Foraging with Mia Andler

Mia Andler  0:00  
We really could be eating much more local and it would be really fun. We could be incorporating a lot more of these flavors into our diet. And it's actually better for the planet because these are the plants that grow here. They're the things that do well naturally without inputs of fertilizer and water. So that's something that I really want to see. Hello, and

Michelle Fullner  0:21  
welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who's ever been hiking and wanted to snack. I'm Michelle Fullner. And today we're talking foraging with meow antler whose voice you just heard. In this episode, you'll hear about edible plants, the ethics of foraging, how to harvest pine nuts, deadly plants, and how to avoid them the difference between edibility and palatability, eating weeds, how not to get stung by stinging nettles, foraging in cities, medicinal plants, and how eating local foods can actually be better for the planet we live on. While enriching our lives in more ways than we might imagine. Before we get to that I have updates for you. First, I want to remind you that this is a bonus episode dropping right in the middle of the season break because I miss you and I thought foraging would be a really cool thing to try out while you wait for new episodes. Some of those new episodes are going to be on tide pools. Redwood trees are like nature art, California condors and also a whole bunch more. So make sure you're following the show wherever you listen to get updated on those as soon as they're released. Now, when season three does start, you're going to notice that the show art is getting a glow up, it's still going to be the bear with the puppies, which I designed and painted when I started the show. But the new version is so bold and beautiful and detailed, and I absolutely love it. Lots more on that when season three starts, but I wanted to bring it up now because I got new stickers made for the new art, and I'm gonna be mailing them out to everyone supporting the show on Patreon. With the start of season three, Patreon is absolutely the reason I'm able to keep making this show. So I want to express my gratitude to every single person supporting me over there. If you're already on Patreon, make sure to send me a private message with your address so I can get you a sticker. And if you're listening to this, and you're not on Patreon yet, you can join for as little as $4 a month and you'll get a new sticker too if you sign up by the end of July. Another really exciting thing happening in the Patreon community is that I'm starting a patrons only book club over there. We're going to read fantastic books about natural history and ecology and discuss them every month with a community of wonderful kind human beings who care about things that matter. There's absolutely room for you there too. And I hope to see you on Patreon at www.patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's in Fullner is fu ll en er, also now that I've quit my job to work on Golden State naturalist full time I've been able to put time and energy into hosting more in person events and workshops. If you want to be the first to find out about those as I announced them, head over to my website, which is Golden State naturalist.com and join my email list. While you're there know that I'm just starting to develop my blog and I recently created a post about beginner friendly nature journaling supplies specifically for people who already have too many hobbies. So check that out and maybe even head over to the Golden State naturalist store while you're there and grab some merch with the current barren poppies before that art goes away. Okay, that was so much let's get to foraging. Meow antler is the author of the beautiful new book this year a forger and co author of the Bay Area forger. She's committed to facilitating meaningful connection to nature and is the founder and executive director of vilda, a nonprofit that runs nature connection programs for children in Tahoe, Truckee and the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been foraging since she was a little girl in Finland and has studied the regenerative practices of earth based cultures around the world. So without further ado, let's hear from Mia antler on Golden State naturalist.

I met up with Mia in the middle of May not far from Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains right beside a very full and fast moving Truckee River. Even though there were still occasional patches of snow on the ground where we were at around 6000 feet of elevation, the plants around us had started to wake up from their winter dormancy beneath the pines and the firs native currents were beginning to flower and beside the river. The leaves of willows were just starting to burst from there otherwise bear stems. Each of our footsteps was padded by a spongy layer of pine needles on the ground. I couldn't help but wonder what this place looked like to me as trained i How many plants do you see that we can eat? Like as you just look around? Oh, I

Mia Andler  4:56  
love that question. That's kind of what I do in my mind often I'm Like, Oh, which plants are here, which plants are likely to be here? Let's see, there's sagebrush. There's wild current. There's pine and fir and Willow. That on the other side is probably a dog. Grass is edible. Rushes are technically edible. The brushes are sedges. Oh Aspet Oh cottonwoods cottonwood and, well, not exactly not like you're going to chow down on the cottonwood. Technically, you could eat some of the leaves, but it's not necessarily what you want to be eating. Like there's edibility. Like, can you eat it? Is it not poisonous, but then there's also palatability. So, is it too spiky to eat? Or is it uncomfortable? Or is it just bitter? Right? Like I mean, even dandelions, a lot of those are really bitter. So would you actually want to eat it is another question.

Michelle Fullner  5:53  
So even though Mia and I were surrounded by edible plants, not all of them are necessarily things you'd want to take a big bite out of exactly as they were. And some would taste better in other seasons, including the pine needles, we sampled

Mia Andler  6:08  
for pilot furs, I actually just taste them. And there's some that tastes really good in certain seasons. And then others that are bitter i like most non free dead. Yeah, but it does that thing to your tongue, where it kind of makes it like dry. Yeah, almost. I know what you mean. But it's, it still has a good flavor this one. And it's so unique. That's not like something you buy through the grocery store. Right? But then if you wait when it has its little like new sprigs light green, those are just like you can actually eat them like in a salad or know something. Well, this is an older green. So just like all older greens, it has a kind of a more intense, rougher taste. And

Michelle Fullner  6:46  
like the texture too is like kind of hokey. Yeah, exactly.

Mia Andler  6:48  
But I still like to kind of chew on one every now and then and or you could make it into a tea but my style of foraging is that this is exactly how I do it. What we're doing right now is I very rarely harvest large quantities I instead hikes or do whatever I'm doing outside and then when I see something that's edible, I just grab a little piece and I eat it like more kind of like somebody pointed out to me like a deer grazing. So

Michelle Fullner  7:12  
you can graze on pine and fir needles, or as Mia suggested earlier, you can make them into a tea. And according to webmd, the needles are high in vitamin C. So making a cup of pine needle tea can be a great boost and apparently very soothing if you're sick. Just make sure you're not using needles from a you tree which is poisonous, or from a ponderosa pine, which is especially bad for pregnant people. And there might be other similar looking trees to watch out for. So as you listen to this episode, remember that with every single thing you forage or cook, what you put into your body is your responsibility. And it's your job to stay safe. Lots of things out there can kill you or make you very sick. So use reputable field guides to double and triple check that any plant or mushroom or anything you want to consume is edible, and you're identifying the species correctly. Nothing you hear on this podcast is dietary or medical advice. Please go talk to your doctor for dietary or medical advice. Okay, but once you've done your homework, that soothing cup of pine needle tea, or a few fresh for needles added to your salad would be lovely. And as you likely already know, the needles aren't the only edible part of these trees. Mia and I found some picked over pine cones on the forest floor and we had to check them for one of our mutual favorite foods.

Mia Andler  8:31  
Did they credited a hold of that? Or operably? Okay, cool. And if we're lucky, maybe we find one that actually has issued one. Yeah, these are definitely favorite food of really a lot of animals.

Michelle Fullner  8:41  
They're one of my favorite foods too. Oh,

Mia Andler  8:43  
good. Hi, next. They're probably these went well, we

Michelle Fullner  8:47  
couldn't closed. Yeah. But then how do you get them out when they're like that? Oh

Mia Andler  8:51  
my gosh. And that is a question. In some ways. It's really easy. So these pine cones at this high of an altitude they have teeny pine nuts, but the ones that are really the ones that people harvest, which are usually called Pinyon. pines, those pine nuts are bigger.

Michelle Fullner  9:06  
Okay, but where can you find Pinyon pines Cal scape shows them all along the eastern Sierra is starting as far north as about Reno. But they're way more abundant. As you go farther south, down the eastern side of the Sierras. In Southern California. They're also all along the eastern side of the transverse and peninsular mountain ranges surrounding LA and San Diego. So there are lots of places to find these trees in kind of the southern and eastern parts of the state. And looking at a broader distribution map, I'm seeing that they're also across a lot of Nevada, a bit of Western Utah, parts of Arizona and a tiny little blip in Idaho. So those are your general regions if you'd like to try the really good pine nuts, the pinyon pine nuts, and we're gonna get more deeply into the legality and ethics of foraging and a little bit, but for now, just know that these trees are incredibly slow growing and don't start producing seeds for at least 35 years. And according to the US Department of Agriculture, they don't produce good seed crops for the first 100 years of their lives. So as with all things don't take too much, and make sure that there are plenty of pine nuts left behind for wildlife for the trees to reseed themselves. And for indigenous people whose families have been utilizing these trees and taking care of them for millennia. Okay, but I know my NorCal people also want pine nuts. And you may have noticed that there aren't a whole lot of pinyon pine trees close to us up here. So I did my best googling for you. And it looks like a great species for pine nuts of this way is the gray pine. Their distribution map shows them pretty much wringing the entire bathtub of the Central Valley. And they grow from sea level to about 4000 feet in elevation. If you've ever been hiking where they grow, I'm sure you've seen their cones, they're about the size of a pineapple, which just don't stand under one of these trees. If it's windy. If you want to know more, I actually found an article in The Atlantic called California's forgotten pine nuts, all about gray pine nuts, and how to get them out of their shells and how they taste which is apparently better than grocery store pine nuts, but not as good as pinyon pine nuts. I'll link that in the show notes. Okay, but Mia has experienced harvesting pine nuts, so let's hear her talk about it. And so

Mia Andler  11:21  
what people do is they harvest the whole pine cone, and they when it's not open yet, and they leave it out to dry. And then everything just ideally falls out when you kind of bang it with some Okay, whether that actually happens that smoothly I I'm usually around species that aren't the main ones that people harvest. So and I do harvest the ones here, when I've tried to do it like that, I've had mixed luck. But last year, we were really lucky and we had such a good pine nut harvest, they were just falling out all over my driveway.

Michelle Fullner  11:52  
And then what time of year would that be that you're finding the cones with the pine nuts in them like pretty abundantly

Mia Andler  11:57  
that would be in the late summer or early fall. Okay,

Michelle Fullner  12:01  
so late summer, early fall for pine nuts spring for fresh green sprigs. And you can also eat pine pollen, check for that in the spring as well. Right around when you start to see yellow dust coding all the cars, you can add it into a smoothie for extra nutrition, or even replace a small amount of flour for a recipe you're making one blog that I saw recommended not to replace more than a quarter of the flower in a recipe with pollen, it might also just be difficult to gather pollen in those quantities. So there are a lot of great foods right outside your door if you know what you're looking for. But actually identifying which plants are edible means honing your powers of observation, you can start to notice things like the color of plants, the shape of the leaves, and whether their edges are smooth or not the texture of bark, how many petals the flowers have, and so much more. One of the things I was noticing when we were looking at the sagebrush before is that the leaf color is like it's got almost this like white powdery look to it's got like this darker green underneath. Yeah, with like this white powder, you look under it. But then when we look over here to the left, this other plant that's right under the same tree has this really vibrant green color. So what is this? Yeah,

Mia Andler  13:11  
that's I love that you're noticing colors, because I always encourage people to like, well get really in there notice, like, what's different about this one, and that one, and even that one, like the color difference really, really light and silvery green and that one's bright. And then that one is Forest forest. So yeah, this bright plant with these kind of curly leaves with with a sticky two with three parts, almost like a teeny, tiny maple leaf that's curled up. This one is a wild current and it does not have berries yet. And it won't until much later in the summer time. At which time it'll develop these. Usually bluish varies that incidental usually have a white kind of powdery coating on them almost like a great like, oh, yeah, exactly. It might even be a yeast actually might be the same thing that happens to little currents. But so current as a family, there's many, many edible plants that if you know the family, then you're on the right track and you can kind of assume that many of them are, are edible in that family. So this current family is one of them. Here in the Tahoe region, we don't have a very rewarding current to eat. Like in Europe, there's these really juicy, half cultivated or cultivated and currents that are like black currents, okay, that are really tasty to make into juice. And these are technically black currents. They're dark colored currents, but they're kind of seedy. I like them most when they kind of dry up and they're almost like little teeny current, like raisins. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I remember that. So I do eat them. But the seeds are so big in comparison to the fruit that you get that seed tastes like if you've ever eaten a great seed. It's really Similar to Yeah, and then there's gooseberries in the same family which are really strikingly beautiful both the flowers and the berry. It's kind of a funny comparison because I'm like, what does the berry look like? It looks like the Coronavirus picture like, gosh, it's so funny. Well, that's for all of us. Yeah. Yeah, it has huge spikes around a circle and it's even that same color. They often use a purplish like magenta. Yeah. So that Syrah gooseberry is very tasty inside, but you have to deal with the spikes. So technically, you could like crush it, okay, and then squeeze out the juice. Or you could go through the cumbersome process of peeling off the algae, individual one spikes. So that's this family of plant though Currently, there's not much we can eat on that. I

Michelle Fullner  15:48  
think Mia slipped a current pun in there just to keep us on our toes. Sidenote, if I had to make a hierarchy of the most personable nature words be like, as in the insect bee would obviously be the top and current is currently second on my list. But if you're like me, you're a little nervous about eating berries in the woods, even if those berries are excellent for wordplay? I mean, lots of plants are poisonous, right? Turns out, it depends on where you are. But yes, the answer is yes. Do you see any dangerous plants right now? Can you look and see any of that are, you

Mia Andler  16:19  
know, we're quite lucky in this region that our hazards are really much more minimal than at the sea level. There are large quantities of water Hemlock, but I don't see any right now. But it is definitely something to be aware of. And poison Hemlock in his comment as well. Other than that, there are obviously a lot of toxic plants, there just aren't that many that you would be likely to forage for. Like there's also the skunk cabbages or the oh the one that's probably good to know about is the the death Camus lilies which really resembled the the the edible Camus, those are probably the main ones you would want to kind of think of for foraging and then the penny royal, which is a meant that is kind of could be toxic, especially to pregnant people. But some people also just drink pen royalty as the famous Nirvana song says, and it's medicinal, but it is like they kind of recommend that children shouldn't have it. It's a strong mint. Okay, those are kind of my instant foraging ones. And then of course, the plot the rule applies, don't harvest something you don't know what it is like. This is just we have the poisonous look lights. Yeah,

Michelle Fullner  17:28  
those ones are the ones that really scare me. If

Mia Andler  17:30  
you don't know, then I'd say don't do it. Because if the poisonous lookalike is deadly, you don't want to mess around with that. No back season. No. And I that's what I always say in my books is like, just avoid all carrot family until you don't need this book, basically. Yeah, like until you feel like you're so strong in your identification, that you're just 150% Sure otherwise, why risk it? Right. Yeah, no point. No, there's there really isn't, though I do know some foragers were like, oh, yeah, I'll try a little piece of it. Yeah, that doesn't seem edible. I'm like, Wow, you're so brave. Your system can handle it. I think mine couldn't. Yeah, I'm with you. I would I would be on the cautious. Yeah, I

Michelle Fullner  18:08  
have a grocery store down the street. I'm not in any kind of dire situation where I need to eat. Right. And a sandwich in my backpack right now. Exactly.

Mia Andler  18:19  
Exactly. Yeah. And I think you brought me one too, so I don't have to be eating anything questionable today, either. So

Michelle Fullner  18:25  
we have edible plants, poisonous plants. And what about medicinal plants, Mia and I could see at least one of them from where we were standing near the river. willows,

Mia Andler  18:34  
medicinal willow leaves. Actually, some people really liked the flavor, but I always considered more of a medicinal plant.

Michelle Fullner  18:40  
This is where aspirin comes from. Willow. Okay, willow bark.

Mia Andler  18:44  
So a lot of people have willow bark tea for headaches and things like that. And Willow is an amazing medicinal plants and the animals use it. The deer use it to for pain relief, wow, as well. But if you have willows, which a lot of us do around because it's very common around water. If you look at the bark of the willows, you might find a spot where you see that something has rubbed on it, and it's most probably a buck with their handlers getting pain relief, because it's painful to grow antlers.

Michelle Fullner  19:11  
Wow. Yep. Oh my gosh. So you can eat Willow, but it's usually used as more of a medicine than a food. Which brings up a really interesting point about foraging. There are different kinds of foraging for different purposes.

Mia Andler  19:23  
It does depend what are you foraging for? Are you there because you're a survivalist. And you're wanting to go or minimal backpacker so you're actually interested in nutritional value, and things that digest easily because you don't want to eat a bunch of something that even if it's high nutritional value, if it's causing you to have a stomach ache while you're out in the forest, that's not going to be a good match. As

Michelle Fullner  19:45  
an example of this digestibility issue meet the ancient grass humans can technically eat it. grass isn't toxic to us, but we don't have four stomachs like cows do or the right kind of microbes living in our gut. So we just can't get digested super well, and like calories

Mia Andler  20:01  
to like tallied a lot, right? So that's one category of like, okay, that's why you're foraging. Are you foraging because it's fun and you're just trying different flavors and wanting to get to know the plants and you actually have really no attachment besides not being poisoned? To like, the purpose or are you a cook or a foodie and you're wanting things that are really tasty and grow in large abundant quantities so you can harvest it for your cooking project. And so there are those different lenses for Jays. Yeah, makes sense. And it's good to point out because I will say that while I do know about wilderness survival, I have never done a major wilderness survival time like I have been out for a couple nights and I have friends who've been out for actually have a friend who just won that. That's the one that is a competition. Everybody knows

Michelle Fullner  20:51  
that. The competition she's referring to is the History Channel's show alone, Mia's friend who won the competition is named well Nia Tebow, she actually competed twice was the runner up the first time she competed and won the second time for a grand total of 123 days in the wilderness by herself with only 10 items she could bring with her. She was the first woman to win the competition. And she did so by emphasizing her relationship with the place where she was surviving absolute legend.

Mia Andler  21:21  
But anyway, she won that and she was out in like, Canada like Northern Canada for gosh, I don't know how long it was but it was months like she's actually surviving on the land Wow. Or another teachers teacher of mine who actually lived in Central Park in New York and like said he could survive there off of the land and did for I don't know how many months again, but it was like half a year or a year. It might have been a year like a year, every season.

Michelle Fullner  21:46  
Right? It's crazy, especially Snow was in New York in the winter. I've been to Central Park in the winter and governance. It's pretty amazing. Listening to this now I feel like such a basic sea level Californian for being so impressed by snow, but it is impressive to survive in the snow. Okay. The person who survived in Central Park is named Tom Brown Jr. And apparently the 2003 film The hunted, starring Tommy Lee Jones has a character based on him. It's Tommy Lee Jones, his character. It's worth googling.

Mia Andler  22:16  
And I talk to those people it's like with great respect that they're like, Yeah, you know, a lot of the foraging books say that that's edible. But I'll tell you that one you're out there actually surviving there's different kinds of edibles.

Michelle Fullner  22:27  
Once we had scouted out most of the edible plants near the river, we decided to walk up the trail to find a place to sit and talk for the interview. But on the way there we saw some plants we knew we had to sample.

Mia Andler  22:40  
This is a very good sized patch of metals, which is actually what I'm out for right now. So nettles is one of the few things that I will come out and harvest in mass, both because I know that's totally sustainable to do in most places. And because I love metals. I have seasonal allergies. So nettles are really good for me to help with seasonal allergies. They're so rich in minerals, they're really a superfood, and they taste really good to me. This is the perfect time to harvest nettles, right when it's at this low height, it's the tastiest, then it's potent, it's nice. So I come out and I harvest them and then I often freeze them so that I have them for a longer period of time. Fantastic. Okay, but

Michelle Fullner  23:21  
I'm scared of handles because a few weeks ago, I was in Humboldt, and I'm not really familiar with nettles if I go like tramping around in the garden, my ankles like irritating me for like two days. Yeah. How do you avoid that situation when you're harvesting them?

Mia Andler  23:34  
You don't

Michelle Fullner  23:35  
me accepts that getting stung is part of the deal when it comes to harvesting nettles, but she did tell me that you can avoid most stings by wearing thick gloves for harvesting and thick pants. So these things don't get you through your clothes when you walk. There are also two more ways to avoid getting stung, which you'll hear about in a minute when we harvest the nettles. One of them is crazy, but

Mia Andler  23:57  
don't promise that you will not get you know,

it's a risk of. Okay, we could try to go down here, do it. Let's see, I'm gonna walk around. Right now I'm

putting you in danger already. But this looks like a safe spot right here in the middle. In this

Michelle Fullner  24:13  
next part is so important regardless of what it is you're harvesting both for your own safety and for the plant and the ecosystems health. So if you're multitasking, zero in on this part for the next couple of minutes, and

Mia Andler  24:25  
when I harvest something, the first thing I do is I stop, and I make sure that is really the plant that I'm looking at. Because I make mistakes too. Everybody does for whatever variety of reasons. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe that's not natural. You don't want to make that mistake. You want to be 150% Sure. So I stop and I look is this really metal in this case? Nettle is pretty easy to identify. You look for well, you could sting yourself and things you you're good. There's only very few varieties of metal that don't sing, okay, mostly at farmer's markets where there they cultivated out the string. So if it's things you, you're good to go, I'm not going to do that. I'm gonna look at it and see that it has these leaves that have a sawtooth edge, but they're fairly large. They have your typical leaf veins, you can see them, the stem is square, they have little teeny hairs on them, and those are the Stingers. And that's key for knowing about a nettle sting is that those stingers? They're mechanical singers. So if you break them, they cannot send you they bring their like a little injector, actually, they inject formic acid or something very similar to formic acid, which is the acid that ants have in them. Yes,

Michelle Fullner  25:46  
it is formic acid that's in the stings. So according to Medical News Today, the stings contain formic acid in histamine along with acetylcholine, and serotonin. And there's just a ton of traditional medicinal uses of stinging nettles. So super cool plant. So

Mia Andler  26:04  
if you break them by crushing, or by putting them in your blender, or even with a spoon, or even with your fingers, they should not be able to sing you. Of course, some of them are harder to break. So I'm looking at it and I'm bow paused. And I see that those are the identifying features of metal plus, I know that metal likes to grow in spots like this close to the water, often. And so I feel pretty confident that this is metal. And now I've stopped and done that I've also assessed is there some kind of nasty pesticide around? Is there a dog poop right here? Is there something that just feels weird or smells weird around here, because if there is I'm not going to want to eat from that spot. The second step that I do is, I have a connection of gratitude with the natural world. So I want to make sure that I harvest respectfully, I don't usually just take something from the earth, I take a moment I pause it in whatever way anybody's comfortable with I often even just ask in my head or out loud, hey, I would like to harvest some of you and eat you. And would that be okay? I actually asked for permission. That's my way. Or maybe it's just a moment of awareness. Yeah, I'm going to harvest the plant. And does that feel right? Whatever it is, and I like to say thank you. And I feel that is a respectful way, because otherwise it's a it's almost like you just take something from someone.

Michelle Fullner  27:24  
I've probably mentioned Robin wall Kimmerer book braiding sweetgrass more than any other single book on this podcast. And I'm going to mention it again right now, because in it Kimmerer, who's a member of the Potawatomi Nation describes something called the honorable harvest very beautifully. The honorable harvest is a way of life practice by indigenous tribes across what is now the United States and by earth based cultures around the world. A couple of things she mentioned in her section on the honorable harvest are things like asking permission before taking never taking more than you need, sharing with others never taking the first one you see and giving a gift in reciprocity for what you've taken. And me as book this year. A forger includes an opening section on respectful foraging, which I absolutely love. Here are Mia's ethics and rules of foraging. Don't harvest a plant that is the only one or one of only a few of its kind in that spot. And often repeated foraging role is never to harvest more than 1/3 of the entire quantity. In my opinion, however, 1/3 is far too much, I would suggest, like 1/7. Watch how the animals engaged with the plants don't harvest something that wildlife clearly prefer. And consider the current condition and health of the plants don't harvest struggling plants at drought time or in the winter. When we pay attention to these details, take care of the species we're harvesting and show them gratitude, we develop a relationship that is healthy and sustainable. If we take too much, it becomes a one sided unhealthy relationship, and the plants will eventually break up with us. One more thing I really like about me as intro is the reminder that if you want to start a plant focused foraging business to please harvest invasives only, or plant a wild garden. This is so important and emphasizes the distinction between plants that are ecologically harmful, and those that are beneficial. Check out the California native plants episode of this podcast for more information on that distinction, but for the purposes of this episode, know that invasive plants by definition take over areas where they didn't evolve. And when they do that, they push out a wide range of native plants, which are the vital building blocks for entire food webs. The end result in this scenario is decreased biodiversity, which is a big loss for the resilience of ecosystems as a whole. The good news is that there are lots of edible invasive plants. So it's a good idea to remove as many invasive plants as possible, whether or not you're going to use them and it's just a great bonus. If you can also eat some of them, use them as medicine or make something out of them while you're at it.

Mia Andler  29:49  
And then gladly with metal. I can actually harvest it super easily and I know that I'm not going to harm it say I have scissors

Michelle Fullner  29:59  
me His scissor method is great. She basically just grabs the stinging nettles with her scissors and gives them a little trim, and then picks up the piece that she just trimmed off with the scissors. So she can avoid touching it all together and drops it into a bag,

Mia Andler  30:13  
if you have to go for bare hands, that they do this,

Michelle Fullner  30:17  
at this point B, you just grabbed a stinging nettle leaf with her bare hands,

Mia Andler  30:21  
it's to squeeze so much like that, that you break those mechanical pieces. It doesn't always work, okay, but it does work. Sometimes I'm not worried about what you do is you just go like this, and the bottom often is a better place, you go straight down. So now I have not gotten stung it. Wow. Also, the reason for that is that your fingertips at least mine from like playing guitar gardening, they're not your softest piece of skin. So you've got that. Usually you don't get stung at this phase. Now what you have to do it somehow actually fold it and every touch you do has to be firm, because otherwise you'll get stung. So you're crushing those little mechanical things, right? And then you do a few extra squeezes to make sure all of them are broken. And at that point, you should be fine to just eat it. It's like a magic trick. Yeah, that's so cool. There's no way to really eat a nettle in the field without crashing it into a pillow. Okay, because anything else you're gonna have to take it home and crush it with blender or cook it and go with the spoon or so. Depends on how brave you're feeling if you want to try one or not. Again, I don't promise sometimes I get stung in my mouth. Okay, I'm fine. It's not that bad. Okay,

Michelle Fullner  31:37  
okay. Yeah. All right. Can you take a video of me? Sure. I'm gonna post this video on social media soon in case you want to see it already rolling. Okay, here we go. I'm gonna firmly grasp belief. Yeah, yes.

Mia Andler  31:49  
Okay, here we go. Yeah, let's see. Let's pick one would it be confident

Michelle Fullner  31:53  
just go after it. Yeah. The Good Life less dream. Okay, I'm gonna go for this one right here. And I'm just gonna go and nothing happened to me. There's a spider on there. Oh, friend. No need to Spider

Mia Andler  32:07  
the spider. I'm gonna just go in and I keep crashing. Yeah, make it into a little pillow fold the bottom on top of the crush crush crush. Did you get some? Yeah, no. Yeah, these are Super stinky. Okay.

Michelle Fullner  32:20  
Squeezy squeeze. I feel I'm fine so far. Okay, let's go to get Justin foot in my mouth that I did a lot of. I popped it into my mouth. And this was my first time ever tasting stinging nettles. Wheatgrass.

Mia Andler  32:34  
Wow. Oh, my gosh, is so good. Right? No, no, it's not bitter. It's yummy. It's delicious. And when they're cooked, they're a little more like spinach.

Michelle Fullner  32:45  
That's why they're hiding behind those little stings. That's why they're like Don't be gone. Other ways. That's so good. Okay, after enjoying a few nettle leaves, we walked farther up the path and found a shady spot to sit down and chat for the full interview. We talked about truly local food systems, advice for new foragers, wild foods. Kids love how humans can make a positive difference to the planet through foraging and so much more. All of that right after a short break.

Welcome back today we're talking foraging with meow antler. Let's get into the full interview. How did you first get interested in foraging? It sounds like that was part of your curriculum in Finland.

Mia Andler  33:57  
It was part of my curriculum to know plants and animals and it was part of our way as a family and for many Finnish families. They wouldn't even call it a word. They wouldn't call it foraging but Finnish families back then. And some these days went mushrooming and went berry picking together as a common activity. Basically everybody did it. That's amazing. Yeah. So when I came here, I already had the sense that you eat from the forest. And at some point, when I was hiking around the Sierras, I was like, Well, it seems like there should be something edible here too. And just nobody knew about it. So then it was a long journey of asking a lot of questions from a variety of people and finding out what you actually can eat. And

Michelle Fullner  34:45  
how many years do you feel like it took you to get to that point of confidence of eating, you know, a fair amount of wild plants?

Mia Andler  34:52  
That's a good question. I think that really it took me maybe two years of like, concerted study and probably a few more years of getting interested really in deciding there were things to eat and slowly figuring out how to figure it out the how to figure it part was not actually that easy here. So that was the piece that took longer. And now we have books like mine. And that helps a lot like Kevin and I, who I wrote the Bay Area for Joe Woods, we used to joke about like how at first, it felt almost weird that something's that it took us like 10 years to find out because there wasn't information available at that time. Now we say in like, a couple seconds in the book. And at some point it like felt like selling ourselves short. But really, that's completely the opposite. Really, we were just so happy to get to put it all together into a useful piece of information. And since then, like there's so many books out now, and there's so much internet information. But back when I was studying this, it was actually very difficult. There was a you'll Gibbons book from the 60s, it doesn't have any pictures. It just has a bunch of long descriptions. And it's for the entire west coast, probably more for like Washington area. So it wasn't that easy to go from

Michelle Fullner  36:07  
there. California's got its own thing going on, too. There's a lot of different stuff, so

Mia Andler  36:11  
many ecosystems here. So really wasn't actually a totally easy journey in that way.

Michelle Fullner  36:17  
Well, I'm glad you did. Yeah, we have your beautiful books. And I was looking at the intro in Sierra foragers the other day, and it is just, it is so beautifully written. First of all, I love it. And yeah, and one of the things I really wanted to kind of pick out of that and ask you about just this idea of what it means to have a truly local cuisine, and how that's kind of something we've lost. And so I was just wondering if you kind of expand on that idea a little bit.

Mia Andler  36:40  
Oh, my gosh, I'm so glad you asked me that. Because originally I wanted that book to be called tastes of Tahoe. And that was what I was pitching is that I would write an ultra local book. And it would be all about, like, if we could taste the Tahoe region, what would it tastes like? My publisher felt that there wasn't gonna be enough purchases for such a localized book, which they're probably right on. But I'm really fascinated by this idea of what would a truly bio regional culture look like not just in food, but clothing and language like, from my travels around the world, I really enjoy tasting local cuisines, I really enjoy seeing local patterns in the weaving and the clothing the colors like and how it mirrors the landscape, like that's just a passion topic for me, or how the language sounds like the landscape or describes the landscape, and how cool it is when you get to travel from intact culture to intact culture, and experience those things. So I really want to re encourage that finding of local features, local cultures, within our global community. Even if we have mixtures of things coming in. I don't want to lose that very hyper localized expression.

Michelle Fullner  37:57  
I love this idea so much. And it reminds me that of course, this is exactly how indigenous cultures live all around the world, including here in California, where there's still an amazing diversity of indigenous people living all across the state. And regardless of our own ancestry, we can support these cultures by purchasing hyperlocal items directly from the indigenous people selling them either online or at events where they've welcomed the general public. Often you can follow tribes that are located close to you on social media, if you want to find out about these events. So that's one way to support hyperlocal cultures. Another one is even if our ancestors aren't from the places where we live now, we can still celebrate local foods and the local landscape by creating our own art stories, poems, and even ceremonies about them without taking those of the indigenous groups around us. Creating these things can be an authentic way for us to honor and connect with the places and beings around us. For me, that looks like drawing in my nature journal, ethically snacking on local flavors, writing poetry and stories that incorporate locally native species, and of course, making this podcast

Mia Andler  39:05  
and so yeah, it would have to include foods that actually grow there. And we really could be eating much more local and it would be really fun. We could be incorporating a lot more of these flavors into our diet and it's actually better for the planet. Because these are the plants that grow here. They're the things that do well naturally without inputs of fertilizer and water. So that's something that I really want to see and I've always wanted to partner with a cook that is passionate about this because I do not want to do the cooking even though I enjoy cooking. It's it's too big for me to take on. But to create these kinds of experiences for people sign me up. I

Michelle Fullner  39:46  
would come to your rescue, right? Yes. I love that. Yeah,

Mia Andler  39:49  
yeah. Even if it's just featuring the flavors because it's hard to do a fully forged cuisine like these days if the amounts that we need are not really realized sick and sometimes actually aren't the most like sustainable practice. So even just featuring like sagebrush flavored chicken or you know, well ideally you could even go a little bit more exotic than that than the chicken but anyway having like those Yeah, exactly or having a pine drinks or and companies are starting to do this like there's a bunch of kombucha is that are flavored with local flavors. I know there's nettle kombucha, or be not chocolate is becoming a thing, truffles in the Bay Area. But yeah, to have those for each bio region, it would be so fun to just have that ability to taste a place. Right? And

Michelle Fullner  40:41  
you already hinted at this. But when we scale these things, right, and especially in a landscape that's already so disrupted and disturbed, like how do you think about the ethics of foraging? And what do you kind of take into consideration when you go out into the wild and maybe other people should do?

Mia Andler  40:55  
Yeah, the good news is that a lot of things that are your, what are called weeds these days are edible. So there's a lot of things we can eat that really don't have a negative impact. And if we did this tending the wild model, we would probably be having less of an impact than our farms do. It is a different way of eating though. So I actually do see that if we were really smart about it and educated ourselves and had this value of bio regionally creating sustainable food systems, we really could do it, but it would be a whole switch of the way we eat. And also it would mean that certain things are not available at certain times. Like right now we think that any fruit and vegetables should be at the grocery store at any season, I actually try to avoid buying tomatoes in the winter, it's not necessary, like you do totally fine without tomatoes, I'm not saying they have a horrible impact, tomatoes are pretty easy to grow. But it's just like we don't need everything available at all times. Nor do we need to have like, choice of excess at all times. In fact, withholding something until it's the right season for it, like peaches are a great example. Because they're not sold in the winter, not as much right? Like that moment, when you get to bite into the first juicy summer peach is the celebration, and the friend

Michelle Fullner  42:18  
that didn't come from too far. And it's really sweet,

Mia Andler  42:21  
actually good. Like that moment is like, that's gratitude, that's when you make the connection, and you're not oblivious to that fact anymore. So that's kind of a long answer to it's not just the cuisine or the flavors that need to change, it's also kind of a way of eating and thinking that really would be possible. And I have wanted to actually write a book on suggesting both native and non native plants for each bio region and the regions of California that I know, as a suggestion for how we could create these bio regional food systems that then perhaps trade or purchase things from each other. That's

Michelle Fullner  43:01  
amazing. And when you go out into the wild, and you're looking at plants that are maybe more critical to an ecosystems health, right thinking about a plant that really needs to be there to support the insects or or whatever, or maybe it's a little bit more of a rare plant. How do you approach harvesting from a plant like that? Or do you or kind of what's the balance you find?

Mia Andler  43:20  
I am glad that I have a knowledge base of understanding those systems, that would be hard to just know. And I now know this even better, because my main job is running a wilderness school for children. So I run a nonprofit organization that teaches children about plants and animals, and I train a lot of staff for it. So one of the things I come up against is how do I teach my staff to be able to say yes or no to that kind of question of harvesting. And it's not easy for somebody to learn that quickly. Because you do need to understand the health of that spot, you need to understand what plants normally grow there, you need to know about the plants, that's a lot of knowledge. So that doesn't seem reasonable to expect. So instead, often there's rules of thumb, like don't harvest more than a third, although even at third is a

Michelle Fullner  44:06  
lot a lot, especially if somebody else comes behind you and doesn't the next year, right? So I don't

Mia Andler  44:10  
usually I do way less than that. And then it's just Are there a lot of that plant around? And how much are you taking, that's an easy way to kind of determine for without needing to really know, and then the more you know, the more you'll know, it won't be a question because you'll know if you truly know that spot and you've observed it, which in the permaculture way means that you've observed it for at least a year, like it's a significant knowledge of that land, then you can start making those decisions in a more informed way. And

Michelle Fullner  44:40  
I think that that's really beautiful too. If you are consuming these plants, right you're it feels like it's easier to enter into a relationship with a place if you have that physical connection and I mean, I don't know about you, but I am like very much motivated by my stomach, my stomach anywhere. And so if I know I got good food from Overtown that way yonder. Like, I am going to remember that spot, and I'm going to want to observe it. And I'm going to pay attention to it more closely. Every time I go by in the area. Yeah. So you get that deeper connection. Exactly,

Mia Andler  45:11  
which ideally motivates you to take care of that spot, which is why foraging is not usually harmful activity, if it's done in a good way, it'll most likely just make you have a reason to take care of that area. Hopefully, though, it can go both ways. So I do understand when people are concerned, but now, most of the plants in my books are plants that are not in high danger of being over harvested. I don't include those plants.

Michelle Fullner  45:40  
Yeah, that's wise. Yeah. Because you don't know if somebody with like, this extractive sort of mentality is going to come along and use it. No,

Mia Andler  45:46  
you never do. And I've been actually I was interviewed by like a TV show film crew for something and they were stepping all over the plants at the same time, as we were, that was the very plant we were talking about. I don't remember what the plant was, but I was like, watch out your, oh, gosh, like your eye. You know? And even just that is like, Okay, you're not thinking about what you're doing right now.

Michelle Fullner  46:08  
That's difficult. Yeah. Where is it? Okay, legally, for people to forage. What are kind of the guidelines on when it is or isn't okay to forage,

Mia Andler  46:16  
that can be really tricky. A lot of the national parks have rules about foraging, who can look up or ask arranger for example, Yosemite, which is included in the region of my current book, this year forger is very particular that you can harvest a certain amount of certain berries in the summer. And that's it. No other foraging Point Reyes National Seashore I think allows you to harvest a certain quantity of mushrooms, usually the quantity is something that you can yourself carry out and it's for personal use, okay, commercial harvesting is very rarely allowed. And then state parks really vary. A lot of them just have a Don't touch anything policy, depending on what kind of region they're located in. And if it's very populated or not, they might have slightly different policies on the ground. Most of them would probably just tell, you know, if you asked, right, and then private land is by permission of the owner, public parks, like are these kinds of trails like what we're on right now? I don't know that they really have clear rules. They would all be different than writing on the landowner. Here where we are by the Truckee River. I highly doubt anybody would care about us harvesting some nettles. Right. But often, if we have to ask on a large scale, they probably err on the side of No, just because there's liabilities like if they say yes, you can forge and then somebody dies from eating poison Hemlock is that kind of on them. You know, people are worried about liabilities, overharvesting, people doing silly things, because people do silly things, for sure. Know that absolutely. So unpopulated areas, it can be really hard to find spots that you can legally forage. So

Michelle Fullner  47:49  
wherever you're going, check in advance and see what the guidelines are in that location. Thankfully, for those of us who live in urban or suburban areas, Mia says there are things to watch out for, but there are also a lot of opportunities for great foraging. Yeah. And then my other concern in populated areas, like I think about like the listeners, there's lots of listeners in like LA San Francisco, right, like, more bigger cities. And you know, you might find some wild mustard growing, that would be totally fine to eat. But then at the same time, how do you know if it's been sprayed with a pesticide or herbicide? Like, where do you worry about those things? What are your kind of guidelines for finding those foods?

Mia Andler  48:27  
Right? That's a great question. Also, that reminds me that I forgot to tell those of you who are in urban areas, the best way to forage in urban areas, and then the neighborhoods meet the weeds is what it is. And the Bay Area forger outlines that really well. And it would probably apply quite well to LA for the most part, there'll be some differences, but like, the weeds are kind of the same. And those places have irrigation. So there's foraging year around, it usually is okay with people that you just pick something out of the crack of their sidewalk. Is it even theirs? It's unclear. Like there's a lot of urban spaces, suburban spaces, especially that you can forage and then yes, you deal with different hazards. or In addition, is there a pesticide that's been sprayed? Is there a dog that's been pooping on that spot, and that's just looking around and assessing the pesticide one is very hard to tell gladly, most pesticides unless you're eating a freshly sprayed one isn't probably going to hurt you right that moment and isn't probably going to hurt you. If you just state one. If you eat from that spot every day, then you should probably find out like if it's a regular thing for you. And the dog thing, it's just kind of wild. Don't harvest on the side of trails where dogs tend to walk, maybe go just a little further in and if you're worried about some kind of biological dirt or dirty nests or germ likeness, then you can wash your plants. You can wash them before you eat them. You can wash them in a little bit of hydrogen peroxide or a little bit of apple cider vinegar. And there you go if you're eating them raw or cooked them, and then you don't have to worry about the dog. And then some of those like environmental toxins are hard. But then without when it's tough, like a lot of people eat food grown out right by highway five and ensure the levels of pollution in those plants are quite high. So it's funny how people get a little more picky when you're foraging sometimes than like, what about the food you buy in? The

Michelle Fullner  50:24  
crops are sprayed? Often? Unless you're buying exactly,

Mia Andler  50:26  
no, then you know, then that opens up a big can of worms. That's why I eat pretty much all organic.

Michelle Fullner  50:33  
I realize I'm giving you like a firehose of information to try to drink from as you're listening to this episode. So what about those of us who are new to foraging? How can we break it down and just get started? What advice would you give to somebody who's just starting out, and they're maybe a little intimidated by how much there is to know,

Mia Andler  50:50  
I would say, Great, I'm so glad you're interested in foraging. That's awesome. It's super fun and worthwhile. And there's a couple of different ways to go about it, it usually makes sense to just learn a few plants well, that you're encountering regularly, it is really helpful to go out on a foraging, walk with someone, that is definitely the easiest way to get interested because otherwise, you're having to discover it on your own, which could feel intimidating to not have anybody pointed out even if you're quite sure, though, you could start with plants that are really easy like most people can identify or pine or fir tree, for example. But it is great to go out on a walk with somebody, even just a friend or somebody who knows a little bit more than you will help. If

Michelle Fullner  51:42  
you're looking for a guided foraging walk, Mia actually leads them she's got dates for her upcoming wild food walks on our website, which is this feral fin.com The one that's currently coming up as I record, this episode is going to be on July 23 2023. in Tahoe City at 11am. It's two hours of learning from this wonderful, knowledgeable human being and it's only $30. If you're listening to this after that date, no worries, check her website for updated information while you're there and know that you can also book me for custom walks or presentations for your group, organization or family. Again, Her website is this Farrell finn.com. I'll link it in my show notes. Okay, more tips for beginners, I

Mia Andler  52:24  
would say get to know what's growing really close by to or what you already know from some other contexts. cross reference pictures, don't just rely on one picture. But once you look it up in a book, go on the internet and see different picture angles, different stages of that plants growth. Look for plants that have other cues. Besides visual, those are the easiest ones to start with. For example, fennel, which is another really common plants smells like licorice. And there really aren't any other plants that look like fennel and smell like licorice that I could no have in this region. Or mint. Mint smells like mint. A lot of people have already seen it sometimes. So there's just the penny Royal. But even that's not poisonous, like you can eat a leaf of Penny royal totally fine. It's mostly if you ate a ton of it, and they were pregnant or something. So those kinds of plants that have the smell cues to are really nice to start with because it's got a confirmation, or like saying nettle, it's things you like something obvious like that is an easier entry point into your foraging. That's great. I love that. And

Michelle Fullner  53:35  
I feel like then once you have that relationship with one plant or a couple of plants and you're going out, then you're gonna start to notice more things. Yes, and you're gonna start to make deeper observations.

Mia Andler  53:45  
Yes, exactly, which is why I actually complimented you on probably comes from working with audio is looking using all the senses, the taste the smell the visuals in a different way, not like really paying attention to color because it takes a little while to develop kind of the plant. I like how you identify plants, looking at very many different types, gardeners will have a much easier entry point. And so foraging because they'll be used to looking at identifying features of plants. So that's also just one way to start is just looking at very many different types of plants and getting to note the differences and similarities.

Michelle Fullner  54:21  
Yeah, yeah, that's great. This next one is a patron question from Tori. And she's wondering what your favorite California wild food is to share with young kids like what is something that kids go for? Berries

Mia Andler  54:33  
is what kids usually go for. I mean, Blackberry harvesting, most people know that and know how excited kids get about BlackBerry harvesting.

Michelle Fullner  54:42  
I am equally excited about one Yeah, so

Mia Andler  54:44  
any berries seems like an instance sell my daughter's way into rose hips because they're an easy to eat teeny little berry huckleberries symbol berries, raspberries for those really lucky enough to find wild strawberries there. Amazing. There used to be a lot of them in California but aren't as much anymore. But yeah, any kind of berries are what kids go for. I do also love showing kids cat tail pollen or any pollen because it's so fun. It's yellow, and it sticks on your hands and it's great, or cleavers that stick to your shirt. Like there's some kid fun plants like that. They also tend to like things with smells anything more sensory. Like we often make mint tea. Kids tend to get into all the wild foods. Honestly, they love foraging and making things out of things that they themselves get to harvest and then make they even like flavors that they would never like at home, when they get to participate and make it themselves.

Michelle Fullner  55:40  
Oh 100% Like I tried to give my kids plants from the grocery store all the time, and they're not having it. We're running to the redwood forest, and they're like, can I eat more of this? And they're like eating reportorial. Right and left. And then it's like one Yeah, I have another one. You know, there's tons of it. And we're not in a state park. So yes, you're gonna have okay, but I probably shouldn't let my kids eat like all the rapid soil in the whole forest. Right? Is there any consideration of like, wildlife might want to use this species? So I shouldn't take too much?

Mia Andler  56:08  
That is a really good question. And there's a lot of that I think there was a Yosemite Ranger, somebody who posted like a picture of berries, they were picking and they got a lot of feedback on like, Why are you picking berries? You should leave that for the bears. So it's a complicated question. There are probably years when harvest is scanty, and we need to be more observant. It's again about like being mindful and looking around. Are there a lot of berries around animals will get the berries before you they know exactly when they're ready? Why are there that moment? They're not waiting for a while? You know, they're way more knowledgeable than us. So they will get the very so are there a lot of berries that year? And especially if you're going year after year? Is that a year when there's a lot of berries, or are you like like I think it was last year? Was it what was the big drought year? Was it last year? The one yeah, there were like no berries here. And I definitely didn't feel comfortable except rose hips, which there's just all over like, that was a year that I was like, Yep, I'm not gonna pick the No, I'm gonna leave it for the wildlife. And then other years, there's humongous abundance. And my own belief is that I don't see humans as separate from nature at all. I just think we're a little misdirected by our guilt, we can definitely interact with our environment in a positive way. I even would go as far as to say as some species like oak trees have co developed with us, and that we're supposed to have a relationship with acorns. And there are a lot of acorns just falling to the ground like excess of what would grow into trees run complete access. And I just would encourage people to be a little more kind to us as humanity. I know we have made big mistakes, but there's also a lot of symbiotic codependence, but in a good way relationships in nature that would be good for us to enhance and work with without a perspective of guilt, but actually coming from a perspective of hope and believing that we can coexist in a good way. I

Michelle Fullner  58:10  
really love that that's beautiful. So being human and using things from nature. And in fact, seeing ourselves as part of nature is not bad. It's actually who we are meant to be. What's bad is a mentality that's extractive or this idea of dominating nature in some way, or this idea of taking something without giving anything back and not living in a reciprocal relationship with the planet. Humans are smart, and we're adaptable and we can absolutely relearn to live in that reciprocal relationship with the environment around us. And since you mentioned acorns, do you have a favorite way to eat them? Yeah,

Mia Andler  58:45  
acorn like ginger molasses type of or just molasses. I feel acorns go really well with like fall time spices actually. Oh, so they do mask the corn flavor a little bit. So that's the pity of it, but they match really well with those spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger might be a little overpowering, but it's good. The molasses maple syrup is really good with acorns. So I like making them into like sweet things like cookies

Michelle Fullner  59:12  
and stuff or like cakes are well because I'm

Mia Andler  59:15  
as a mom and busy person I'm often short on time right? Sure often make pancakes. Oh no. Flour, because it's easy peasy. That's and they're really good with maple syrup.

Michelle Fullner  59:26  
Do you use like wheat flour as well? Or is it I do not

Mia Andler  59:29  
I often do use a little bit of some flour. I don't use wheat very much myself. Wheat flour would make it very easy. Even just a teeny tiny bit of it but you don't have to. It's just sometimes if you don't which I often don't put anything at all just do the corn flour as long as you cold leached it. It'll still have that glutinous property, though it doesn't have gluten. And so you don't need to. But I also don't use eggs a whole lot. So sometimes I'll put something another kind of flour in there to hold it together. But yeah, experiment And then doesn't really matter if they're slightly mushy or like they work out. Nice. Yeah, still gonna taste good. Yeah, they're

Michelle Fullner  1:00:06  
great. That's fantastic. Okay, shout out to my patron Tory for having so many fantastic questions this episode. This one is also from her. You know people often mentioned like eating wild mustard. Are there any other prevalent weeds are invasive plants that you're like yes, like go after this one. Are there any that especially that are like statewide, very prominent that people can find in whatever region they're in that they can eat those weeds or invasive plants? Yeah,

Mia Andler  1:00:31  
there are a lot. thistles are actually one that is pretty universally found and most of them are edible. I test them by flavor. They're spiky, but you can actually remove the spikes and the spring thistles you just remove the leaves and the spikes and the stalks are quite delicious. They're related to artichokes. So they're really pretty good. You don't usually the flower like you do on artichoke, but you eat the stock and the leaves and you're good to go. Nettles grow a lot of places, like we just harvested any kind of riparian zones tend to have nettles, pine and fir trees grow a lot of places and pine and fir needles as long as you're sure it's a pine refer and it smells like a Christmas tree. You're good to go because there is a hemlock tree that is not edible, but it's really rare. So it's not usually an issue. What else is kind of I mean dandelion is like the poster child of the edible plant world's not as common in California, but most people know how to identify it. Then you had mentioned mallows in some other context, those are easily identifiable and edible. But sometimes those are ones to watch out for not eating them from polluted places. cat tails are quite common in a lot of riparian places. Toria

Michelle Fullner  1:01:49  
was also wondering since you mentioned cat tail, she was also wondering about harvesting their pollen. Yeah. And like what the best time of year is for that when

Mia Andler  1:01:57  
they have pollen. Okay. So that's Yeah, is that too obvious of an answer? cattail pollen is obvious. It's bright yellow is abundant. And you will know if your cat tail has pollen on it. Okay, there's no mystery cattails have something in all seasons to eat, whether it's the root rhizomes or the young, what is it officially called the sausage part that's young, that's green or the pollen? Cattails have something edible and all seasons. Great.

Michelle Fullner  1:02:25  
So you're not gonna go wrong? No, except that's that is

Mia Andler  1:02:28  
actually a hard one because often they're growing in polluted little teeny ponds, and that is an issue. Okay. So but hopefully you find them somewhere that's that doesn't have that issue. Okay. Roses. Roses are common. And then both the flower and the fruit, the rose hip are edible. There's lots of common plants. Okay. There really are. And that's really what the Bay Area forger specializes in. Is these kind of universal easy plants.

Michelle Fullner  1:02:53  
That's fantastic. And that is geared toward high population. Yes, exactly.

Mia Andler  1:02:58  
Which really aren't bad places at all to forage, in fact, sometimes easier than up here in the Sierras. Yeah,

Michelle Fullner  1:03:04  
that's really interesting. Any common myths about foraging that you would like to dispel or help inform people about? Well,

Mia Andler  1:03:11  
I think one of them would be that foraging is dangerous that eating any plants that grow outside of the grocery store, not that they grow in the grocery store. But that eating plants from the wild is just plain dangerous. And you could just die, which is true, but you could actually die if you ate something wrong from the grocery store, too. It's just a matter of knowledge. And there are a lot of easy to identify plants to forage. So it doesn't need to be that scary of a thing. The other one is that foraging is harmful, which is kind of been presented by this Leave No Trace ethic, which I think definitely had a place in the post industrial or industrial society, which was wrecking things like not caring at all about clear cutting redwood forests, which is a horrible thing. So it makes total sense that the swing of that was total environmentalism, don't touch anything. Because that was needed at that time. I think now, hopefully, most places, we have a more balanced way and can now go more to the wisdom of yes, we actually are meant to interact with our natural environments. As long as we're knowledgeable and have a respectful ethic, we can actually make a positive difference. So and I'm really glad to see that places like the Native Plant Society have contacted me to learn more about foraging because they're realizing a lot of the plants I teach about are not ones that are at all endangered. They're the ones they're pulling out, you know, so hopefully that'll make for more balanced caretaking ethic oriented foraging, which is what the land base people here What

Michelle Fullner  1:04:48  
have happened. That's wonderful. I love that. And my very last question for you is just after all of the years that you've put into learning about foraging and you've gone out and you've eaten all these wonderful wild Dude, what about It still blows your mind or takes your breath away?

Mia Andler  1:05:03  
Everything. Nature is one of those things where like, you could never possibly be bored or know everything. If you think you know everything or you're bored. There's something weird going on, like, every little spot of nature for me like I could take anything right here on the ground where there's not even anything in particular happening. There's, but when I can't even say that anything in particular happening because once I start looking at this, I'm like, What's happening with these ants? What are they doing? What's going on with the pine needles and how they're climbing on them? And what's the deal with the soil and there's all these little like, ends and the more like, it's just like an infinite world any moment in nature's and infinite world, or all the humbling experiences that I have where like, I'm constantly not knowing anything, which is why it's actually hard for me to do like to write books and do things because like, the more I know, I don't know kind of thing. I really feel that in nature. Like every year, I realize how much there is to know and learn in everything, every little piece lead you to another thing. So it Yeah, it's amazing.

Michelle Fullner  1:06:11  
I love that thing so much, man. This is super fun. Oh,

Mia Andler  1:06:15  
thank you so much.

Michelle Fullner  1:06:15  
The more closely you look at the natural world, the more you see, and the more frequently you return to the same places across more seasons. And the more you eat food from a place and experience it with all of your senses, the deeper your relationship with that place becomes I'm so grateful to NEA for taking the time to show me so many great wild foods so that I can continue to deepen my relationship with the place where I live, and the places I visit. I hope that you will do the same where you live. If you need help along the way. Remember to check out me his books, the Bay Area foragers and the Sierra forger, and her website, this feral finn.com Thank you again to everyone supporting the show on Patreon and everyone who has purchased merch for making the show possible, head over to Golden State naturalist.com. To learn more about both of those things, and to get on my email list and check out past episodes. And if you enjoyed this episode, it would help so so much if you could share it with a friend who might enjoy a snack from their front yard. I always share something interesting for my week at the end of each episode, and this week's is that my husband and I took our kids to Putah Creek and winters on July 5, and it was so peaceful. There was just no one there. We were joking that we need to co author a book called the introverts guide to the universe that's full of tips for people who need to avoid crowds and noise and chaos. And one of our tips would be to go to rivers, lakes or creeks on July 5 When everyone else is at home sleeping it off. Do bring a trash bag though because not all of the July 4 party years are practicing a reciprocal relationship with the earth. Okay, that's all for this one. I miss you more soon when season three begins. I can't wait. Okay, I'll see you next time on the next full episode of Golden State naturalist. Bye