Gooseberries are ripe

By Amie Johansen   |   Columnist

Finding edibles in nature is the best. At home, you wander into the kitchen and the majority of what you find needs some sort of preparation before chowing down on the snack. A bag of chips needs to be opened and paired with a dip. The cookie jar lid needs to be removed and a glass of milk needs to poured. Don’t even get me started on the impossibility of preparing ice cream for a “quick” snack. All of these time consuming steps are enough to push someone near the edge of starvation. There are no steps to enjoying Mother Nature’s snacks. Technically, you wouldn’t even need to pick the fruits from the branches, you could gobble them off the stem with your face — though, I’m not sure I would recommend that.

One of our readers suggested to fellow reporter Kate Hayden that she try gooseberries as part of our “Feed Kate” project. Being a true fan of natural edibles, I jumped on board. I called around to a few of my favorite outdoor contacts who pointed me in the right direction. Last week I informed Kate the gooseberries were ripe at Tosanak Recreation Area in Marble Rock. I insisted that we hurry so we could beat the birds to the ripe ones.

We set up a date, grabbed the bug spray and a couple of buckets made our way to Tosanak. Last year was the first time I ate a gooseberries. They kind of have a texture of an overripe tomato. I think they are probably best served between two pie crusts with a small pile of sugar, but they are able to be enjoyed with fewer preparation steps.

“Although I wasn’t overly won over by the gooseberries, I did enjoy checking out the park and doing a bit of hunting,” Kate said.

It didn’t take us too long to find the gooseberries. I did warn Kate that I had only eaten them once before. I assured her that if I poisoned us through misidentification it was entirely unintentional. I’m not sure that disclosure provided her with much comfort.

The plan was to collect at least three cups of gooseberries and I would teach her to make a pie. After 40 minutes of picking we ended up with roughly a ¼ cup. We took the berries back to work and shared them with our coworkers. The remaining gooseberries I flung into the Cedar River where even the mallards rejected them.

Despite not falling in love with the gooseberry, I was happy to learn that Kate did thoroughly enjoy the act of picking the berries.

“I ended up with an on-the-fly blackberry picking excursion on a disc golf course this weekend, so who knows, maybe a lot more berry hunting is in my future,” she said.

Everytime we check something off of the “Feed Kate” list, someone presents us with a new food item. Liver and onions will remain the grand finale, but next up we have sardines and okra to try. I have never fried okra, but it certainly is delicious, so I guess I need to find a recipe before we get to that one. Sardines need no recipe: peel back tin, fork onto cracker, enjoy!

To share food ideas, email Kate Hayden at khayden@charlescitypress.com or Amie Johansen at amie@charlescitypress.com.