Cemetery offers tart reward for foragers who know what to look for

I think part of the reason I like learning more about foraging is because I feel like some of the most valuable things in life are the things no one can take away from you. This article will describe how our family works together to make a mean glass of chokeberry lemonade.

I only found out what a chokeberry is after I started looking around for fruit hanging on trees and bushes wherever I went. I have always been a bit of a fruit nut. I love almost any fruit. But free fruit is particularly enticing. A big, sweet, juicy, free fruit is the holy grail then.

One day in late July, we were biking past Green-Wood Cemetery and I saw a clump of ten or more shrubs the size of blueberry bushes. The bushes were loaded with hundreds of round, blackish berries, each one significantly larger than your average blueberry. I thought, if these are all juicy, sweet, free fruits…I dared not hope too much.

The berries reminded me of the vague impression I had of chokecherries (spelled with a “ch”). And I was pretty sure foraging expert Samuel Thayer had written a chapter about chokecherries in one of the two books that I often consult at home. I started making big, delicious plans for the chokecherries. I got home, flipped through the book, and saw that my guess had been wrong. But what were they? I did some googling about large black berries and came up with chokeberries as a possible match. Yes! That’s what they were. And, yes! They’re edible! But oh, my dreams of stuffing my face with fistfuls of those dark, plump berries were dashed by the description of chokeberries as very astringent when eaten fresh. I experienced a very dry, chalky sensation in my mouth, as I was told that I would, after eating my first chokeberry.

So I hadn’t found the holy grail, but there was a consensus that the fresh squeezed juice was very tart and healthy and could be mixed with other sweet fruits or a little bit of sugar to make a refreshing drink. One could also create a chokeberry syrup for cocktails or pancakes.

My kids and I went back to the cemetery and filled almost three gallon ziplock bags with chokeberries. My youngest son, Ameya, contributed about 12 berries to the 1,000 or more that we must have collected—the rest were smeared onto his cheeks and teeth and tongue. So maybe children are somewhat immune to the chalkiness.

Since we’re foraging in a large city, before using the berries, I soaked them in a baking soda bath for fifteen minutes before rinsing them thoroughly, to remove any pollutants.

The process of turning the berries into lemonade is pretty straightforward. I use a blender for the first step, but a food processor or potato masher would also work. I take a cup or so of berries and blitz them in the blender for a moment with maybe 24 ounces of cold water. Then pour the resulting slurry through a fine mesh strainer to remove the skins and small seeds—the primary astringent components of these berries.

The resulting liquid is a gorgeous deep red color. The juice itself is very tart and probably still astringent to most tastes. At this point, you can combine it with apple cider, some lemon juice with sugar, or whatever sugar source you prefer. This effectively cuts the astringency. If the chokeberry was the kind of berry that would brag about itself, it would tell you that it has more antioxidants than any commercially available berry or fruit. But knowing this or not, the drinks we’ve made with chokeberries have been refreshing and delicious.

Our family also had great luck simmering some of the berries in water and adding sugar to create a pancake syrup. This was a family favorite for months on end and takes advantage of this berry’s powerful flavor and colors.