I’m all for foraging for wild food. Lord knows when the shit goes down in 2012, I want to be able to pick through the post-apocalyptic rubble and find the makings of a lovely dinner. After all, so much of the flora in our urban surroundings is edible. Outside the urban boundaries, the bounty becomes even more extensive. It’s a regular grocery store out there, sans the wobbly-wheeled carts and the florescent lighting.
Someone should really create a cooking contest based on those ingredients you can find for free along the sidewalks, in the fields, and deep in the forests of this particular locality. Oh! Look!:
The Wild Food Cook-Off challenges Portland cooks to dazzle the public with tasty treats using foraged and gathered foods! Join us on May 15, 2010 to cook, eat, vote and win!
The Wild Food Cook-Off invites home cooks, chefs, foragers, and cart owners to submit their best ‘dish’ using foods available for free from the land, waters and wildness of Oregon. The public will vote for the Wildest Chef in Portland (there is a trophy, too!). We’ll all win, as we experience food sensations like dandelions, wild leeks, mushrooms, morels, fiddle-heads, huckleberries, or even shellfish or trout.
Check out the Wild Food Cook-Off website for more information, and answer me this: Would you be at all hesitant to eat a dish that included ingredients someone had foraged? Also, where are your favorite foraging places? (You know, so I can raid them when 2012 rolls around.)
Is roadkill eligible?