More May Memory Joggers

Earlier this month, I posted Gail Lee Martin’s tips for early May memories. Hopefully, you were inspired to write a few and are now ready for some more memory prompts. Get out your pen and start writing! May 15 – May 30.

Graphic from Pixabay

“In the merry month of May, there are many things to do that will jog your memory. Such as gathering edible mushrooms and green plants that spring rains have made plentiful. Do you remember your mother or grandmother going out to do this? Even here in town, I can find some of nature’s bounty to make our meals colorful and different by picking Inky Cap Mushrooms to add to soups, scrambled eggs, and even gravy. I also pick Poke, Goose Weed, and Lamb’s Quarter and cook them like spinach.

May is also Older Americans Month. This would be a good time to visit your older family members and neighbors and get them talking about what they did years ago.

Graduation time is upon us but those dreaded finals always came first. Write about your senior year as if it was a letter to your great-grandchildren. Add what was going on around the world during your final year in high school or college. Were you a class officer, in a class play, lettered in sports or music? Tell about your school’s colors and mascot. As always, add pictures if you can. Also, tell what you know about your parents or grandparents education.

Memorial Day finishes up this month. Do you look forward to it because the holiday signals time to play outdoors or for the time to remember your family and friends that are no longer with you – or both? – Gail” 

These were originally posted on the Our Echo website by Gail back in 2007.

Gail Lee Martin with her granddaughter, Samantha on her graduation day.

Picking Sandhill Plums

Cynthia Ross sparked some nostalgia with this email, “I remember the times spent picking sandhill plums with Larry, his mom and dad, Nora and Silas Ross, while in Oklahoma. It seemed like easy picking along the side roads or in the pastures. But we had to keep an eye out for the rattlesnakes and a curious steer or two. We took our share of the plums back to my folks, Gail and Clyde Martin, who canned them for jelly. They made great Christmas gifts several years in a row. Love the sweet flavor of those sandhill plums! I know our parents believed in the saying, “Waste not, want not!”

Sandhill plums – Photo courtesy of June Seimears Ary.

There was a great article in the Wichita Eagle back in 2014, but it has disappeared from their online site. I finally tracked it down with the Wayback Machine. You can read it at Sandhill Treat Is Plum Full of Taste, Memories.

Mom made the jelly a number of times, but I didn’t find what recipe she used. Probably one from the Ball canning booklet. Here’s a very detailed recipe in the Everyday Home Cook for sandhill plum jelly. If you can find the plums, go ahead and give it a try.

How to Eat Well Using Nature’s Bounty

How to Eat Well Using Nature’s Bounty By Gail Martin

Nature provides free food that most people don’t slow down enough to even see. There are wild food and unpicked crops going to waste. Having grown up in the 1930s, we hate to see food being wasted. Here are our methods for using these wholesome and free foods in meals.

ThingsYouNeed

• basket to gather fruit in
• fishing equipment and bait
• bucket for berry picking

• Free Mushrooms – Maybe your grandmother gathered edible mushrooms and green plants that spring rains made plentiful. Even here in town, I can make our meals colorful and different by picking Inky Cap Mushrooms to add to soups, scrambled eggs, and gravy. The come up in the same spot in our yard after a rain.

Photo Coprinopsis atramentaria Postcard by aapshop

• Wild Plants – I also pick Poke, Goose Weed, and Lamb’s Quarter and cook them like spinach. Don’t eat the beautiful poke berries as I understand the seed is poisonous. Just pick the leaves.
  

  Wild poke berries and leaves. Only the leaves are edible. (photo by Virginia Allain)

• Free apples – When we drive around town or in the country, we watch for fruit trees that aren’t getting picked. Maybe the owner is elderly and can’t climb anymore or it might belong to a career person without the time or interest. I knock on the door or call the person and offer to pick their fruit for them on a fifty/fifty basis. Half for them and half for us, for our effort. Sometimes they say, just go ahead and take it all. Even fallen apples make great applesauce or get baked into pies. We return year after year with the same offer. Sometimes they even call us to say the tree is ready for picking.
  

  Look for apples going to waste. Offer to pick them. (photo by Virgina Allain)

• Nuts – The same technique works for getting free nuts. People often don’t want to be bothered gathering them. We would collect bushels of black walnuts which are quite laborious to hull, crack and pick out the nutmeats. The results are worth it. Some of the nuts we made into candied nuts for Christmas gifts and even sold them packed in decorative tins.
  

  Black walnuts collected by Gail and Clyde Martin (photo by Gail)

• Gooseberries – As a child, I went camping with my family near the river. We would gather mulberries and tart gooseberries. These made a good dessert when cooked together to go with the fish we caught and we never got tired of eating them. Lots of people use them for making pies.
  
  Green gooseberries in the sun Wall Art by carulcards

   

• Catfish – I still love eating fried catfish. Mother always coated the fish fillets with flour and fried them in lard in our biggest iron skillet. Sometimes at night we would catch bullfrogs and their hind legs were good eating too. We mostly lived off the land as we had no refrigeration when we were at camp in those days. When I look back at those wonderful carefree days I don’t envy the fancy campers or motor homes. I’ll bet they don’t experience half the thrills that I had with my parents in those long ago summers on the Cottonwood River.
  

  Clyde Martin with catfish caught at Sugar Valley Lake. (photo by Gail Martin)

• Carp – In our retirement, my husband and I fished a lot using a boat and also from the shore. One fish that others don’t keep is carp because the many bones made it impossible to eat. We found that we could pressure cook it in canning jars (bones and all). Then we use it like salmon for fish cakes.
  

  Clyde was so excited about the 30-pound grass carp that he cut off Gail’s head in this photo. (photo by Clyde Martin)

Tips & Warnings

• Always ask before gathering fruit or nuts from a tree in someone’s yard or farm.
• Even tart fruits like gooseberries or sand plums make good jellies.
• Don’t pick wild plants in areas that might be protected (like a park) or where chemicals are used (like near a golf course).
• Get positive identification on mushrooms before eating any. Some edible ones look very similar to poisonous ones.
  

(article by Gail Lee Martin, first published on eHow in 2008)