Laura Vozzella ran a piece in the Baltimore Sun yesterday regarding the seemingly on-the-rise concept of Urban Foraging, which essentially amounts to picking things up off the ground and eating them:
By gathering food in a city public park, Stauss not only trims her grocery bill but also takes part in one of the more surprising offshoots of the local-foods movement: urban foraging. Even in Baltimore, where certain parks are better known as murder-victim dumping grounds than locavore playgrounds, wild edibles grow in abundance.
Look, people, I’m no fascist, hippy-killing, factory-farm loving capitalist, but I’ve seen the quasi-legal things Baltimoreans routinely throw on the ground. That stuff gets into the ground and stays there. Don’t we have a super-fund site in the city that corresponds roughly to the size of the city? (Evan: it’s the Superest!) But, you say, what if I still want home-grown roughage without all that home-grown chemical flavor? Instructables has a bunch of great garden projects for your windows and backyard. I’m pretty sure dandelions will grow in a modular hydroponic window garden. I’m planning on growing tomatoes upside down out of a five-gallon bucket. If mushrooms are your thing, there are home starter kits that recycle coffee grounds. The point is, we have options that exercise more control over the soil in which a plant grows. In short, the less chromium in your berry, the better.
-muke
i could spend a lot of time on that superfund site. i didn’t know what one was, but now i want to read about all of them.
tastes like shiny!
In before Superfundberry Vodka
But I spent $14.99 on this IPHONE APP! It’s got gps coordinates to berry patches and a VEN DIAGRAM that shows where edibility and FOODIE trend CRED intersect.
I was all set to CAN HUCKLEBERRIES like my grandmother did in ARTISANAL MASON JARS, and now you’re telling me they’re unsafe?
Like Bourdain unsafe, or like Fukushima unsafe?
Somewhere inbetween, like Three Mile Island or the Inner Harbor unsafe I’m guessing?
Tastes like 1968.