I spotted a familiar face while walking through the forest, and squatted down to take a closer look while my companions continued on ahead. The young leaves were just beginning to wake up, reaching out of the soil towards the light. I pinched off a leaf, crushed it between my fingers, and brought it to my face. The familiar, unmistakable scent filled my nose: pungent, spicy, garlicky. A quick taste confirmed my hunch: this was young garlic mustard.
I’m sure there are times when you don’t know what to eat, you don’t feel inspired to cook, and all your regular meals don't sound good? Or times that you run out of produce or herbs, but you don’t feel like going to the store? Maybe you’d like to try a new flavor? Next time this happens to you, please consider checking in your yard, your neighborhood, or on your local nature trail for some wild edibles. Incorporating wild food into your diet introduces you to new flavors, encourages you to be creative in the kitchen, stimulates your brain by learning something new, benefits your gut by increasing the diversity in your diet, and benefits your community by harvesting invasive species.
Hopefully, but now you can tell that this is important to me. Many people are scared to forage, worried that they will misidentify something and ingest something harmful. This is not something to make light of; it can be serious business, but a worthy endeavor nonetheless. Foraging builds self confidence and helps you learn to trust yourself. Wild food is more nutritious; those plants are exposed to more dangers and stressors than cultivated ones, and as it turns out, the constituents they make in self defense just so happen to be very nutritious to us. Don’t just let invasive species run wild, and don’t just toss out free nutritious food. Go out there and harvest. You are serving your body, your mind, your wallet, and the ecosystem when you do this. It is an act of self-love and an act of service to the native species that are being outcompeted. This is what foragers and herbalists mean when they talk about being in relationship with the ecosystems and the plants - you are literally building a reciprocal relationship. When you nourish the land, the land will nourish you.
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