Category — Wild Food

This research demonstrates the importance of wild foods for food security and well-being, especially during times when incomes or access to market foods is limited. 

Article by Erin Smith, Selena Ahmed, Virgil Dupuis, MaryAnn Running Crane, Margaret Eggers, Mike Pierre, Kenneth Flagg, and Carmen Byker Shanks
The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
VOL 9 NO B (2019)

Wild foods persist as integral components of Indigenous food systems. Colonization of Indigenous peoples of North America has resulted in a dramatic shift away from the consumption of wild foods and towards consumption of processed, store-bought foods that are typical of the “Western diet.” Evidence suggests that this nutrition transition is having a profound and disproportionate impact on the health and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples.

Finding Fabulous Ingredients In Your Backyard Or Farmer’s Market, With 88 Recipes

By Tama Matsuoka Wong And Eddy Leroux
Penguin Randon House
2012

Forage for wild food and discover delicious edible plants growing everywhere—including your backyard—and how best to prepare them to highlight their unique flavors, with this seasonally organized field guide and cookbook.

While others have identified in the past which wild plants are edible, Tama Matsuoka Wong, the forager for Daniel, the flagship restaurant of renowned chef Daniel Boulud, and Eddy Leroux, its chef de cuisine, go two steps further, setting the bar much higher. First, they have carefully selected only the wild plants that are worth seeking out for their fabulous flavors. Second, after much taste-testing, they have figured out the best way to prepare each ingredient—a key in getting to know these exciting new foods.

On a recent trip to Cambodia, I toured the Artisans Angkor’s silk farm

By Bronwyn Smyth
All Photos by Bronwyn Smyth
City Farmer
January 2019

If you have visited us at City Farmer this past summer, you have likely been introduced to our silk worms. Depending on when you may have visited us, you may have seen the eggs, the worms the cocoons, or the moths.  

At City Farmer, we haven’t extracted the silk thread from the cocoons, but have instead let the worms complete their life cycles. When they emerge from the cocoon as a moth, they create a hole in one end of the cocoon. Once this hole is formed, extracting a continuous silk thread from the cocoon is impossible. However, the cocoon can still be used in creative ways, such as the flowers Maria Keating created this past year. 

Lori Snyder believes that indigenous plants should be incorporated into daily diets to improve lifestyle (Sharon Nadeem)

Indigenous herbalists are working to preserve their traditional sources of food and medicine

By Sharon Nadeem, Seher Asaf,
CBC News
May 07, 2017

Excerpt:

A tiny park in central Vancouver surrounded by skyscrapers, a stadium and a concrete parking lot looks like the kind of place that would be hostile to indigenous plants.

But to Métis herbalist Lori Snyder, Hinge Park is a “treasure trove.” She visits the park to fill her basket with indigenous plants, and conducts tours to share her knowledge of traditional medicines.

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Gary Lincoff’s Illustrated Guide to Finding, Harvesting, and Enjoying a World of Wild Food

By Gary Lincoff
Quarry Books
2012

Discover the edible riches in your backyard, local parks, woods, and even roadside! In The Joy of Foraging, Gary Lincoff shows you how to find fiddlehead ferns, rose hips, beach plums, bee balm, and more, whether you are foraging in the urban jungle or the wild, wild woods. You will also learn about fellow foragers—experts, folk healers, hobbyists, or novices like you—who collect wild things and are learning new things to do with them every day.

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120 wild and flavorful edibles from Alaska blueberries to wild hazelnuts

By Douglas Deur
Timber Press
2014

The Pacific Northwest offers a veritable feast for foragers. The forests, meadows, streambanks, and even the weedy margins of neighborhoods are home to an abundance of delicious wild edible plants. Discover wild lilies with their peppery flowers, buds, and seeds and use them in your spring salads. Select sweet, succulent thistles or the shoots of invasive Himalayan blackberries and Japanese knotweed to add wonderful flavor to hearty soups.

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Mark Bittman samples plants growing along the sidewalks of Oakland, Calif., with Philip Stark and Tom Carlson from the University of California, Berkeley.
Not only can wild edibles be sold at markets and to restaurants, they’re essential in maintaining soil health

By Mark Bittman
New York Times
Jul. 9, 2015
(Must see. Mike)

Excerpt:

With Stark and Carlson, everything was different. We parked our car at a corner in West Oakland and within seconds these gents were pointing out sow thistle, mallow, dock, sourgrass, and nearly everything else you see here. Most of it was good enough to eat on the spot; some of it would’ve benefited from cooking. A portion … well, I’d ignore.

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