Foraging in Florida Dec 06 '10    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Books Rick Bragg - Somebody Told Me: The Newspaper Stories of Rick Bragg From $6 260 Drum Machine Patterns From $8 The Bottom Line Foraging- the best natural food. Quite recently I discovered that my university campus is a living orchard.  To me, it is amazingly thrilling to stumble upon a random tree bearing dozens of grapefruits, or in my leisure time to go out purposefully looking for new food and finally grin when I spy orange spheres hanging in the distance. This early winter season, I've found prickly pears, kumquats, mandarin oranges, mandarinoquats, regular oranges, limequats, tangellos, grapefruits, and bananas.  The bananas are not quite ripe yet. I also spotted more palm trees that I recognized as, in the late summer, ones that will bear orange fruits called jelly palms. When I picked my first grapefruit, and took home the big greenish/yellow not-quite-ripe-looking sphere, I realized that I did not quite believe it was actually a real grapefruit until I cut it open.  RUBY RED!  RUBY RED!  The color nearly blinded me and I thought, "UHH...I THINK THIS IS A GRAPEFRUUUUUIT!" After picking the mandarinoquats, I had to look them up on the internet before I even knew what they were.  Same with the limequats.  Live and learn.  The mandarioquats are like candy to me, and amazing on cereal in the form of their tiny wedges.  The limequats, while they are little compared to limes, I still manage to juice four of them at a time, add a bit of sugar and make a glass of limequat-ade. Ironically, I hate the taste of regular kumquats. I only knew what a tangello was when I saw the tag on the base of the tree I had been picking from.  They are glowing orange jewels, juicy when cut into wedges. The larger oranges are like diamonds in the rough...almost dirty, dull exterior, and when cut open, sweet in color as well as flavor. The magenta-colored prickly pears take some skill with handling...I pick them with salad tongs and into a plastic-lined paper bag they go.  Rinse their hairlike spines off under running water with tongs initially, then again while holding between thumb and finger, perhaps scraping the spine "tufts" with an elongated fingernail.  Rotate fruit against good light to visualize any remaining spines, then finally cut off both ends and then quarter.  Bite out the middle, swallowing the tiny stonelike seeds between which the best, sweet, deep magenta fruit lies.  Some self-made foraging rules I follow:  1.)  Never take more than you can eat. 2.)  Pick only the ripest fruit. 3.)  Do not damage the plant (ie, break any branches). 4.)  If you cannot reach it without damaging the plant, don't pick it. 5.)  If in doubt, look up poisonous look-alikes on the internet.

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