Foraging on land
Last semester I had a class assignment where I investigated low-impact food consumption. One of the areas I looked at was foraging in the urban context. Not surprisingly, there are resources in San Francisco that teach foraging! So I signed up for a couple of classes from foragesf.com.
The first one took place in Golden Gate Park, and was all about plants. The overcast day was such a perfect atmosphere to be walking through the forest. Or, as I learned on this tour, we were walking at the border between forest and meadows, because that's where a lot of the biological activity of the forest happens, and where we can find a lot of the edible plants.
We really only walked about half a mile, because everywhere we walked there was something to talk about. One of the most common edible plants in this area is called Miner's Lettuce (below). It had a leafy, green-y lettuce taste. Very pleasant. We also learned about sour grass (looks like three-leaf clover), black nightshade, nasturtium, and mallow (related to the marshmallow plant, which was used to make marshmallows in the early days).
$30 for 2 hours. I highly recommend this tour!
