Practicing the Foraging Lifestyle

What do an overgrown field, a weed-infested city lot, a wilderness hollow, a suburban backyard, and a shady woodlot all have in common?

Well, if you’re Alan Muskat, the answer is simple – food for the taking.

Muskat operates No Taste Like Home in Asheville, a business that has as its mission “to help people feel at home in this life.”

And this home is outside where people can connect to the hunter-gatherer society that is natural and universal.

What inspired Muskat to become an advocate of the foraging lifestyle?

“I think the advocating grew out of the teaching, or guiding, as we call it, which grew out of doing this myself, as a lifestyle,” he says. “I started teaching how to forage before I really much knew why. I started foraging myself for a number of reasons: The ‘treasure hunt’/shopping spree fun of it, avoiding the system, getting back to the land, the health food, and the ‘seven’ reasons.”

Those seven reasons, he says, are the following.

Wild food is free

Wild food is a foodie delight

• Foraging is healthy
• Foraging is sustainable
• Foraging is empowering
• Foraging is reconnecting
• Foraging is fun

Muskat says he doesn’t like to list favorite foods, as the foraging lifestyle is much more diverse than that. Many of his “favorites” just happen to be what is currently available.

“I have learned that foragers can’t be choosers, that you can’t play favorites because you can’t control what you’re going to find,” he says. “That said, lately I enjoy amaranth greens because they are convenient, plentiful, and truly tasty. I enjoy kousa dogwood, which isn’t actually wild but is conveniently planted as an ornamental and usually the delicious fruits go uneaten.

“I appreciate reishi mushroom, taken as a tea, for its medicinal value, and finally, hibiscus leaf, also not actually wild, but right now I’m in Costa Rica and it’s one of the few familiar foods I could readily harvest, and being related to okra, it is somewhat mucilaginous and this adds nice body to salads.”

Muskat says his mission is challenging because so many people lack a basic knowledge of what lies outside their front doors to eat.

“Most Americans wouldn’t consider more than two or three wild foods edible,” he says. “The same goes for many cultivars. Kousa fruit and hibiscus leaf are two examples. Of the wild foods, I find the flavor of certain acorns wonderful. How pleasant pine needle tea is I find surprising, at least to me.”

Not surprisingly, this passion to gather evolved into a passion to teach, and annually Muskat and his staff conduct numerous workshops, some of which have been quite memorable.

He says that one in particular concerns a young man who was a special education student at a middle school. The day after the presentation, the boy’s teacher sent this note.

“He came into my class today and told me he was having a good day because he had a good breakfast. He was referring to the apples he picked with the foraging club yesterday. He shared with me information about pesticides and washing apples and how I shouldn't be afraid of anything ‘dirty’ if it's organic. It was really sweet and moving. You're all doing great work to provide this experience that most take for granted, but is really life changing for a kid like him.”

Muskat adds that these were just apples, which “as far as an inner city kid goes, might as well be wild, or for that matter, growing on Mars.”

The passion that this North Carolinian exudes is obvious.

“Foraging can be a spiritual path,” he concludes. “You are going ‘by the graze of God,’ you might say. Foraging can also ‘save the world.’ One could argue that we, as a species, lost our way precisely when we stopped foraging, and the mess we are in now is a direct result of that.”

For more information: www.notastelikehome.org.