Salal (Gaultheria shallon) is a plant that is native to coastal parts of central California up north to Alaska. It’s in the blueberry family and indeed its fruit looks and taste much like a blueberry. Its flowers are much like that of a blueberry with the typical bell shape, however, they are also a bit hairy with a beautiful star pattern on them.  And this weekend I tasted the flowers for the first time as a tiny trail nibble. Incredible! Sweet nectar with a bit of astringency and an amazing crunch!  Crunchiest flowers I’ve ever eaten. 

They are beautiful plants that grow in and around and in between coastal forests. Please plant them in your landscape! (They like acid soil like blueberries)

Another amazing attribute is that they seem to grow in environments that most often at least in California are usually covered with poison oak. In some forests, instead of poison oak making impenetrable thickets in the understory, it’s all Salal and no poison oak!

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On this Easter day I ate a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon, and potatoes, took my pine pollen tincture, and went out for a very long day of sharing what I know about plants as fast as I can. This is the time of year here in the Bay Area for foragers!  The hills are green and full of flowers and nearly everything is edible.

Wild mustard and radish flowers, miner’s lettuce, wild oats, chickweed, cardoons, thistle stalks, salsify roots and leaves, cilantro, fava bean leaves, calendula flowers, mugwort, mint, mallow, pine pollen, and yep, you guessed it, fresh pastured chicken eggs.

There was a big pile of eggs in the chicken coup, all different colors. Since we came unprepared, a make-shift Easter egg basket had to be constructed. This was a paper bag filled skillfully with pine needles and such to pad the eggs for their transit back home.  I mean how do you accidentally make an Easter egg basket and fill it with colored eggs?  Today we found out.

I taught a class at Sienna Ranch first, had an amazing group. We walked through a wild mustard car wash, surrounded by food everywhere.

Then across town I led the East Bay Raw Food Meetup group on a tour of a semi-wild garden and then through the fields of flowers and wild oats all the way down to the creek and back up.  Got sunburn.  Tired.

Happy Easter!

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Wild Edible Lunch

May 5 $80 9:00am-2:00 pm, Lafayette, CA

Join Kevin for an edible adventure into the Bay Area’s wild and feral places. We’ll forage together, learning as we go about all the food that nature has to locally provide. We’ll discuss identification, hazards, nutrition, preparation, and the “what if’s” (as in “what if” the salmon and brodiaea bulbs were still abundant?)  We’ll give you some tips on how to enhance these foods growing in your own landscape or how to get them going in your own “wild” garden. We’ll gather as many wild edibles as we can and we’ll put them into our lunch that will be supplemented with stored acorns, bay nuts, and more from Kevin’s personal cache. In addition, fresh local wild seafood will be provided.

REGISTER HERE

limited number of coupons are available

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Just recently enjoyed another newsletter from Green Deane at Eattheweeds.com.  In it he posts the following story about his youth. I think it is a horrible but important reminder of how we really do not have much freedom as human beings on this planet. Of course, when you find out the true reasons for this erosion of liberty and how it was done, it becomes almost unbearable for most people.  Deane does a nice job of making a joke about it, but unfortunately this is the just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our lack of freedom as human beings of the Earth.

“The best plan was walk to an island at low tide on a Saturday afternoon. Spend the night on the island as the tide came in and then head back to the mainland the next afternoon at the low tide. We boys would build a fire, scavenge the shore for edibles include little crabs, trapped fish, clams and a few mussels. A traditional clambake followed using hot rocks and seaweed. We kept the fire going all night and slept in its glow. Do that today and several laws would have been broken and half the child protective service department would swarming over the place. We all know the headlines: CHILDREN ABANDONED ON ISLAND… video of my negligent mother being arrested at 11. Law suits would follow. Custody hearings et cetera … However, in hindsight what was special were the mussels.”

Thanks, Deane, keep up the good work!

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Mia just emailed me this one.  I very much enjoyed this particular one, so I thought I’d share it:

http://www.examiner.com/books-in-durham/food-from-the-wild-review

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this is the stage we need them -- before flowering

In the Bay Area and have a ton of thistles on your property that you don’t want? I would love to forage them.  In some cases, I can even pay you!  Please email me at feralkevin (at) gmail (dot) com.

Desired species:  common/bull thistle, milk thistle, wild artichoke.

Hurry, before they are overripe!

I’m also happy to hear about whatever else you might want to be foraged on your property.  Whether it’s something going to waste, something you want to learn more about, something you want to get rid of, or perhaps need to have someone forage some of it for you, there are many possible foraging connections.

Please just send me your:

NAME, CITY,  TYPE OF PLANTS OR MUSHROOMS, QUANTITY AVAILABLE.  Pictures say thousands of words.

I will machete down your wild arthichokes and devour them!

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Here is the link to the article that mentions our upcoming book:

TIME MAGAZINE article

The Bay Area Forager

Your Guide to Edible Wild Plants of the San Francisco Bay Area

by Kevin Feinstein and Mia Andler (October 15, 2011)

Paperback

over 50 plants found in the Bay Area (many found all over the world)

60+ color photographs

over 50 recipes and recipe ideas

each chapter has sections on sustainable techniques

personal stories of Mia and Kevin

$24.95

“In a world focused on serious issues such as climate change and the redesign of energy, food, and human shelter systems… Mia and Kevin’s work shines as a functional and joyful solution to the seemingly massive scale of the human footprint. eating the plants that are available, and growing wild in your neighborhood and region is more than a symbolic gesture towards honoring ecology… it returns you to the ecological system as a functioning member, like any other bird, bug, and mammal.”
—Rebecca Burgess, educator and author of Harvesting Color-How to Find Plants and Make Natural Dyes

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The Bay Area Forager

Your Guide to Edible Wild Plants of the San Francisco Bay Area

by Kevin Feinstein and Mia Andler (October 15, 2011)

Paperback

over 50 plants found in the Bay Area (many found all over the world)

60+ color photographs

over 50 recipes and recipe ideas

each chapter has sections on sustainable techniques

personal stories of Mia and Kevin

$24.95

“In a world focused on serious issues such as climate change and the redesign of energy, food, and human shelter systems… Mia and Kevin’s work shines as a functional and joyful solution to the seemingly massive scale of the human footprint. eating the plants that are available, and growing wild in your neighborhood and region is more than a symbolic gesture towards honoring ecology… it returns you to the ecological system as a functioning member, like any other bird, bug, and mammal.”
—Rebecca Burgess, educator and author of Harvesting Color-How to Find Plants and Make Natural Dyes

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After a long wait in setting the final tweaks for the printing of the physical book, due to be out by December, the E-book is now available!

The Bay Area Forager

Your Guide to Edible Wild Plants of the San Francisco Bay Area

by Kevin Feinstein and Mia Andler (October 15, 2011)

Electronic Version

No Paper Waste

Can read on computer or mobile device

PDF Format easy to use

$24.99

$14.99

“In a world focused on serious issues such as climate change and the redesign of energy, food, and human shelter systems… Mia and Kevin’s work shines as a functional and joyful solution to the seemingly massive scale of the human footprint. eating the plants that are available, and growing wild in your neighborhood and region is more than a symbolic gesture towards honoring ecology… it returns you to the ecological system as a functioning member, like any other bird, bug, and mammal.”
—Rebecca Burgess, educator and author of Harvesting Color-How to Find Plants and Make Natural Dyes

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It appears that the use of land is increasingly less available to the vast majority of the population.   How about “Occupy State Parks”?

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