What Happened When I Foraged My Vegetables For A Month
It gave me a SUPER-POWER!
During the month of June, I attempted what I refer to as the WILD FOOD CHALLENGE:
The general idea was to try to replace as many of the plants as possible in my diet with wild, foraged, and found ingredients.
It wasn’t easy!
I didn’t succeed in the one-to-one replacement I’d hoped for. Instead of using wild ingredients in every meal, I’d say I had about a 3/4 success rate, but I’ll take it.
It may have been simpler if we lived in a more rural location, but since we live in the city, foraging options are more limited. However, this very limitation led me to develop a new kind of super power. When you work with a fairly small palette of ingredients, you really develop the skill to decode the flavors in your environment.
You begin to appreciate more subtle flavors, and to develop new ways to extract them (I’m now a HUGE fan of wild seasoning salts):
You learn to create recipes that are templates instead of specific methods of preparation, and to find interesting ways to use greens based on their characteristics even if you’re not completely sure how they taste:
Once you start getting into plants and their uses, you will never be bored again.
In many ways, foraging allows you to use “cheat codes” to “level up” your involvement with your surroundings. This is a kind of super power; now when you walk into a park or the forest, you start “seeing” like some kind of Lego Master Builder. You no longer suffer from “plant blindness” and instead you develop a real kind of Second Sight!
Dandelion: potherb, salad, soup.
Plantain: medicine, cheesy crisps.
Mallow: okra family… gumbo!
Don’t just take my word for it, though: get outside and find out for yourself. There’s no more interesting way to involve yourself in your surroundings, to participate in your local biosystem.
