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Tired of all the toney--and expensive--restaurant openings? Feeling concerned about sustainable lifestyles and wilderness survival? Take to the hills this summer for some advanced nut and berry munching with John Kallas, who holds a PhD in nutrition and has been leading wild food expeditions for more than 10 years. Kallas trolls the Northwest, finding Native American delicacies on Sauvie Island, gathering sea vegetables and shellfish on the coast and making full meals out of neighborhood plants. He's currently offering Wild Food Adventurer Workshops, a series of summer weekend programs. Sampling nature's treats along the way, participants learn quickly that some are more delicious than others--but they may also learn something that could save their lives if they're stranded in the wild (or too broke to shop at Nature's). I went to one workshop at Hoyt Arboretum, on edible and medicinal herbs of the Northwest, with a few concerns. Were there really plants all over Oregon that I could pluck from the ground and eat on a whim? Would they taste good? What if I ate something poisonous? Should I bring Tabasco? I soon learned that yes, edible wild plants abound. One of our first discoveries was sheep sorrel, a wild gourmet garden vegetable that grows prolifically in the Northwest; if you have a garden, this plant is probably already there. Characterized by small arrowhead-shaped leaves, 11?2 to 2 inches in length, sorrel's lemony, vinegarlike flavor makes excellent dressing for salad. Dried, sorrel leaves make a soothing tea. Another great salad component is dandelion. Overpoweringly bitter on its own--though this season's excessive rain and meager sunlight have reduced bitterness in all wild edible plants--it's a great complement to a mix of wild greens, and it's one of the five most nutritious greens available. For thousands of years it has been valued for its liver-detoxifying properties, so you can top off a hangover breakfast by boiling some dandelion for your omelette. The flowers are also edible, raw or cooked, as long as you remove the bitter green underbelly. Why spend 10 bucks on dandelion capsules when you can walk into your backyard and munch on the real thing, at optimum freshness and nutrient density? (Of course, if you are using any herbal supplements for specific medicinal purposes, it is wise to consult your naturopath or other practitioner before replacing them with the garden variety.) Kallas emphasizes the importance of accurate identification when it comes to edible wild plants. Cat's Ear, a false dandelion species, is a sneaky imitator that usually grows near the real thing. While dandelion leaves are smooth and the stalk is strawlike, leaves of the false dandelion are fuzzy and the stalk is branched. If the prospect of getting an unpleasant substitute when you're hoping for dandelion doesn't persuade you to be sure about what you're gathering, the similarity between, say, camas (edible) and death camas (as edible as the name suggests) should. Red clover, the common clover with the purple flower at the top, is another edible plant native to Oregon. The high complex carbohydrate content of red clover leaves makes them difficult to digest, but the flowers can be eaten raw and in soup or stew. They have a slightly sweet, grassy flavor that's subtle but really tasty. Ready for dessert? Wild rose fruit, which forms directly beneath the flower, can be sliced open and emptied of the seeds inside, leaving nature's version of the SweetTart--the tangy rose hip. Rose hips can be mashed into excellent jams and jellies, as well as delicious tea--dry or fresh. You can taste the high vitamin C content. Violet and wild ginger are easy to find (though easily confused) and have plenty of nutritional merit. Violet leaves have veins that extend directly from the base to the stem; ginger leaves have veins that circle around and close in on themselves. Violets, like rose hips, have lots of vitamin C, and they taste great raw as a salad green. Ginger root, renowned for its anti-nausea effects, makes a flavorful drink when grated and put into a tea ball. You can also dry it, or chop it up raw and sprinkle it on stir-fry. Red huckleberry, one of the most common shrubs in forests of the Northwest, was another of our finds as we explored. Unlike other kinds of huckleberry, which tend to grow at higher elevations, the red variety grows anywhere from sea level to 3,000 feet. Simple, small leaves alternate on angular stems with greenish-white flowers and red berries. The tart fruit can be infused into beverages you can drink or gargle to freshen breath and soothe inflamed gums. Everyone's favorite natural antidepressant, St. John's wort, also popped up along the trail. A 2- to 3-foot-tall perennial with tough stems and bright to dark green leaves coated by transparent dots, St. John's wort sports bright yellow flowers piled along the tips of the stems. A multistep process is required to turn the bright yellow flowers into a tincture, so we didn't gobble it up enthusiastically and frolic through the forest or anything. Not that we needed it; as every hiker knows, simply communing with nature can make you feel better--and as Kallas' expeditions demonstrate, it can feed you as well. |
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