Northern Ontario, wild edibles & more!

I recently went up to the ThunderBay Area to visit my relatives at their camp in Trout Lake. My Aunt Mary, Uncle Tommy & my 3 cousins all hail from there. I love to visit because they are relaxed folks, the area is really calm & the sky is the bluest I have ever seen.  Seriously...check out this picture I took at 9am on my cell phone. No fancy filters or photo shop here. This is the real deal!

They have an amazing garden that runs the length of the camp. They have herbs, zucchini's, lettuce, strawberries & Uncle Tommy has the biggest tomato plants I have ever seen. I am actually kind of jealous. I don't really have the space to grow these things & I am still battling with my killer black thumb. Plants live in fear of me.

 

The best part of being up in the northlands is getting out to hike. This literally happens steps from the cabin door. Mary hasn't seen bears recently, but the kids accidentally called a Moose playing with an old "Moose Call" they found. Mary also spotted a Lynx not too long ago. The best parts of my walks were discovering all the wild edibles just growing any old place we walked. I know from orienteering classes we took in school we can eat the inner parts of Cattails & sweet clover, etc, etc.

Apparently almost all water lilies are edible. Tasteless & mushy...but edible.

Eat the blueberries AROUND the mushroom. The fungus will kill you stone dead.

However, as a city kid, you never get to actually see any of the things they teach you about. I picked handfuls of tiny wild blueberries. They were all over the place. Tiny raspberries half the size of a dime. I got to try Saskatoon berries....the damn things were EVERYWHERE. Apparently cold, rainy summer = huge Saskatoon berries. I found them to be kind of fibrous & not so tasty, but the kids were eating them right off the bushes with no issues. 

Saskatoon Berries

Wild Blueberries

Wild Raspberries - hated by my Uncle Tommy .

So, what I am hoping to do with my tiny haul is make some small batches of northland bumbleberry jam. I can eat it with the amazing Gouda cheese we got from the famous Thunder Oak Dutch Cheese Farm. So my lesson learned from my stay with the relations is...is doesn't get more "organically grown" than finding food randomly out in the woods. I am really looking forward to visiting next year.

Trout Lake lagoon. There's a beaver dam if you look closely.