Foraging Lessons

This weekend I dragged Dan with me to a wild food foraging class. We learned how to identify a lot of edible plants: lambsquarters (my favorite), sow thistle, wild currant (for jam), wild mustard, wild radish, and more! We got stung by the stinging nettles and then learned how to cure the sting with curly dock. Then, we had some nettle soup and made some scrambled eggs with our wild foods. (The eggs were from the store.)

There were a lot of interesting surprises. The wild radish plant produces pods that look like tiny chiles. They are very spicy, and you can pickle them. California sage, which grows all over the place, smells amazing and can be used to make soap. Horehound, which looks like mint, is used to cure a cough. The fibrous cord of the yucca plant can be used for instant soap/shampoo. All you have to do is peel it into a collection of stringy bits and rub them together with water, and you've got bright green, foamy yucca soap. I wonder how your hair smells after that?

In addition to finding plants we could eat, we also learned to identify some dangerous toxic plants. Spookiest of all was the poison hemlock, which is extremely deadly and was used to execute Socrates back in the day. I never imagined this stuff was commonly growing all around us. It looks like parsley, and it's a very pretty plant. All in all, an inviting appearance. But it will kill you. Scary!

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