as it has been for most foods that grow from the ground).  She spoke to me as she methodically moved around the vine, clipping off clusters one at a time and dropping them into a lovely, old-fashioned basket.

Wild grapes are not a particularly dangerous forage food, she noted, because the leaves and the fruit are both fairly distinctive; it’s hard to mistake a wild grape for something that is toxic. However, at this time of year there are other fruits growing wild on vines, so be sure to study the photo on this page carefully and check for photos on the Internet as well.  

Wild grapes are very small and almost look like champagne grapes; but they aren’t sweet and delicious like champagne grapes. They’re fairly sour, Wood said, if you eat them raw (I took her at her word and did not eat any myself).

What’s the point of picking them, then? Wood makes grape jelly from them: She cooks them with a little water until they soften, and then strains them overnight through a cotton cloth or a jelly bag. 

In the morning she takes the juice and adds pectin and sugar. The amount varies depending on how much juice she gets from the fruit. She goes online to find the right proportions but didn’t recommend any particular website.

Most fruit, and especially sour fruit, requires a lot of sugar, she said. It not only sweetens the final product, it also helps the jelly to “set.” For cooks who want to reduce the amount of sugar, she said there are low-sugar pectins sold at most stores that sell pectin (most grocery stores carry pectin and you can also usually find it at Tractor Supply in Amenia).

The fruit has some of its own pectin; the green, unripe grapes have more pectin than the ripe, purple grapes. 

For those of us who are confused about the difference between jam and jelly, Wood clarified that, “Jam is fruit that’s been cooked down. It has more body to it than jelly, which is made just from the juices.”

Wood filled her basket to the top (making sure to leave plenty of other grapes for other foragers) and estimated that she would get about six pint jars from that basket of fruit. Since she already has a cupboard full of raspberry-blueberry-currant  jam, crab apple jelly and strawberry-orange jam, she said she might give a few jars away to her friends (who must be very lucky people).