Sustainable Snacking: Things I Forage, Dry, and Stash for Later (Instead of Buying Crinkly Plastic Packs)

Let’s be honest: most store-bought snacks come in a crinkly plastic package, cost too much, and taste like they were made for someone who doesn’t actually like food. You know the ones. Granola bars that are 80% air, fruit snacks that somehow contain zero actual fruit, trail mix that’s mostly dusty raisins and disappointment.

And yet — I used to buy them. A lot. Until I realized I was literally surrounded by better food growing in the ditches, woods, and bush trails of Northwestern Ontario.

So these days, instead of impulse-buying shrink-wrapped granola at the gas station, I make my snacks the old-fashioned way: I forage, dry, stash, and occasionally overdo it and turn everything into powder by accident. It’s messy, it’s seasonal, and it’s not always pretty — but it’s cheaper, tastier, and doesn’t leave me with a pile of plastic wrappers and regrets.

Here are some of my favorite wild, sustainable snacks I stock up on during summer and fall — and how I turn them into year-round food without needing a warehouse-sized pantry or a love for food dehydrator instruction manuals.

Berry Mania: Nature’s Candy, Without the Guilt (or Packaging)

If I ever go missing in July, I’m probably face-down in a raspberry patch.

Northern Ontario is a berry wonderland if you know where to look (and you’re willing to get scratched to pieces finding them). Wild raspberries, blueberries, saskatoons, strawberries, and chokecherries are all free for the picking — and let me tell you, they beat the pants off anything sold in a plastic clamshell at the grocery store.

Drying & Stashing:

• Wild raspberries and strawberries: I dry these on mesh screens or parchment in a dehydrator (or just in my oven on the lowest setting with the door cracked). They shrink down to sweet, chewy little nuggets — perfect for tossing into homemade trail mix, oatmeal, or straight into your face while you pretend you’re just “checking the jar.”

• Blueberries and saskatoons: These get frozen if I have freezer space (ha), but I dry the rest for things like baking or DIY instant oatmeal jars.

• Chokecherries: These get cooked, seeded (or smashed and strained if I’m lazy), and turned into fruit leather or syrup. Once I made a leather so thick and tart, it was basically edible sandpaper. We chewed through it like it was punishment, but hey — no plastic!

The Berry Realities:

There are always “berry days” when everything’s perfect — cool breeze, full buckets, hands stained purple like a forest criminal. And then there are days when you get five berries, seventeen mosquito bites, and a wasp up your sleeve. But I keep going, because one full jar of dried wild raspberries in January makes it all worth it. It’s like opening a bottle of summer — if that bottle also came with memories of tripping in a gopher hole and swearing loudly at a bush.

The Magical World of Wild Mushrooms (a.k.a. Fancy Trail Snacks)

Some people snack on store-bought crackers. I snack on mushrooms. That’s not a metaphor — I literally eat mushrooms I find in the woods.

Northern Ontario has some real fungal MVPs like chanterelles, puffballs, and boletes, and when they show up, I grab ‘em like they’re going out of style (because they literally are — mushroom season is short).

Drying & Snacking:

• Chanterelles: I slice and dry these for soups, stews, or making my “fancy homesteader ramen” (which is 90% boiled stuff and one smug mushroom floating on top).

• Puffballs: The big ones get sliced and fried fresh, but the smaller ones can be dehydrated and stored in jars — they rehydrate surprisingly well. One year, I forgot I had a whole tray of slices drying and turned them into weird puffball croutons by accident. Still tasty.

• Lobster mushrooms: Rare but amazing. I dry and grind them into powder for seasoning if I don’t get to cook them fresh.

A Few Notes of Caution:

If you’re new to mushrooming, don’t just grab random fungus and throw it in your mouth. Learn your IDs, double-check with a book, or ask someone who hasn’t died doing this. But once you get confident, it’s one of the most satisfying snacks to stash. Especially in the winter when your body is like “you need vitamin D” and you’re like “I got you — mushroom powder from August, baby.”

Wild Tea Is My Love Language

I don’t just forage for food — I forage for calm. Which is another way of saying I collect things that I can turn into tea so I don’t lose my mind in January.

Some of my favorite local tea ingredients include:

• Wild mint

• Yarrow

• Fireweed

• Raspberry leaf

• Goldenrod

• Labrador tea

How I Dry It:

• Bundle, hang, and forget about it until I run into it walking past the pantry — or

• Strip the leaves and flowers onto trays and use my dehydrator on the herb setting until everything crumbles like dry paper

• Store it in labeled jars so I don’t mistake yarrow for kindling

Why It’s Better Than Store-Bought:

For one, I know exactly what’s in it. No “natural flavors,” no weird filler herbs, and no plastic tea bags that look like they came from a science lab. And it tastes like my backyard — in a good way.

My current go-to blend is raspberry leaf + fireweed with a tiny pinch of mint. It’s like forest spa water for your soul. Add a bit of honey (foraged or otherwise), and it’s better than any overpriced herbal tea you’ll find in a foil pouch.

Snack Experiments That Sorta Worked

Let’s talk about the weird stuff I’ve tried in the name of sustainable snacking:

• Berry Leather: I made this with raspberry, saskatoon, and a bit of honey. It was perfect — until I over-dried one batch into brittle berry sheets that could probably be used as roofing material. Still edible. Kind of.

• Mushroom Jerky: This one shocked me. I marinated chanterelles in soy sauce, garlic, and maple syrup, then dried them low and slow. They came out chewy, savory, and genuinely delicious — even the kids liked it (once I convinced them it wasn’t slug meat).

• Infused Wild Honey: Technically I bartered for the honey, but I infused it with wild mint and yarrow. It tastes like the forest in the best way possible — plus it makes me feel like some kind of woodland wizard every time I drizzle it on toast.

• Foraged Granola Bars: I once made a batch with dried blueberries, wild rosehips, puffed rice, and seeds. They tasted amazing... for about three days. Then they got soft, weird, and a bit fermented. I now call them “compost bars” and feed them to the chickens.

Moral of the story? Not every wild snack attempt is a winner, but every one teaches you something — even if that something is “maybe don’t dry rosehips until they’re the texture of gravel.”

Why These Snacks Matter (Besides Making Me Feel Superior at the Gas Station)

Here’s the deal: snacking on wild food just makes sense.

• It’s free (unless you count mosquito blood as payment).

• It’s sustainable — no packaging, no shipping, no fossil fuels required.

• It’s delicious — because wild raspberries don’t taste like cardboard.

• It’s real — like “I-picked-this-myself-while-dodging-a-skunk” real.

• It keeps me connected — to the land, the seasons, and the memories of the chaos that came with every harvest.

Plus, every time I crack open a jar of dried berries in winter, or brew a mug of wild mint tea while the snow piles up outside, I get to relive summer. Not just the taste of it — but the feel of it. The sun, the sweat, the scratched-up arms, and the satisfaction of filling a bucket with something the earth gave me for free.

It’s not about being perfect. I still eat chips. I still cave and buy chocolate. But the more I fill my pantry with things I gathered, dried, and stashed myself, the less I need from a store. And that feels pretty damn good.

So here’s to sustainable snacking — one wild berry, mushroom chip, and questionable fruit leather at a time.