FIDDLE HEADS

Well, I think I'm going to do it! I'm going to harvest some fiddle heads this year! I used to pick and eat fiddle heads as a child and I'd love to have them again. Fiddle heads are unfurled ferns. They taste good boiled with a little bit of butter.

Unfortunately, there are some potentially toxic aspects.... I've done quite a bit of researching and also some plain old searching! When I was young someone else told me where to find fiddle heads and I always just went back to the same place to pick them. I knew what they looked like but as an adult I wasn't sure if there were similar looking fiddle heads that weren't edible.

What I've learned is that I'm looking for Ostrich Ferns. Some people eat other kinds, but the Ostrich Fern is the only one that is completely safe. They have some" distinctive" characteristics. I've learned that they come up in clusters, have a groove in their stem and have a brown papery covering on them. I can remember the brown papery covering very clearly from my childhood.

I've located a good source and have been checking them for the past two weekends. I hope that they taste as good as I remember and I hope that at least someone else in my family likes them too.