Urban Foraging

There's a bounty of food around us if only we knew how to tell the yummy stuff from the yucky stuff. The L.A. Times had an interesting article a couple of weeks ago about an urban foraging hike offered by the School of Self-Reliance. The guided tour through the Pasadena area pointed out good things to eat, as well as a few poisonous plants to avoid, and helped people assemble enough to make a salad at the end of the walk. The cost of the outings runs from $20 to $50. Urban Outdoor Skills, which specializes in preparing gourmet dishes using wild foods, was also mentioned

Sweeten Your Spring

Lots of interesting food-sharing websites are listed in Sunset Magazine this month. FallenFruit has an active group mapping "public access" fruit trees in many L.A. neighborhoods (none in Long Beach yet). They're also sponsoring an interesting open participation project called EatLACMA where you can send in videos of how you eat. After you set up an account, you can check Neighborhood Fruit to find public fruit trees or people in your area willing to share fruit from their trees or (if your trees are laden with fruit) you can sign on to share some of your bounty.

The other sites are more localized, like Forage Oakland, Santa Barbara Food Not Lawns, and ForageSF (which sponsors wild food walks . . . cool).