Blueberries and Mushrooms and Cranberries, Oh My! | 2023 Alaska Calendar

well it's hard to believe that has been another year in alaska this is our fourth year here and our third year doing a calendar our 2023 less calendar is ready for purchase she's gorgeous we've got the big copy and this calendar comes in two different sizes we're gonna put the link in our description and you can also visit our website if you're interested in purchasing it if you've purchased one in the past thank you very much it is filled with alaskan images eric and i love making the calendar we love going on adventures and just getting to see alaska the printing company we've been using is awesome so we are using them again and they can ship out worldwide they ship to lots of different locations we hope you enjoy the calendar if you are interested in purchasing one and we're moving on to today's video we're going hunting today hunting for blueberries we got the players loaded up we got the boys and all our gear it's about an hour ride to our secret spot we'll see you guys up there [Music] [Music] [Applause] we made it to our destination and we already found blueberries which is awesome that's what we came for it is beautiful out here unfortunately it is going to be raining it's been raining for about two months as you may know so the plant life though doesn't seem to mind it it actually seems to be a benefit to these plants out here because it is wildly colorful it's probably the most colorful fall that eric and i have personally seen when you come up to the mountains here it's so fantastic we're actually in what is called a alpine tundra so we are just above the tree line where trees don't really grow because there is frost in the ground year-round so there's lots of shrubs lots of berries mosses things like that it's perfect for berry picking there are so many berries here but the main berry that we're after today is blueberries okay that's my container put up our little tarp tent keep things dry it is gonna start raining i'm pretty sure it's looking pretty gloom out here but we're gonna be out here for a long time picking berries all right there you go girl we haven't even made it to like the actual hill where we pick we're selling a little trail up look how big these blueberries are this year i mean that's massive there is smaller ones like that but i mean that is just so cool it's the size of a human thumbnail that is let's try them though they're good yeah wild blueberries it's just insane well did you make sure to clock in this morning i want to see if i can get some vacation it'll be a hard now until blueberry season's over a hard nut you know you can pick them off and plant yourself right there do you see that do you see what that is that's a blueberry yum pretty good amount all right these are blues and blacks in here that thing works good that's how you get so much more than me it does it does work good but you can only do it when the at a certain time if you come before the berries are ripe this thing sucks well that's you just said it though who should be picking before the berries are raped man these are loaded we are in a huge patch right now i mean it's like the whole hillside so it's not just a patch alaska is known for wild blueberries they are fantastic they are very flavorful very potent stuff they dye your teeth blue just so you know that they do that to ours we have really acidic soils here so they a lot of berries do really well and in fact i don't know all the differences between the blueberries there's huckleberries i just discovered there's bill bilberrys here as well so that's another type of berry that looks similar to this one and the plants look pretty close to each other i believe we're harvesting blueberries right now but i know that there are also huckleberries out here too either way they're all good they're all blue and they're all delicious did i mention i like the harvest it's you know like fourth time good time on camera hey you don't get blue hands doing it that way huh man this is it's a win-win today what'd you call this little berry a little triple trailing raspberry i don't know what that is that's not australian raspberry so i think i stumbled upon a different variety right here because these are way more tangy way more tart i don't know if those are huckleberry but they just taste to me these ones are a little more up my alley i really like those these ones are delicious up here you got to come pick these hon i know they taste really good they taste great that's how much i collected thank you check out our bucket okay that's i'm gonna say this is two gallons it's two gallon bucket and it's just about full that's gotta be two gallons it's probably the best blueberry picking we've ever done these hills are just loaded with huge blueberries every time we go blueberry picking i do bring my little scoop and every single time we go i don't use it except for this time this time i don't know the conditions are just like perfect for using this thing a lot of the plants have already dropped their leaves and if they haven't dropped their leaves they're not really on there so this thing just is scooping through and just nailing the blueberries you can see in this bucket we're getting we're getting leaves in there but it's it's not bad this is we haven't been out here very long it's taken me like maybe like four minutes to fill up one of these whole things so this is amazing keep on picking we're gonna make some coffee coffee time that's full do you want to hold it at all yeah see what it feels like oh my gosh all right it's starting to rain all right tim horton's coffee and a freeze-dried meal a little something to warm us up out here it's getting chilly and i'm pretty wet this is storming now we've got to go back out there and get a few more gallons before we can head home see if it's windy enough oh yeah well i have eric to thank for these because my method of hand picking is much slower probably wouldn't have anywhere near that amount i don't know if you gathered but i love picking blueberries it's my favorite alaskan pastime it's also beau's favorite because he knows how to harvest them and it's bandit's favorite because he is running around chasing the sound that those arctic ground squirrels make and there's also pikas and marmonts out here too so little critters of the mountains i guess look at this one i think we're gonna wrap things up after this last little patch run we're getting ready to take down our little tent and head home i thought i'd share some pretty cool information with you guys this is a gps tracking collar that we use usually on bandit bow has one too and uh we use this in case bandit goes too far away we'll do a tone so it's like an audible beep and he'll come back to us and it'll tell us how far he ran just running around here on the trail in and bandit did 5.42 miles today so pretty dang impressive for a 13 year old dog awesome so we're gonna get this thing down we're gonna head home it's starting to get wet out here [Applause] [Music] back out harvesting again this morning we got two buckets i'm going for high bush cranberries we just started out here so i only have about a cup and then ariel's going for these little rose hips so we got a nice cool day cool fall day perfect for harvesting wasn't it for you oh my gosh that is good that is not a hibish cranberry this is a red currant they're absolutely delicious i'm just going to mix these in with my hybrid cranberries for a recipe we're making but those are awesome beautiful those are like in their prime it's a little late for these rose hips ideally we would have wanted to get these probably like two three weeks ago i like to wait a little bit later because they do get sweeter as time goes on once you actually have like a light frost they will get sweet and they taste delicious we don't actually eat them raw this year i may try drying them and doing some for tea something like that usually we process them i really like the flavor for some reason it reminds me of a tomato mixed with like another fruit or something like that this one looks pretty good to me it's a nice like i don't know if i want to say magenta color so it's not the orange color that they are when they first start out they start at orange and they go red and they get a little bit darker some people don't like to harvest them when they get mushy i don't really mind because we're going to be processing them but you just want to stay away from them if they're like really wrinkly or if they're starting to break down and mold or something like that got a nice array of them here and hopefully we can find some more i don't need too many for the recipe that we're gonna be doing well we found some more stuff we found labrador leaves and we haven't picked this in a while i know we picked this a few years back and it was a little bit strong in my taste for tea you have to be careful with how long you want to steep it but i do want to try it like marinating meats i think it could be comparable to maybe not comparable to a bay leaf but something like that like a dried leaf if you're doing meats or maybe even fish so we're taking some of that home and we found an unidentified fungi i think it's turkey tail it smells fantastic it's a little bit old and there is another look alike i just have to double check what the look-alike looks like because i'm not sure if this one is actually turkey tail or not we're gonna head off to our next spot and see if we can find any more berries it's definitely not the best year for high bush cranberries we usually find a lot more and they're bigger but i think this is going to be enough for us these plants aren't actually cranberries just called high bush cranberries we also have low bush cranberries and they're super tart these these ones the high bush are super tart very easily identifiable the leave is something i personally find nothing else looks like it except for current leaf and those are also edible we have one more thing to forage back at our house so that's where we're headed okay well i've been putting this mushroom harvesting off waiting for the time to be right and it is right look at these beautiful mushrooms right here mushrooms don't get like absolutely huge so that's a that's a pretty good size these are yellow foot chanterelles or we also call them winter chanterelles totally delicious we've mentioned in our videos this summer we have been getting just a crazy amount of rain and a lot of plants have just been doing great mushrooms are one of them we're gonna have some awesome mushroom harvesting today oh yeah look at this you don't usually get that big no i even found one over there that's like twice that big this is the best it has ever been look at this the leaves in there look at those i already harvested somebody look at this see right here yeah that's not nervous they're like getting closer here well they're basically oh they're doing really well see i used my knife out here because i can see i cut them oh did you lose your knife um no i don't think so it's a neck knife oh look at this one nice big dark one it is an awesome year for these mushrooms that rain is really helping them for sure they have a short window of opportunity here you have to get to them before you have frosts or you start to have a hard frost we have yet to have that i think it's because of the rain so i'm expecting it in probably the next two weeks or so so we're gonna try and get a lot of these harvested before then this mushroom we did not know how to identify it before we came here i hadn't seen it before and there was one thing in particular that kind of tripped me up and it's that these ones are hollow or they have a hollow stem and i'll show you what i mean by that i'm going to cut into it but that was confusing to me that's not typical of other chanterelles they can actually vary quite a bit from each mushroom to the next so sometimes they have like a round circular cap and sometimes they have like a wavy one like this they do have ridges forked ridges on the back so that's another good identification factor and their stem it's always that golden color it's a little deceiving because to me i would say this is orange not quite yellow but all of those factors combined we know that these are the yellow foot chanterelles i also know because of where they're growing so they grow really well in these bog areas near the base of trees or in the moss itself but with any mushroom obviously you've got to be very careful before you make the choice to eat it so we did a little bit of consulting with some professionals before before we actually ate this one i wanted to make sure that it was in fact an edible mushroom so this one's hollow right there on the inside the stem is really good the stem is one of eric's favorite parts that's why he's pulling it out and the top is pretty meaty they dry excellent and they're awesome to eat all throughout the winter do you remember how i told you the bogs are uh trees that have broken down like over maybe it's even thousands of years i don't know hundreds of years but that's why they're growing in the bog is because of the the old wood wow my celium proud moment right here this is a two gallon bucket overflowing that's the biggest one i've picked so far i mean look at the thing it's like an earring it's gorgeous yeah man awesome flavor with these things this is probably the first year we're actually gonna have to use the five gallon bucket we've probably only been picking for maybe like 25 minutes this is absolutely insane it's a great time out here look at those let's transfer that's like three gallons another fantastic foraging day in the books i think we're both kind of tired i think we're going to call it quits head inside and tomorrow we have some plans for cleaning up and making things out of what we harvested well that's it about five gallons worth of mushrooms not bad heavy old sac we are getting started this morning on cranberry juice we have never made it before and we are interested in trying it so i've got probably about four to five cups of high bush cranberries in this pot and then maybe like six cups of water we're just gonna bring it to like a light simmer and let it simmer for about 10 minutes eric and i finished processing all our blueberries yesterday cleaning them and cleaned the mushrooms it took about three hours we have all the mushrooms drying and i have our blueberries in the freezer i set just a little bit aside for something that we're making today we're going to let our berries cool before we blend them and i am starting on some jam bars our neighbor was nice enough to share her recipe unfortunately i am heavily modifying it because i do not have all of those ingredients so i'm going to get started with some sugar i've got about a cup of sugar here and we're gonna add probably half a cup of butter and then i'm also gonna add some coconut oil and an egg and we're gonna get this mixed up first i added probably about three scoopfuls of coconut oil and i've got that mixed together there's still some chunks of butter but that's okay i'm going to be adding that to flour and i have three and a half cups in this bowl just all-purpose flour into this mix goes some vanilla we're gonna put maybe a half teaspoon of baking powder and then just a little bit of salt too this is a perfect consistency it's just barely coming together so i've got a 13x9 dish or a rectangle of some sort and i'm going to be pressing about half of this dough maybe a little bit more into the bottom of that dish and we're gonna get it cooked in the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes our high bush cranberry mixture is still very hot but i'm gonna go ahead and mix it and i'm using our immersion blender you could definitely just strain these and not do this step but i don't mind if there's pulp in there and i'm trying to extract the most that i can from the berries [Applause] so i've got a strainer and some cheesecloth these have really large seeds in them you can definitely eat them they're not a problem but they're pretty big so we're gonna strain that out for the juice this is my special way of straining juices and such this is what we do for our keeper cheese we're just gonna let this stay here we've got enough weight here and i guess again five minutes or so we should have that juice completed looks good okay it wouldn't be a normal day in the kitchen if we weren't multitasking this has been in for how long i want to let it cook normally you use jam for this recipe but we're going to be using the fresh berries that we have and then i have some orange zest i'm going to add to that and then i'm also going to add some maple syrup so that sounds delicious and i'm just going to layer that right on top of that dough okay we're ready for the rest of the dough we're going to crumble it up and put it on top and get it back in the oven i added about a quarter cup of oats to it so it's gonna have a little more for this recipe there we go that looks awesome and i'm going to turn our oven down just a little bit probably closer to 300 ours runs pretty hot i don't want those to cook too fast we add some honey and orange juice to the high bush cranberry juice which is very tart so i think that that's going to be a nice sweet and acidic balance and we're going to put this outside for a little bit because i want to drink it chilled not hot it's time to start our rose hips we have about two cups and these guys are a little bit squishy because we harvest them a little bit late in the season you can remove the seeds this is the fruit of the rose so it has seeds in it i personally never do that because we always strain them and i like to get the most when i'm processing them they say to some people that those seeds can be irritating if you're eating them raw we're not eating them raw so that shouldn't be a problem rose hips are a powerhouse they have a lot of nutritional and medicinal benefits we're cooking them processing them so they're going to lose a little bit of that but they're still going to be delicious we're going to get them in this pot add some water and we're going to be making barbecue sauce with these today rose hips cook for about 30 minutes we're going to be running them through our tomato strainer it's very hot so i've got to be careful oh let's make sure she's plugged in first i'm just going to pour that down [Music] okay this may seem kind of silly but you do get the most from these when you do it this way if you try to strain them manually i just i feel like you just don't get that much out of them so i'm not going to worry about some of those seeds because we're going to be blending this barbecue sauce all the way anyways we're going to get this back to our pot and then we're going to add a whole bunch of other good ingredients [Music] this is the time to let your creativity shine we have lots of things in there and we are adding a whole bunch of more stuff we're adding dried herbs this is a little assortment of actually it's a big assortment of a lot of herbs we have and a spice mixture that eric made up so that's a secret to me and we're gonna add a few of these peppers once it's cooked down for a little while i'm gonna immersion blend it and i'm gonna add our sweetness to it i almost forgot i wanted to add a little bit of cuban oregano too the vegetables are soft and ready to blend i almost forgot to add vinegar to this recipe so we're adding apple cider vinegar probably about a cup okay and then we're going to be careful again and immersion blend this [Applause] we're going to add maple syrup and honey to this because i do not have brown sugar and i do not have molasses on hand i don't know what happened but we just don't have it so that's not good but we've got to sweeten this up somehow we're going to do a taste test and evaporate some of that liquid and get it to the consistency and the flavor that we like before we can it so there you go our barbecue sauce is finished we water bathed it for 15 minutes and it has some really good earthy smoky flavors too we ended up adding just some of our own mustard to kind of finish it off in the meantime our jam butter has chilled and is ready to be tasted [Music] these bars look awesome they cooked for about 40 minutes and we added just a tiny bit of butter on top and some powdered sugar on a separate note i guess it's slightly related the other day when i was out foraging i found what i thought was turkey tail although it didn't quite look like turkey tail because of the bottom side didn't have the pores and i looked it up in the car on the way home and it actually is called violet toothed polypore so similar to turkey tail fact when i was harvesting it i saw that there was like this bright purple band which i thought was a little unusual my point being with that is that you learn something new every day eric and i have learned about foraging through years we've learned by books we've learned online a lot of people share really great stuff online if you're willing to wade through it so to speak but nothing in my opinion compares to actually getting out into the field and looking for the specimens and actually bringing them back home and doing some more research so that is all we have done that's just over the years we've just constantly learned that way and every year we're learning more and more including that mushroom that i just found the other day i'm gonna have my cameraman jump in here and we're going to enjoy this bar these bars and the juice did you shake it up yeah look at the color on that it looks like oh my gosh it looks like a kool-aid punch yeah it looks like punch any good oh my gosh it tastes like a tropical tart it's very unique almost like lemonade that's really good wow oh yeah yeah it's delicious this is really light and refreshing okay yeah those are good i like the oats holy cow eric approved that's the bomb stay in my teeth look at that it's crazy i'm trying to drink this all night

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 127,226

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, homestead alaska, off grid cabin, off grid in alaska, cabin in alaska, homestead off grid, life in alaska, garden alaska, high tunnel garden, growing food, growing vegetables, alaska garden, wild berries alaska, foraging mushrooms alaska, blueberries alaska, wild blueberries, foraging alaska, mushrooms alaska, berries alaska, picking wild berries, canning bbq sauce, homemade barbecue sauce, simply living alaska, high bush cranberries

Id: WM2ywPsHvsU

Length: 31min 10sec (1870 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 25 2022