But she was also very serious about the risks of foraging for food with too little information. Farm to table was great, but forest to table had an even lighter footprint.Ĭat was highly knowledgeable, friendly, informative, and fun. She was obviously enthusiastic about wild foraging, sharing with us how she used the practice to provide a good portion of her own diet, and how foraging was a way to stretch the sustainability of the local ecosystem. Our Food Foraging GuideĬat was wonderful. We’d search for edible food in the wild-flowers, leaves, and, of course, mushrooms. We would first walk through the garden area where we would spot some edibles hidden in full view, then we would hit the trail that wended through a thick patch of woods beyond the gardens. All of us but the Chicago crew were first-time food foragers.Ĭat gave us a preview of the day. Soon we were all assembled: A group of foraging friends from Chicago, a young family from Ohio with two little girls, and a couple from Brooklyn. They were easy to identify: They had a pile of little baskets spread out on the ground in front of them. We walked over to Cat, our guide-to-be, and her assistant. We arrived at the meeting point, a lovely garden complex and horticultural education center where the ground was damp but not soaked, with the sky actually showing smidges of blue interspersed among the clouds that no longer looked all that threatening. But about 5 minutes before our exit, the rain, inexplicably, gave up. So, I looked out beyond the busy windshield wipers and asked, “What would it take for the rain to clear out and for us to have a wonderful, dry foraging tour today?” I finally convinced Mike to join in, and we laughed for the next 20 minutes as the rain paid no attention to us repeating our silly question. You don’t try to answer the question yourself, you just put it out there. We decided to bring our umbrellas, wear the closest things to rain gear that we had packed, and give it our best shot.īut as we headed to the meet-up point through a persistent drizzle, I thought of the advice a New-Age-leaning friend of mine once shared with me: When you’re nervous about a good outcome for something, simply ask aloud, “What would it take for _?” and then fill in the blank with the positive outcome you’re hoping for. I checked my email and texts: no word that the Asheville foraging tour had been cancelled. When we got out of bed, rain and gray skies were waiting for us on the other side of our curtain. We hoped for the best: a rain that would exhaust itself overnight so that we could wake up to a sun-dappled morning ready to go foraging. This sounded like the perfect Asheville food tour, so we responded with an enthusiastic “absolutely!”Īs we went to bed the night before our scheduled outing, we heard the beginnings of a wind-whipped rain slapping at the windows of our room. The folks at No Taste Like Home had invited us to join them on a wild food foraging excursion 35 minutes outside of downtown. We were eager to check out all of the above, but we were also excited by the prospect of trying our hand at an aspect of foodie life we had yet to delve into: food foraging. In the last two decades or so, Asheville, NC, has earned a reputation as a cool, bohemian city with, among other things, a creative craft brew scene, a vibrant arts district, and an eclectic, inviting restaurant culture, all in a setting interlaced with towering trees and surrounded by the forested hillsides visible from seemingly every corner in town. So, in addition to stunning views, we were looking for an outstanding Asheville food tour. Of course we appreciate beautiful scenery, but let’s face it, with stops in New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston, South Carolina, this was a foodie road trip. And the scenery continued to awe as we left The Swag and drove eastward to Asheville, the next stop on our cross-country road trip. My husband Michael and I learned that firsthand at our stay at The Swag resort, perched among the peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains. The forested mountains of western North Carolina are breathtakingly beautiful.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |