Urban Foragers Unite!

Back in May when we were visiting the Lowes in California, Jeanette told us about an emerging food trend called "urban foraging." Urban foraging is basically living off the land, finding food that is growing wild and taking advantage of the natural bounty Mother Nature provides. Sounds kind of weird if you imagine hippies running around digging for roots and funky looking mushrooms like I did. Watch out locally grown/organic foodies everywhere; urban foraging is fun and the benefits, taking the form of wild blackberries in our case, are both economical and tasty.
After talking to some friends at a Sunday picnic who know all the right places to find wild blackberries, we tried our hand at urban foraging. We found tons of wild blackberry plants growing alongside a public park. While picking, our friends told us about the anecdotal effects of jewel weed on a poison ivy rash and how one can actually boil cattails and eat them...only if you have to though, I guess they don't taste that great if you can believe that. (I can.)

Today, we found even more wild blackberry bushes lining the forested area near our apartments. I showed Jonah how to only pick the black ones. He learned that blackberry bushes are poky, but eating the berries is well worth it. Every time I turned around he was stealing handfuls of blackberries from the bowl and shoving them in his mouth and saying "mmmm". Pretty funny.

The Daddy Bowl, Mommy Bowl, and (empty) Baby Bowl. :)
We are definitely going to be making some blackberry cobbler and blackberry ice cream at our house this week. Happy summer and thanks to Nate and Jenn, our urban foraging heroes! :)