Foraging for Food
The other morning my mum came home from her early morning fitness session with my dad’s Commando group, and showed me these:
She found them growing in the public park area where her morning fitness group meets to be ‘punished’ 3 times a week, and was laughing because some of the other participants starting calling her “Bush Tucker Lady”.
Mum’s response was, “I think a bird who ate some tomatoes, must have pooped here, so why not take them home to eat”. Haha hardly appetising but what a great find I think.
Loads of raw food enthusiasts currently forage for their wild food but I am yet to do so for fear of picking something poisonous. Things like dandelion greens, berries & herbs. And it can turn into a bit of a thrill. I remember a friend telling me about a place in Northern Italy where apples grew wild on the side of the road, and I wanted to plan a trip there immediately. Even seeing papaya and coconuts growing wildly in Thailand made me want to pack up there and move. My crew even brought me home some coconuts they found on a venture to dry land.
But not only are ‘hippie’ types hitting their local reserves and gardens to find unusual and nutritionally dense items to add to their repertoire, but big name chefs are hitting out and trying to find ingredients that no one else has like this article in the NY Times. Also on Come Dine With Me last week (see, told you I love it!) one of the participants, picked some wild garlic from his local common to add some pizzazz to his dish. Needless to say it impressed his diners so much that he won the £1000 prize money for his inventiveness with his dishes.
Lola Berry also filmed this video on ‘Freeganism’ in a trip she did to New York which at first made me wonder, “eating out of dustbins?’, but as you will see, they find some pretty good stuff. The hubs even has a friend who goes foraging in bins regularly with a group of people to only then go home, cook it up and feed it to the homeless. And he’s just like you and me.
So what are your thoughts on ‘Freeganism’ and Food Foraging? Ever done it? Ever just found any free food either still attached to the plant or otherwise?
When the hubs and I were in Italy last year visiting my sister in Santa Margherita, we went trekking in the late afternoon and I was excited to come across wild blueberries!! That’s pretty much the extent of my foraging experience!
That’s amazing? I’m assuming they are finding it outside restarants? I wonder why they are throwing out such good edible stuff.
I love finding “free food” here… in the trails we walk in, we can often find mushrooms and TONS of berries!! so awesome!!
I know Jess, if I lived where you lived I reckon I would be out there all the time looking for berries and herbs etc. I’d be worried I’d pick the WRONG mushrooms though and be hallucinating for days LOL.
I’m like you, in that I love the idea of foraging, but I’m terrified of picking something poisonous accidentally! I do remember, as a kid, picking tiny plums from neighbours’ gardens on the way to school. They were always rock hard and incredibly sour, but I ate them anyway
How fabulous that you were brought a bunch of foraged fresh coconuts, though! Your crew clearly know you wonderfully well
Yes I remember finding food when climbing trees as a kid too and having no regard for safety. Lucky I never picked a poisonous berry!!
LOL re the coconuts. Perhaps I need to speak to someone about my addiction?
Used to LOVE thetomatoes that came from my parents transplanted compost!
Ooooh, they grew in the compost? Very cool! My mum accidentally grew something like 70 pumpkins in her front yard from her compost too. She had to give them away, after making pumpkin soup and scones etc for a few weeks!
Agreed. Foraging makes me nervous. My grandmother used to send us into the bush near the river in Canada to search out wild blueberries. I had been warned so often about eating berries without permission that now I have a bit of a fear taking anything not planted by me in my own garden.
Foraging is fun here because there are so many unmaintained walnut, fig and almond trees and blackberry bushes, many on the nature walks around our subdivision. But I’m paranoid to do it in areas I’m not familiar with because of poisonous plants and pests. Great post!
Wow, how lucky are you Christine! I would love that kind of neighbourhood. I think I’d go silly over walnuts, figs and almonds.
I have heard about this, and honestly see no harm. I do not see much food around NC, but in FL it is all over the place!!