Foraging in Lobetal, Bernau Berlin

My friend Sylee organized for us to go on a foraging walk last saturday.

Wild plants have to fight to survive, so they pack a much heftier nutritional punch than commercially grown vegetables that are mollycoddled with fertilizers and the like.  Apparently, chimpanzees, our closest relative in the wild, eat a diet of fruit and foraged greens.  While the bulk of our diet is made up of grains, flours and meat.  This was generally the gist of the opening talk given to us by our foraging guide, Elisabeth Westphal.

Then we set out on the dirt paths in the forest around Lobetal Dorf.

After spending about half an hour trying to swallow, dry sometimes hairy leaves that tasted mostly identical and promised to fight “der Schleim” or phlegm.  I started to think “Don’t we live twice as long as chimpanzees, anyway?” and “Well, I’m sure if chimpanzees had a choice between hairy green leaf and say salad nicoise, they would probably choose the latter.” Let’s face it, they would probably eat toothpaste right out of the tube, given the choice.  And if slime is really such a problem, maybe we should call the ghostbusters?

But then we moved on to some more interesting edible greens.  Wood sorrel; a small, clover like plant, made up of three heart-shaped leaves, tender and sour.  I had visions of it on strawberry tarts.  The young shoots of pines, succulent, with a strong resin taste, I could imagine them in a salad of olives, capers and tomatoes.  Wild garlic flowers, a whisper of garlic, which I scattered straight onto the pasta salad I had brought along for lunch. Read more of this post

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