[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/26/DD5G1M78UD.DTL]
Even the most gentle-looking plant can reach out to bite an unsuspecting forager. In their new book, Mia Andler and Kevin Feinstein offer stern warnings about poisonous plants that can cause death or severe illness.
"The Bay Area Forager: Your Guide to Edible Wild Plants of the San Francisco Bay Area" (Foraging Society Press, 320 pages, $24.95) is filled with descriptions of oleander, camas and poison hemlock that can "paralyze the whole body." For those not deterred by such advisories, the lavishly illustrated guidebook about identifying, cooking and eating plants in the wild is essential to the pursuit.
Andler and Feinstein are bound by a fierce attachment to the outdoors and have all the necessary credentials to write about it. Andler, 31, comes from Helsinki, where she foraged with her parents when she was a child. She returns home about once a year to forage in the forests not far from the center of her native city.
"It's normal for Finnish families to forage together," she says. "The countryside is blissful in summer."
To the forest -
When she first moved to the United States, she was stunned to discover that people didn't go into the forests to find food.
Feinstein, 34, grew up in Tennessee playing video games and feasting on TV dinners. He says he "didn't eat fresh fruit from a real live tree" until he was in his 20s. When he moved to Florida to go to college, he embarked on a self-taught crash course in botany. "Almost everything I know is self-taught," he says. "That's how I learn."
He and Andler met in 2008 at an event at TrackersBay - an organization that provides outdoors education, walks and camps in the Bay Area - and discovered they shared a passion for plants and a desire to teach others about the cycles of nature. A year ago, they began to collaborate on their book.
"It's rare to find someone as excited about this stuff as I am," Andler says. "Kevin and I live at opposite ends of the Bay Area - he's in Walnut Creek and I'm in Fairfax. We used to have really long conversations on the phone in which we shared what we knew about plants."
Feinstein says his curiosity about foraged foods was sparked by "My Side of the Mountain," Jean Craighead George's 1959 novel about a New York City kid who learns to live off the land when he runs away from home and hunkers down on his great-grandfather's farm in the Catskill Mountains.
"I was crazy about that book," he says. "But my main teacher has been and still is the woods. I'm ecstatically happy to be out there in the hills, foraging for supper or just eating what I find in the open air."
Like Feinstein, Andler loves to graze - walk, pick and snack on leaves and berries. She says she occasionally harvests "a huge pile of prickly pears" and then figures out "what to do with them."
Both have translated their love of plants and open spaces into paying jobs. Andler takes adults on weekend wild food walks. During the week, she teaches kids in Bay Area schools about birds, herbs, seeds and flowers.
"Kids get really excited about the wild," she says. "It's tangible and immediate and, without prompting from me, they think they were always meant to be in the woods."
ForageSF -
Feinstein, a prominent member of ForageSF, the Bay Area's leading foraging organization, also teaches foraging classes. He started in 2007. Back then, only a handful of people showed up for his classes. By 2009, his classes were full and teaching out in the wild became his full-time business. His blog and videos are well known to Bay Area foragers (feralkevin.com).
After dispensing warnings about the poisons of the natural world, "The Bay Area Forager" provides descriptions of plants that are nutritious and tasty: the abundant acorn that was once an essential source of protein for Northern California Indians, the powder from cattail heads that can be used to make crepes and pancakes, and clover that provides vitamins similar to C and E. The book lingers over wild onions, wild plums and wild radishes that Feinstein pickles and ends with a section on Yerba Buena, the native plant that means "good herb" in Spanish and was the original name of San Francisco. The mint-like herb can be used medicinally or in teas or cooking.
The color photos make identification of the plants simple. There are also concise descriptions of the physical aspects of each plant; when, where and how to harvest; and how to use. The authors remind readers that foraging is illegal in parks and on private property, and while they don't condone trespassing, they do suggest ingenuity. Rule 1 of the "respectful harvesting ethic": Harvest only if the plant is clearly growing in abundance.
The 50-plus recipes are aimed at gourmet chefs as well as common cooks who want to branch out from store-bought ingredients and experiment with the likes of hawthorn, toyon and western black walnut that Feinstein uses to make vin de noix.
Once a vegetarian turned vegan, Feinstein now eats meat. "My goal is to go on a hunt for wild boar," he says. "I really love how it tastes."
Top picks -
Foraging is illegal in public parks. Mia Andler and Kevin Feinstein urge novices to begin the search for edible plants in their backyards, parking lots or community gardens. It helps to know someone with a farm, orchard or vineyard who will grant free foraging rights.
-- The best acorns are found inland, east of the Caldecott Tunnel or in the dry hills of Marin from September through November.
-- Miner's lettuce and chickweed usually grow together and are abundant during the rainy season in wilderness tracts and along the sides of country roads.
-- Mushrooms grow best in coastal forests after fall and winter rains. They will grow back each season if only the tops are harvested.
-- Nettles like wet areas along the coast, near streams, and can be foraged in winter and spring. Wear gloves to avoid stings from picking the plant.
-- Yerba Buena, which means "good herb" in Spanish, grows abundantly in most Bay Area hills, often under the shade of oak and bay trees, and it's available most of the year.
Kevin Feinstein, who barely ate produce at all growing up in Tennessee, demonstrates his expertise in finding and cultivating thistles during an outing with Mia Andler in the East Bay hills.
Photo: Lance Iversen / The Chronicle
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