Foraging for nutrition

sustainatives
Aug 2, 2021
5 min read

Once again inspired by Claire's book Rewilding the Urban Soul, I have been learning a bit more about foraging for what Claire prefers to call 'wild edibles', but what a lot of people would know as 'edible weeds'.

"If you think about it, a "weed" is what we call a a plant that's out of place. It's quite subjective."

Adam Grubb

The most common one would be the dandelion plant, which is all edible; flowers, leaves and roots. Dandelion has many medicinal properties (such as helping detoxify the liver) and is becoming more popular as an alternative to coffee as dandelion root 'tea', which you can find in most shops that sell teas- even supermarkets. It is being used as an alternative to coffee for it's earthy flavour, but is still quite a different flavour.

I personally prefer drink dandelion as part of a blend, such as the dandelion chai blend, which usually has a mix of cinnamon, ginger, cardamon, star anise. I don't drink coffee, mostly because I'm quite sensitive to caffeine, so I quite enjoy the flavour. It's one of my current favourite teas.

I've been enjoying the process of going out into the garden or going for a walk and searching for these wild edibles. The ones I've mostly been able to identify confidently are Sticky Weed (also known as Cleaver), Chickweed, Plantain and Wild Brassica. Dandelion I can identify when it's flowering, but being winter I find it difficult to discern a this stage between Dandelion and Wild Lettuce (also edible).

A word of caution: if you are also wishing to explore foraging please be mindful of two very important practices:

1) Only ever forage what you can confidently identify: there are many toxic and lethal plants, like Poison Hemlock, that has edible look a-likes (ie young wild fennel, or even a home grown carrot). It is a good practice to tap into your intuition when foraging as there are plants that can kill people, as well as animals. Wash your hands after foraging and before you eat them.

Here are more images of Hemlock, if you need more help identifying it:

Images of Hemlock

2) Please leave some of the plants when foraging: this is to help support those plants to continue growing and reproducing, and also as part of the etiquette for future foragers that will pass the areas you forage in. A good rule of thumb is to not pick the biggest or smallest parts of the plants. This is also for flavour, as the biggest leaves or roots aren't always the most tasty.

Foraging as a grounding practice

I have discovered foraging for wild edibles is very grounding and connective practice. I feel like it helps me connect to my immediate environment and what grows in the area naturally, as well as connecting me to myself and my needs.

A lot of these edible 'weeds' hold a lot of nutrition, and is considered unwanted or pests because a) they are hard to control as they reproduce in amazing successions and b) they are hardy and can basically grow anywhere (take the dandelion plant growing through a pavement crack). They're also not the symmetrical grown vegetables we've come to accept as part of the food chain.

Grown food is as important as wild food, but it isn't more important. Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, when you look at how many people there are in the world and how much food we need to be producing to feed the 7 Billion (and growing) world population, you may be able to argue we need to be growing more than foraging. However, nutritionally, wild edibles may actually offer more.

There's also the rising need for people to reconnect with nature as part of the solution to combat our sedentary, in-door and on-screen lifestyles; foraging is a great practice for this. It gets you outside, even if it's rainy and cold. It has you using your body, hands, brain and intuition. And it can be a social practice too. Just the other day, I went foraging with some of my friends before breakfast so we can eat the wild greens as part of our brekkie.

You don't need to forage a lot to receive something in return; even if all you forage is a leaf off each plant, it still counts. Just like if you work in an office job, standing up for a couple of minutes at a time to stretch still helps relieve tension on your body.

How do you eat wild edibles?

It depends on what you are foraging.

Wild edibles can be in forms of greens (aka leaves), berries, roots or flowers. Some you can brew into a tea, others blend into a smoothie. There are many you can eat raw in a salad. Or you can cook, like Stinging Nettle- as this both helps with taking away the sting of the plant, and is delicious, in say, soups.

It also depends on your reasons for foraging.

For example, I'm currently foraging because I wish to eat more greens, and the greens we (the friends I'm currently living with) are currently growing are still quite small. So to help give them a bit more time to grow, we are foraging for the greens to bulk up what we can harvest from the garden. We can also buy greens, and we do at times. But part of their practice is trying to grow more of their food, both to help with localising food source, and also because it means they rely less on the monetary economy (over time).

Wild Edibles in a Green Smoothie

The simple way we are eating the wild edibles at the moment is by putting it into a green smoothie. It makes up about a third of the smoothie. The other two thirds are grown greens and fruit.

the different types of greens in today's smoothie

1. I wash the greens

2. I then put them in a blender with some apple and banana (with the calendula, I only use the petals).

3. I then drink it as a whole, no squeezing out the juice involved. I feel like the fibres from the greens can get lost by doing this other wise.

Each time I make a green smoothie, it tastes slightly different as the quantities of the wild edibles, the ripeness and type of apples and banana and the amount of liquid put in is always different.

I like this, as it teaches me how life is changeable, and things don't always have to be the exact same, even if I want it to be.

If this inspires you to also explore foraging for wild edibles and you live in Australia, I would encourage you to find yourself a copy of The Weed Forager's Handbook by Adam Grubb and Annie Fraser-Rowland. It is such a great resource, especially for beginners like me :p

I've met Grubb (the name I was introduced with) a few times when I lived in Melbourne, as he helped with looking after a couple of bee-hives at my place of residence and was a friend of my land-lords (who also lived at the house). I didn't realise at the time how knowledgeable he was in other food systems, and was pleasantly surprised he co-wrote this book to help other people explore foraging. He is also a co-creator of VEG, which stands for Very Edible Gardens and co-founded the permablitz network with friend Dan Palmer.

I look forward to seeing where this curiosity will lead me next.