August 12, 2013

delicious streets

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Very little, I’m slightly embarrassed to confess, makes a place more vibrant than knowing how much of it is edible.

Since I went on Becky Lerner’s First Ways 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.
Read her blog, if not her book.

Rebecca Lerner, sitting in an alley off Alberta Street preparing a legal smoke mixture

We 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*) our way through a mere 2 block radius, which included

Mallow, a mucilagenous thickening agent, which belies the fact that young flower buds are like edamame

 

Kousa Dogwood (which I’ve eaten as garnish at Kyo Ya, my favorite esoteric and luxurious teeny Japanese restaurant in the LES)

 

Mimosa, an antidepressant, used in TCM

 

Spanish lavender. Russian sage, Spanish lavender and Lemon balm, both of which are amazing additions to a smoke mixture, with a base of mullein

Hen and chicks, whose leaves are edible

Sedum, edible leaves
Everlasting pea, whose flowers are edible and orchid-like beautiful. Becky said not to eat the beans, TBD…

 

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.

 

Sweet alyssum, which I’ve always loved for its subtle honey fragrance (this was our only lawn infraction)
A cultivar of elderberry (uh, eat berries)

 

and American poppy, to make a sedative tincture.

* * * * * * *

*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.

– LA Weekly, shout out to Fallen Fruit

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