After going a few years without pawpaws, I just couldn’t take it anymore. This year, the fruit seemed to be more popular than ever, showing up in more recipes, photos, and food discussions. Despite the abundance of this fruit, some foragers debated sharing their locations while others begged for a hot tip.
I’ve never had a hard time finding pawpaws, to be honest, but this frenzy intimidated me. Besides, I think that farmed cultivars just taste better.
So I took an early morning bus ride to the Baltimore Farmers’ Market, where Two Boots Farm sells some of the only farmed pawpaws around.
Although my “home market” is the one in Waverly, as soon as the weather starts changing, I find myself tempted by the downtown market under the JFX, where the echoes of voices and music blend with the overhead cars on the highway. When leafy salad greens give way to collards and cabbage, and corn to sweet potatoes and pumpkins, the Baltimore Farmers Market feels special. The summer crowds start to wane and its a little easier to navigate the loop.
The smells of smoked meats and cinnamon doughnuts greet you as you browse.
After acquiring my pawpaws, I waited in line for coffee. Already, the familiar scent of the pawpaw was wafting out of my bag, threatening to over-ripen as only tropical fruits can do.
I think that a coconut layer cake with pawpaw filling would be pretty good, but that’s for another year. I made my trusty old pawpaw cream pie. Leaving nothing to chance, I stirred the custard with cornstarch, egg yolks and gelatin. Pawpaw seeds slid from my fingers as I tried my best to scrape the pulpy flesh into my pie crust. Although I didn’t have much fruit, the smell permeated my kitchen, and I knew that it would be more than enough to infuse my pie filling with it’s unique flavor.
Now that I’ve become reacquainted with my old friend the pawpaw, I find myself wanting more. Another crisp Sunday morning downtown may be in order. Failing that, I might just recommit. I don’t think I should let another year go by without tasting the magical flesh of our largest native fruit.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that the Old Angler’s Inn doesn’t exactly date to the 19th century. Rather, the building in Potomac was built on the site of a previous Anglers’ clubhouse that had burned down in 1896. The current building, now a restaurant, dates to just after 1900. Perfectly respectable.
I was surprised to learn that the story of a nearby gold-mine, operated by a Union soldier, was absolutely true. The ruins of the mine still sit near the C&O Canal, just a mile away from the Old Angler’s Inn. The mine even has a historical marker validating its existence.
Legend has it that the Anglers’ Association, whose nearby clubhouse inspired the Inn’s name, boasted several U.S. Presidents as members.
One of the most vivid descriptions of the joys of foraging for wild food was written by Edna Lewis in “In Pursuit of Flavor,” the 1988 follow-up to her influential book “The Taste of Country Cooking.” She wrote in the present tense about the tastes from her childhood in Freetown, Virginia, where both cultivated and wild land offered sensory delight:
“Beyond the garden is the orchard… and beyond the orchard are the fields and woods, where wild things grow – watercress, mushrooms, strawberries, blackberries, grapes, and nuts. Perhaps it is because of the natural, undisturbed compost that nurtures them year after year, or perhaps it is because they grow only where the soil, light and humidity are right for them, but wild things never fail us. They always taste good, which is why if you see only a handful of wild nuts or a cupful of berries, you should pick them. They have a flavor nothing else has. If you transplant a wild plant to the garden it will never taste the same.”
The impact of having been raised in an environment that was both psychologically and physically nurturing stayed with Lewis. As one of the first evangelists of the value of farm-to-table food, Lewis’ relationship to food defined a philosophy for a faction of chefs, diners and home cooks who have sought to question the wisdom of the industrial agriculture era.
To many people, the question of whether an urban environment can incorporate the kind of nurturing qualities found in a rural farming community doesn’t seem worth asking. Cities have been notoriously depleted and toxified by centuries of industry. In Baltimore, the very walls and pipes have poisoned generations of children. For many, urban environments are not only not nurturing – they are hostile.
Nonetheless, a growing number of public health and municipal planning professionals have taken notice of the foragers who do venture into city parks, highway medians or grassy lots to gather edible plants and fungus that most people don’t even know are there.
Baltimore is sometimes pulled into these conversations by chance. The Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is located here, and naturally their initial research often gathers data locally.
In December 2017, they released the findings of a study done in a partnership with the US Forest Service. “Researchers surveyed 105 foragers in Baltimore to get data on: forager demographics; commonly-foraged foods; the locations of foraging activities; motivations for and barriers to foraging; and the contribution of foraged materials to foragers’ diets.”
I was one of the participants of this study. The results have given context beyond the anecdotal about who else is “out there,” gathering in Baltimore, what they are gathering, and why. Most, like me, are white women in their mid-thirties. Most have a college degree and earn 20-40k in annual income. The average years of foraging experience is less than five. Foragers reported gathering “a diverse array of plant and fungal materials which, in some cases, constituted an important fraction of an individual’s overall diet. Despite this,” the report notes, “foraging remains largely unrecognized in urban policy, planning, and design, except where prohibited by regulations governing public parks and other green spaces.”
Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: the book that started my foraging fascination
Researching the history of foraging is an exercise in futility. Where a behavior was once a normal part of survival, it’s not worth writing too much about in books or newspapers. The term “gathering” was more commonly used until the last few decades. What is easier to find is the *decline* of foraging. Old newspapers would occasionally mention unfortunate people who picked the wrong mushroom, but there were no forceful admonitions. In 1894 the Baltimore Sun reported that edible mushrooms were growing abundantly that September but that “it requires an experienced person to distinguish them from the poisonous toadstools.”
Nearly a century later, in 1958, the Hagerstown Daily Mail printed a column by a Dr. Van Dallen entitled “How to Keep Well.” His first advice on how to keep well? “Don’t gather mushrooms…. Even the experts have been known to make mistakes,” the doctor wrote.
It would seem that the popularity of foraging waned until its resurgence in the 1990s, but it never fully went away.
In 1998, one of the first ever studies of urban foraging was conducted right in Baltimore by the now-defunct Community Resources, Inc, “a nonprofit organization promoting community stewardship to restore our urban environment.”
The results are fascinating. Forester Paul Jahnige observed a diverse array of people collecting edible and medicinal items in the city parks. With Community Resources, he produced a paper filled with stories from actual foragers, including elderly African Americans who gathered poke greens, children shaking mulberries from city trees, and a Korean family who would make an annual trip to gather Chinese Chestnuts before cooking them at home, together. The paper determined that “urban forest product collectors come from a wide diversity of socio-economic, age, gender, and ethnic groups and institutions.”
They also determined that the needs and interest of these foragers was not considered before park planning decisions were made. The paper cites the proposed removal of the Chinese Chestnut trees for road-widening. While neighborhood residents, traffic engineers and park officials held many meetings about the project, “the collectors of these nuts were not even considered. They had no voice in the decision. Their use of the trees did not count.”
A lot has changed in the intervening years. Eric Kelly of Charm City Farms feels that Baltimore is doing more and more to encourage foraging and urban agriculture. “I think that they are [encouraging foraging] to a certain extent.” He cites Baltimore Housing’s Adopt-A-Lot program as one example. “You can get involved with Tree Baltimore, Parks and People and other non-profits [focused on] green space, and become part of that community and get involved with maintenance. They are open to conversations about how the areas are tended to.”
Charm City Farms conducts workshops on foraging itself as well as follow-up processes like making rope and processing acorns. At their farm and work-shed in Johntson Square, the concepts of urban versus rural sometimes collide in amusing and enlightening ways. Local teenagers stop by to marvel at the slabs of deer meat and discards, while survivalists-in-training from the suburbs make a show of nonchalance.
Starting friction fires and making your own ropes and acorn flour may be useful skills to have, but even Kelly doesn’t believe that foraging can truly provide enough food to live on. “It can round out a diet pretty well, and I wouldn’t expect to go out and get a full meal but what you’re going to get at a grocery store will never come close to the freshness and goodness of foraged foods.”
Nutrition may not be the most beneficial aspect of urban foraging at any rate. The family ties and connections to traditions first mentioned in Jahnige’s survey are a theme in subsequent studies, including the most recent one completed by The Center for a Livable Future. A 2013 study in Seattle asserted that “urban foraging maintains traditions and social ties while deepening connections with nature.”
Increasingly, municipalities are considering the benefit in allowing and even fostering these activities. The Seattle study conclusion stated that “seeking wild foods and medicines in the city can be seen as a way in which foragers assert their rights to the natural resources that support their wild food and health practices.”
Delving into issues of planning (or any issues, really) in Baltimore is particularly fraught. Any discussion is remiss without consideration of the racial inequality that is built into the very layout of the city. As (some of) Baltimore’s citizens and media have become increasingly interested in understanding this fact, professor Lawrence Brown has become a de-facto interpreter. His analysis of the segregation and the resources allocated to “The White L and the Black Butterfly” elevated the discussion in the wake of the 2015 unrest. I reached out to him to inquire whether seemingly trivial subjects like urban foraging have a place in the reparations of Baltimore’s segregationist culture and policies.
“Urban planning around increasing resources is always worthwhile for Black Butterfly neighborhoods. Baltimore Apartheid operates on a basis of segrenomics that Noliwe Rooks defines as ‘the business of profiting specifically from high levels of racial and economic segregation’ (from her book Cutting School) intentionally reduces access to resources and allows White neighborhoods to hoard them,” Brown says. “Certain environmental efforts may not be a priority in many Black Butterfly neighborhoods… where people are struggling to survive day-by-day. But they are worthwhile. The efforts to plant a garden or fruit trees should not be isolated or a one off project. They should be connected with pressing issues like providing employment or safe spaces or teaching children or reducing redlining.”
One study has pointed out, for instance, that access to park land in Baltimore is inequitable by race and income. Another obvious concern would be environmental contaminants, which often tend to make their way into the lands that disadvantaged people live and depend on, whether legally, by corrupt corporations, or just plain lack of sanitation services.
The Center for a Livable Future is planning to follow-up with further study of contamination concerns. Study co-author Keeve Nachman says “we needed to get an understanding of what foraged items people were most likely to consume and where they are getting them, since both of these are essential to know in order to try and make sense of whether exposures to these contaminants are of concern. It’s somewhat inevitable that exposures to contaminants are going to happen in the urban environment – the real question is whether or not the levels and timing of these exposures are concerning. Now that we know quite a bit about foraging patterns in Baltimore, further work will allow us to answer this question with a lot more confidence.”
As a lifelong forager in suburban and rural environments, the thought of toxins has passed my mind. As much as I love a good morel hunt, my favorite foraging memories involve gathering blackberries with my grandmother as the cars rushed by us on the highway. I wondered if I should worry about car exhaust, but the taste of a fresh ripe blackberry beat out my concerns.
As for foraging in the city, I once didn’t consider it an option. Then, in the mid-2000’s, I had a coworker, Aliza Sollins, who would come into our office in Bolton Hill with a bag full of edible items found in the nearby alleyways or overgrown hedges. Aliza’s connection with food systems eventually led her to a career gardening work with refugees and Baltimore children, tackling issues of education and food access. She is currently working at the community organization Annie E. Casey Foundation. She says “Foraging helps me to reconnect the idea of food as nature. It’s different than gardening because while gardening is something that humans must control and maintain, foraging something growing wild or that has gone feral… gives the sense that nature is enduring and abundant. …. foraging is definitely a nice starting point of intersection between connecting people to the plants around them. People tend to be more interested in a plant if it can be of value to them in some way.”
Aliza told me she always felt appeal in possessing the knowledge and ability to forage for food, but echoed Kelly’s opinion that urban foraging is impractical as a large component of anyone’s diet: “Foraging is also not a good way to ACTUALLY survive unless you have a lot of land because it’s so hard to get enough calories from random plants, it more about the idea of survival…a sense of resilience.”
Adopt-A-Lot aside, Baltimore doesn’t tend to be very cutting edge about these types of things. That is part of the reason that this study’s Baltimore focus is exciting.
Inquiring about the intersections of the food waste and foraging studies presents some questions of interpretation. Nachman says, “On one hand, we could consider that all unforaged forageables in the urban environment are a form of wasted food… many of them are nutrient dense and pack a real punch when it comes to supplementing the diet. Thankfully, the environmental and public health consequences of wasting food in this context are negligible, as the inputs to production are virtually nonexistent (since many of these items are typically considered weeds). On the other hand, we have learned that there are very real concerns related to over-foraging; for example, with some species, there is a potential for harvesting to occur to such an extent that the plants won’t grow back, which have obvious negative consequences on food availability.”
Eric Kelly from Charm City Farms feels that “in [city] limits its especially beneficial to encourage foraging because we’re not disturbing a habitat or ecosystem… not one that’s not already ruined anyway… whereas parks in the county are very sensitive towards that kind of thing.”
The interchange between humans and plants in the city creates intriguing possibilities.
If you’re hiking through Leakin Park during a leafy time of year, there are moments you could forget you’re in the city. Franklintown Road winds around the south end of the park, largely quiet. The streams, ruins and recreational structures create intrigue scattered throughout the park. This remote feeling has enabled the conditions for Leakin Park’s notorious reputation. Longtime residents in the surrounding neighborhoods know the stories of the discarded bodies found in the park dating back to the 1940′s. Those stories were amplified by the Serial Podcast; now, people who couldn’t have named a Baltimore park make jokes about ‘the bodies.’
While outsiders and naysayers crack jokes, many citizens find respite within the city’s green spaces, reaping physical and mental health benefits in the process. Could foraging help repair the relationship Baltimore citizens have with this park?
Heide Grundmann from Friends of Leakin Park is aware of foraging activities in the park, but the park stewards are cautious to condone it. “in general the park system does not allow taking things from the park, excepting fallen acorns and similar fallen fruits. Over the years we have observed significant loss of habitat and wildlife due to climate change and overpopulation of deer, who eat young plants and undergrowth. It takes a well-informed person to forage carefully without causing detrimental effects on the area. During the October Mushroom Festival guided walks occur to teach mushroom identification.”
The CLF study may enable Baltimore to strike a balance. Marla Emery, the US Forestry Service researcher who collaborated on the study believes that it’s possible and worth pursuing. “As a scientist, in general, and a federal scientist in particular, it’s my job to provide information that will support land managers in making those sorts of decisions. Current strategies for managing hunting and fishing definitely provide potential models. In the not-too-distant future, we hope to convene a group of urban public land managers, non-governmental organizations, foragers, and researchers to review the state-of-the-knowledge about urban foraging and consider whether there might be a pathway to safe, sustainable foraging in parks and other city green spaces.”
Many ‘urban foragers,’ myself included, feel that foraging can have benefits beyond the free food. Increasingly, the studies seem to confirm this feeling.
Aliza puts it best:
“Foraging helps me feel more connected to the city because it helps you connect to secret, special spots (like the herbs growing at the base of the statue in Mt. Royal!). It makes you value public space. It’s funny because when I was in Kentucky, you would think that there is so much land to access there, but really most of the land is other people’s property unless you go to a big state park. I realized that Baltimore is so special because there are so many shared small public spaces. The city’s vacant lot adoption program is really special.
Staying connected to nature as the source of food is really powerful, and also helps to maintain honor for our bodies and the earth.”
“An old almanac in the Goschenhoppen Folklife Library contains a woodcut showing a farm boy with a baseball-bat size club whacking away at a walnut tree. The late Thomas R. Brendle records the practice of waking-up young fruit and nut trees that are reluctant to start bearing by beating them with club. The folk practice dictates that the trees were to be beaten on New Year’s Day in the morning without speaking. A current arborist write that this is not complete nonsense. Apparently if a young apple tree, for example, has reached the age when it should start to bear and it just doesn’t flower, during the winter when it is dormant a beating with a padded club and a vigorous twisting of the limbs traumatizes and shocks the tree into its normal cycle.” – The Historian: Black walnuts in local culture, Berks-Mont News
A search of early era newspapers for “Black Walnut” turns up a lot of talk about furniture. And this may be what the trees are primarily known for today. But today, foragers know that the smelly, stain-causing green projectiles launched from black walnut trees contain a tasty little treasure for those willing to do the work to get them out.
It is actually surprising that black walnuts didn’t catch on sooner with Euro-Americans, because their flavor is very floral and perfumey – fitting in well with the rose or orange flower water flavorings that were common in desserts of the era. But with Chesapeake abundance, it could be easy to overlook such tough nut to crack. I harvested some black walnuts last year, dried them out, and had Burgersub drive over them with his car, but they came out too pulverized for use. Mom says that my grandmother smashes them with a hammer – but then she has smaller more nimble hands for picking the nutmeats out of the walnut chambers. This year, I bought them at the farmer’s market, conveniently shelled and ready for use.
Black walnuts were widely consumed by Native Americans, and the practical Pennsylvania Dutch (and their Maryland counterparts) have long used the nuts and the trees’ wood. One Pennsylvania writer has said that Black Walnut Cake was a Thanksgiving tradition in his family.
Elizabeth Ellicott Lea’s Black Walnut notes, “Domestic Cookery,” 1859
Many older Maryland recipes for Black Walnut Cake resemble a pound cake, but I chose a lighter cake from “Maryland’s Way,” contributed by a Ruby Duval of Annapolis (1891-1976). This cake contains baking powder, and uses only the beaten whites of the eggs. Food writer Clementine Paddleford wrote of a similar recipe, hailing from Kansas, in 1952.
I recently learned from “Maryland’s Chesapeake” by Neal and Kathy Wielech Patterson that The Maryland Department of Natural Resources sometimes collects donated bushels of black walnuts in order to grow them into seedlings to be planted along streams. This program, called “Stream ReLeaf,” plants native trees to curb erosion and runoff – ultimately resulting in a healthier and cleaner Chesapeake Bay. If you’ve ever seen the piles and piles of nuts dropped by a black walnut when it’s having an abundant year, you may be reassured that you can have this cake and a clean bay too. Ugh, nevermind, just eat some cake and watch out for the shells because you can break a tooth.
Recipe:
1 Cup butter
2 Cup sugar
3 Cup flour
2 Teaspoon baking powder
1 Cup milk
1 Cup black walnut meats
5 egg whites
Powdered sugar
almond extract or other flavoring
Preheat oven to 350°.
Cream butter, gradually beat in sugar, mixing until smooth and fluffy. Sift together flour and baking powder. Gradually add flour and milk to creamed butter/sugar, alternating, beginning and ending with flour. Gently fold in beaten egg whites and walnut meats, keeping light but mixing thoroughly. Pour into bundt pan that has been greased and floured; bake for 45 minutes or until lightly browned.
Wet powdered sugar with almond flavoring and/or water and mix until smooth. Spread over cake while it is still slightly warm.
Recipe adapted from Maryland’s Way: The Hammond-Harwood House Cookbook
This recipe appeared in “Maryland’s Way,” care of Mrs. Carroll Rede Harding’s “Glebe Kitchen.” Researching The Glebe I learned that a glebe is actually like a church’s home and lands where the priest lives. I always thought it was a person’s name because there’s so many “Glebe” this-or-thats around.
Although Mr. Carroll Rede Harding was in fact the son of a Reverend, the “Glebe” in question is a “typical late 19th century farmhouse” in Talbot County.
Harding mostly grew up in Baltimore, where he delivered hats for a milliner, worked as a copy boy for the Associated Press, and attended
Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. After graduating from Cornell, Mr. Harding worked in railroad industries most of his life, finally serving as the president of the Pullman Company from 1947 through 1958, at which point he retired to the Glebe. He passed away in 1963.
From here, an interesting course of events befalls the Glebe.
The estate came into possession of conservative politician Robert Bauman, member of the House of Representatives who lived at The Glebe with his wife Carol and four children.
His career and marriage came to an end following a scandal in 1980 when Bauman was caught soliciting a 16 year old male prostitute. Bauman penned an autobiography in 1986 entitled “The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative.”
The Glebe, setting for this turmoil, stands today as part of a million-dollar estate.
But back to the mushroom pie. Although people have been eating mushrooms for ages, its hard for me to pinpoint the 18th and 19th century sources of mushrooms in Maryland. It is doubtful that people were growing them, for the most part. Newspaper searches indicate a fairly-frequent occurrence of foraging gone wrong, if you know what I mean. But then, there would not be much reason to mention successful mushroom hunting.
A lot of mushrooms probably reached Maryland kitchens dried, powdered, or in the form of mushroom ketchup.
Personally, I don’t have the greatest of luck with foraging. I’m not talking unfortunate soul meeting my doom through bad judgement, but rather that I’m usually coming home empty-handed. I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about this so excuse me if I indulge in some food-blogger style rambling.
I’ve just had this lifelong neurotic superstition that maybe I wanted it too bad, or I didn’t give off the right vibes to the universe. Meanwhile my family members were always and still are being rewarded with decent mushroom hauls, or at the very least one gigantic morel the size of a human head. Its an uncanny gift that skipped over me.
An ancestor of mine once found this record-breaking puffball:
This year has been no different. Aside from one blessed morel, I’ve left the woods empty handed.
The woods gods threw me a bone the other day when I found this Sulphur Shelf aka “Chicken Mushroom.” I know this thing doesn’t look edible but do some searching, there’s no mistaking this one. I know because I checked and checked again. A Sulphur Shelf is no spectacular find by most metrics but they grow to a nice size for something requiring a lot of mushrooms, such as mushroom ketchup or this mushroom pie.
Mrs. Carroll Rede Harding’s recipe is open to an array of seasonings, so I copied the flavors of some ravioli I once had and used rosemary and some parmesan cheese. So what if it’s wood pulp or whatever?
I made some quick puff pastry for the top. It may not be picturesque but the pie was delicious. Mrs. Harding suggested serving with roast beef so I did just that, along with some Currant Jelly. I will definitely make this again, woods gods permitting. I pick up litter to win their favor.
Recipe:
2-3 Lb mushrooms
1 large or 2 small chopped onions
2 Tablespoons flour
1 Cup strong stock
.5 Cup Madeira
salt
celery salt or seasonings of choice
freshly ground black pepper
cayenne pepper
butter – 2 tb plus more for sautéing
pastry
Sauté onions in butter until golden, add mushrooms and cook until tender, about 10 minutes. Place mushrooms and onions in pie dish. Brown flour in 2 tablespoons of butter over low heat. Slowly add stock and Madeira wine, stirring or whisking until thickened and smooth. Season to taste. Pour sauce over mushrooms and cover with a rich pastry crust. Bake in a 375° oven for ½ hour*.
“Excellent accompaniment for Roast Beef.” – Mrs. Carroll R. Harding
* If using pastry, follow instructions for baking pastry before reducing heat
Recipe adapted from “Maryland’s Way: The Hammond-Harwood House Cookbook”
