Thrifty Living: Seattle food forager Langdon Cook teaches others how to forage

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Could you walk through the woods and pick lettuce or mushrooms and eat them with confidence?

Langdon Cook of Seattle can and does.  He was featured this evening on NPR (

I listened to his story on the way home and thought about my own ability to do this, or the lack thereof.

Wild blackberries are the only thing I forage.  Cook is about more than that.  He forages a variety of berries, mushrooms, blooms, lettuce and more.

Cook is really a cook.  He has a book and blog called Fat of the Land.  You can

Go h

Here's an excerpt:

For Langdon Cook, a walk in the woods isn't that different from a walk through the produce section of the supermarket. He's a writer, blogger and all-around outdoorsy type, but in outdoorsy Seattle, he's made his name primarily as a forager.

He's kind enough to let me tag along on a mushroom hunt in the Cascades. In the back of his Subaru (the official car of the Seattle outdoors) he already has a basket full of morels, porcinis and coral mushrooms — the fruits of about ten miles of hiking, he says. He doesn't want me to be too specific about our location because other mushroom hunters might yell at him. But he's not so protective of his foraging secrets. In fact, he enjoys teaching people how to spot food.

He lists the foods at hand just in this section of the forest: Fiddlehead ferns. Stinging nettles. Miner's lettuce.

"[Miner's lettuce] tastes a little bit like say those expensive French baby lettuces that you might buy for a lot of money in the market. You can harvest it for free right within the Seattle city limits," he says.

But Cook isn't some dumpster-diving "freegan." His interest in wild foods began as something to do on hiking trips, but it's now evolved, as has his taste for the finer things. "Have you ever had an elder flower cordial?" he asks, and rolls his eyes heavenward. "Ah! it's wonderful! With champagne or an adult beverage."

Want to learn how to forage?  Check out this post on Green Joyment.  It seems to have a lot of useful info.

Here's a book on Amazon that's free for Prime Members or $2.99 if you're not.

Are there any foraging groups in Alabama?

I found this blog

Here's a

Here's

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