Foraging for fiddleheads to boycott Loblaws

I spent a couple of hours in the marsh across the way foraging for fiddleheads this afternoon. This is the first time in a few years that I managed to get to the fiddleheads before they were three foot tall fern fronds. I can’t remember who turned me on to this delicacy, but I recall harvesting them along the banks of the Speed River south-west of Guelph fifty years ago. Back then, you headed out on May 24 weekend to fill your satchel. We’re a couple of hours north of there, so you’d expect the season to be a week or so later. Instead, fifty years on, the season is first week of May instead of last. Must be part of that “climate change emergency” so many folks are obsessed with. Quite aside from coming home with exceptionally nutritious and totally unprocessed free food that Loblaws didn’t get a cut of, the afternoon was time well spent. Firstly, you get away from the poison of the screen. I don’t know about you, but I generally never walk away from six or eight or ten hours at the computer feeling happier, more contented, or more optimistic than when I logged on. Then there’s all that fresh air and nature. As I made my way along the creek bank, I startled a nesting pair of Canada geese, who promptly paddled downstream with five hatchlings trailing behind, young enough to still have their yellow plumage. Later, a sandhill crane took flight just in front of me. I made my way home with about a pound’s worth of fiddleheads. I’ve got one recipe for all my foraging finds. Fry it in butter and salt lightly. Use salted butter and you can skip the second part. Whether it’s wild leeks, morels, or puffballs; fry in butter and salt lightly. It’s shocking how much food goes to waste simply because we don’t look at it as food. Every autumn, the backroads around here are lined with apple trees groaning under the weight of a perfectly edible crop, destined to fall to the ground and rot while folks pay five bucks for a three-pound bag of apples at the grocery store. Dream globally. Live locally. Forage as much as you can.