Locavore to the Max: How to Forage for Low-Impact, Recession-Proof Food

You already know that shopping at your local farmers market or CSA is a great way to reduce your food miles. And, if you take that one step further, growing your own food can eliminate shopping altogether. But what's the 'greenest' form of feeding yourself? How can you feed yourself with the smallest possible carbon footprint? Foraging, of course! Finding your food underfoot.

The following tips will help you begin finding food everywhere you go. Whether you live in the city, country, or 'burbs, it is possible to skip the greasy junk at the mall that's been flown in from the other side of the planet in favor of the free food in the park beside your apartment. (Just make sure you're not in the dog park…'cuz ew!)

The following is an excerpt from When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency, by Matthew Stein. It has been adapted for the web.

WARNING: Never eat any wild plant unless you have 100 percent positive identification that it is edible, or you have taken the time to complete the 2-day plant edibility test described in Chapter 4 of When Technology Fails. A small bite of certain plants is enough to kill an adult.

Brief Guide to Wild Edible Foods

There are thousands of edible varieties of plants in North America. Some edible plants are truly delicious, but many considered edible taste bad and are primarily useful only in survival situations. A few of the more common and tasty wild edible plants are listed below. I suggest that you pick up one or two "real" guides to edible plants in your geographical region. Steve Brill's Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places is an excellent start. It is entertaining, practical, and offers varied cooking suggestions and recipes.

A good plant guide will also warn you about potentially poisonous "look-alike" plants that might be confused with the one that you think you are identifying. Harvesting wild edible plants can be fun and will help you make your diet more complete by adding more vitamins, minerals, and trace elements than are found in typical grocery store veggies. Use caution in your forays into wild edible plants, because nibbling on wild plants can kill you if you make a serious mistake. (For a list of recommended edible and medicinal plant guides, see the suggested references in Chapters 4 and 9 of When Technology Fails.) In addition, Foxfire 2 has an excellent section on foraging and cooking with wild greens from the Southern Appalachians.

Acorns. Acorns are the nuts from about 55 varieties of native oak trees. Gathered in the fall, acorns were traditional staple foods for several indigenous peoples. They were stored in baskets and crushed or ground into flour for cooking. In my local area, grinding depressions, where indigenous peoples ground their nuts into meal, are a common sight on the granite slabs adjacent to lakes and rivers. Some varieties of acorns are sweet and may be used without special preparation, but bitter varieties require treatment to remove excess tannic acid prior to eating. To remove bitterness, shell the acorns and boil in water until the water turns brown. Drain and repeat until the water stops changing color. If boiling is not an easy alternative, wrap nutmeats in a cloth and soak in a clear running stream for a few days until they taste sweet. Soaking acorn mush to remove bitterness takes less time than soaking the whole seed. Acorn meal makes excellent pancakes and muffins.

Black mustard, field mustard, and others. These weeds grow more or less anywhere in fields and disturbed areas. Most mustard leaves are best when harvested young in the spring, but some in the mustard family are good throughout the summer. Seeds can be harvested, ground, and mixed with vinegar, like commercial mustard. Young basal rosette looks similar to dandelions, only there is no milky sap. This is a tangy treat if you like strong flavors. There are no poisonous look-alikes.