We have discussed some of the odd critters that crossed our dining room table in Brookwood. Today’s post is about some of the other interesting edibles we were able to try in the woods of Michigan.
Out away from the base of the Smoke Jump there grew a small patch of prickly pear. I am not sure how 
they came to be growing there, whether Dad or Grandfather had planted them. But they were an interesting plant. We never made it a habit to eat the flat, pad-like edible “leaves” or nopal….I don’t even remember trying it. Nowadays nopal is being used as a diet aid! However we did try the pears, otherwise known as “Indian Figs”. Dad peeled them and gave them to us to try. I remember it as being sweet and chewy…indeed the chewiness was rather fig-like – the seeds were hardly chewable and I think we spat them out. But they were neat, different and not unpleasant. occasionally we would ask him and he would harvest a few.
Interestingly my husband found a large potted prickly pear in the trash this year and brought it home! It has bloomed it’s lovely one day yellow blossom and is now forming a fruit! I will have to harvest it and have my family try it!
Another unexpected treat was wintergreen. It grew by the Foxhole. I believe that previously I may have mispoke and claimed the color of these tiny berries was white. They are instead a lovely shade of red when ripe. They grow on a short, about 6″ tall evergreen in sandy, well drained soil. The FLOWERS are white and waxy and bells shaped in most varietes.
Wintergreen was a very mildly sweet, lightly minty, sometimes spicey tasting berry. The berries were tiny and we would pick a handful and eat them. As a child however, a person is impatient, and we didn’t have the desire to keep plucking and eating! It was a tasty sometime treat however!
There were also wild strawberries, wild blueberries, wild raspberries and wild blackberries. These were all really luscious treats that we could avail ourselves of. Dad loved to have blueberry pancakes and blueberry muffins made with our fresh berries. Sometimes Mom and Aunt Martha would make a berry cobbler. All of it was made even more wonderful because there were bush ripened, freshly picked delicacies.
Then there was the previously discussed acquired taste- sassafrass. Dad occasionally made sassafrass sasparilla. for one thing though, his was not carbonated. That was not too pleasant for me. It was similar to a somewhat spiced sweet tea. (I can’t stand sweet tea! Give me lemon and/or mint and NO sweetner!) I guess I don’t have a lot to say about that….it was definitely an acquired taste to which I never became accustomed!
There were a lot of edibles right on the property that we could enjoy. And we took full advantage of the ones we enjoyed!
classics nor pop; my best lullaby comes from Brookwood. You can get it anywhere in a country-ish setting, away from the cars, highway noise, booming stereos and cell phones, but for me it comes from memories of Brookwood. 
