Methods used to improve the taste of plant food include soaking, boiling, cooking or leaching. Leaching is done by crushing the food (for example, acorns), placing it in a strainer and pouring boiling water through it or immersing it in running water.
Boil leaves, stems and buds until tender, changing the water, if necessary, to remove any bitterness.
Boil, bake or roast tubers and roots. Drying helps to remove caustic oxalates from some roots like those in the Arum family.
If necessary, leach acorns in water, to remove the bitterness. Some nuts, such as chestnuts, are good raw but taste better roasted.
You can eat many grains and seeds raw until they mature. When hard or dry, you may have to boil or grind them into meal or flour.
The sap from many trees, such as maples, birches, walnuts and sycamores, contains sugar. You may boil these saps down to a syrup for sweetening. It takes about 35 litres of maple sap to make one litre of maple syrup!
