| Each spring, my crops are ready to harvest. And I've never sowed a seed. Instead, I walk along a trail by my house, collecting dinner. The first to greet me after the winter rains are cheerful bunches of three-cornered garlic (Allium triquetrum). Their pungent odor and waving white flowers make them easy finds. At home, I mix and blend the leaves with olive oil and nuts to make pesto. Then comes miner's lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata). Their slender green stems and lily-pad-shaped leaves fill out salads for weeks, a delicacy of gold miners who learned about this scurvy-curing green from Native Americans. And if I'm feeling hungry, I'll hike down to the California coast, where armfuls of wild California mussels (Mytilus californiensis) are always waiting to be collected. Foraging — the act of finding wild, edible food — is a lost art in modern society. Perhaps it's time for a revival. Foraging will of course never replace agriculture. Meeting the calorie-intensive diets of 8 billion people with wild foods is impossible. Nor should we romanticize the idea of hunting or gathering wild foods to satisfy our daily nutritional needs. But we have lost something essential once everything we eat comes ready to eat or wrapped in plastic. Foraging has enabled humans to survive for hundreds of thousands of years. And it forces you to find and understand your place on Earth, perhaps for the first time, says Maria Finn, chef and author of the foraging cookbook "Forage. Gather. Feast." Finn discovered the value of foraging in Alaska's Yukon Delta during her early 20s, when she worked with the native Yup'ik people. "We used to forage for fun because the food in the grocery store was really expensive and half rotten," she said. "We could go out and pull a crab pot, or gather raspberries. There was this glorious wild free food." Over time, she found the process of finding her own food deepened her relationships with every aspect of where she lived. "Wild food is building relationships with the ecosystem around you," she says. "Even if people are foraging in a city, you have to get to know your neighborhood and talk to your neighbors." Today, her Institute for Ecosystem Based Living is an effort to help people find a way to find their own niche in their local ecosystems. While there are too many of us to forage for survival these days, we can do it responsibly for fun and food, forging a connection to the seasons and our local ecosystems. Finn has a few suggestions for new foragers. Remember to check all rules and regulations if you are on public lands and ask before foraging on private land. Have a light footprint — take a little and leave enough for all the other animals that live off these foods. When starting out, it is also key to get guidance from someone knowledgeable or a reputable online site so that you can identify lookalike plants that could be poisonous, or trigger an allergic reaction. I asked Finn where people in the United States can find foods to forage, no matter where they live. Here are some common forageable foods from five regions of the country. - Northeast: Seaweed.
- Southeast: Sour orange.
- West: Pine trees.
- Midwest: Ramps.
- Southwest: Prickly pears.
Click on the blue button below to read my column about how to forage your next meal. Write me with your favorite foraging recipes and photos at climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails. | 
Email
No comments:
Post a Comment