From The Wild
Humans have been around a long while. Relatively speaking, contemporary agriculture has not. So clearly our ancestors for many thousands of years did well enough solely with wild foods. Of course I’m not suggesting we should all eat only wild food, but am suggesting that it seems sensible to look to what grows wild locally for food. I feel there’s a huge knowledge gap problem, as well as a perception that eating wild foods isn’t ‘normal’, which really couldn’t be further from the truth. Although some lip service gets paid to game meats, I think a quick poll of people’s fridges and freezers would show that wild foods are not the norm. Yet I can’t imagine any front upon which a proud regional food culture could more effectively be built.
What foods does the wild offer? Where I live, wild fruit [strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, blueberries, saskatoons, etc], wild mushrooms, wild greens, wild fish, and a pretty serious variety of game meats [grouse, rabbit, duck, goose, moose, elk, deer, antelope] and their consequent charcuterie [game jerky, smoked fish, saucisson sec, brési, etc.], are all available for the table for those with the initiative. Wild edibles can be elusive [antelope], or a pest [dandelion] – but all are able to coexist and tread lightly in the natural environment we have, which is reason enough to eat some wild species. If your knee-jerk is ‘yeah, but if we all went out and harvested all the wild food’, please read this.
I grew up in a family that hunts, although I’m certainly the oddball amongst them – my interest lying heavily more in the food than the sport. I was nearly 30 before I started to hunt big game on an annual basis as a source for red meat. I may be no hardcore hunter, but I am indeed passionate about making the best of what our environment has to offer. I post a lot about moose and elk because we hunt them annually, butcher them ourselves, and it takes a fair number of dishes to make good use of a whole animal. But I’m also pretty into wild-fruit-wine, highbush cranberry jelly, shaggy mane mushrooms, and dandelion in my salad.
Let’s put some wild foods back in our diets. Our health, environment, and regional food culture will all thank us.
