Free food @ $30 an excursion.

<quote>
Urban foraging

Salad daze

Hipsters are foraging for greens in urban parks

Dec 13th 2014 | SANTA BARBARA

SHOPPING for salad in supermarkets is too easy. A bag of ready-washed
baby greens costs only $3 at Walmart, and takes no time to lift from
the shelf. So a new breed of foodie spends hours foraging for plants
in city parks and vacant lots. For what can compare with the joy of
ripping up the roots of a mallow plant and eating the mucus they
produce when boiled? Many wild American plants are edible but
unavailable in supermarkets: dandelion, pig weed, bull thistle, skunk
vine. But not everyone recognises them. Enter the foraging gurus, who
teach hipsters how to pluck on the wild side.

"Green Deane" Jordan charges $30 for a foraging excursion in Orlando,
Florida; demand exceeds supply, he says. New foraging apps, websites
and books are making it easier than ever to score free food. But this
only part of the story.

Foraging fits the anti-corporate faith of many hipsters. People are
"yearning for something that's real", says Frank Grindrod, who teaches
foraging in Massachusetts. Urban parks typically offer more plant
varieties than similarly sized wilderness areas. And city greenery
holds more calories per acre than wildlands that are picked over by
deer, says Steve "Wildman" Brill, who sells a 26-language "Wild
Edibles" app and gives foraging tours in New York city parks.

Wild food tastes better than you might expect, enthusiasts say.
Cattail roots, roasted until caramelised, have a pleasant chestnut
flavour. The mucus of the mallow plant can substitute for egg whites
to enrich meringues.

Roughly 18% of Americans forage at least once a year, up from 13% in
1999, says Marla Emery, a geographer at the US Forest Service.
ForageSF, a San Francisco firm, serves $100 dinners with foraged
ingredients such as beached kelp and fennel pollen. Iso Rabins, the
founder, had hoped to employ staff foragers but found that the
laudable attributes of folks willing to forage full-time did not
include promptness in returning calls or punctuality. He now uses
freelances instead.
</quote>

http://www.economist.com/news/united...rks-salad-daze

--
Bob
www.kanyak.com