{"version":"1.0","provider_name":"2022 Archive of RENATURED, Marina Zurkow's Research Blog","provider_url":"https:\/\/o-matic.com\/blog-archive-2022","author_name":"Marina","author_url":"https:\/\/o-matic.com\/blog-archive-2022\/blog\/author\/admin\/","title":"delicious streets","html":"Very little, I'm slightly embarrassed to confess, makes a place more vibrant than knowing how much of it is edible.\r\n\r\nSince I went on Becky Lerner's First Ways<\/a> foraging tour near Alberta Street last week, neighborhoods and lawns have come alive. One of the many things I appreciated about Becky is her blindness to speciesism: she's interested in eating, healing, and smoking the neighborhood, not deeming what's native or foreign.\r\nRead her blog, if not her book<\/a>.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"374\"]\"\" Rebecca Lerner, sitting in an alley off Alberta Street preparing a legal smoke mixture[\/caption]\r\n\r\nWe did a 2 hour foraging tour, focused on what might constitute a psychotropic smoke mixture (noting illegal), but also nibbled and snipped (only street side, following the laws of usufruct<\/a>*) our way through a mere 2 block radius, which included\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"374\"]\"\" Mallow, a mucilagenous thickening agent, which belies the fact that young flower buds are like edamame[\/caption]\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"369\"]\"\" Kousa Dogwood (which I've eaten as garnish at Kyo Ya<\/a>, my favorite esoteric and luxurious teeny Japanese restaurant in the LES)[\/caption]\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"374\"]\"\" Mimosa, an antidepressant, used in TCM[\/caption]\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"374\"]\"\" Spanish lavender. Russian sage, Spanish lavender and Lemon balm, both of which are amazing additions to a smoke mixture, with a base of mullein[\/caption]\r\n\r\nHen and chicks, whose leaves are edible\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"374\"]\"\" Sedum, edible leaves[\/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"374\"]\"\" Everlasting pea, whose flowers are edible and orchid-like beautiful. Becky said not to eat the beans, TBD...[\/caption]\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"374\"]\"\" Mugwort, used as tea, medicinal, used in traditional midwifery et al. If I remember right, you can drink it to encourage vivid dreams, or even put it under your pillow, purportedly.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"500\"]\"\" Sweet alyssum, which I've always loved for its subtle honey fragrance (this was our only lawn infraction)[\/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"500\"]\"\" A cultivar of elderberry (uh, eat berries)[\/caption]\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nand American poppy, to make a sedative tincture.\r\n\r\n* * * * * * *\r\n
*The ancient legal principle of usufruct broadly dictates that private property can be used for the public good so long as it's not damaged in the process. This is of note to the urban forager, as it suggests that fruit and other plant foods grown on private land can be harvested by passersby. A stricter and far less hazardous foodie interpretation of usufruct means that ripe citrus tree, whose trunk meets the soil inside your neighbor's yard but whose laden branches overhang the sidewalk, can be shorn of a few bits of fruit so long as you don't harm the tree or any other property in so doing, or abuse the privilege; that is, take only as much as you can consume.\r\n\r\n\u2013 LA Weekly<\/a>, shout out to Fallen Fruit<\/a><\/blockquote>","type":"rich"}