Savage in the Wild: Episode 7 - Foraging in New York City

Sunny Savage meets up with ethnobotanist Nat Bletter for a foraging tour in New York City. Nat discusses intellectual property rights and his work with indigenous people and bridging the medicine trail. Then he takes Sunny to a few New York City parks to forage.

Finally, Nat cooks up a delicious wild meal of burdock root, burdock petioles, poke weed greens covered with shepards purse, garlic mustard root topping, sauteed mulberry leaves, a chickweed, shepards purse, garlic mustard, wild chive salad topped with redbud flowers, california bay laurel nut chocolate and roasted Kentucky bean coffee!

Sunny's wild food television series Hot on the Trail with Sunny Savage airs on Veria Network (DISH channel 218 and Verizon FIOS channel 162).
See http://veria.com/hot-on-the-trail.html for show times and more information.

Learn more about wild food plants:

Sunny's web blog at http://sunnysavage.com

Sunny's wild food site at http://wildfoodplants.com

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• foraging
• identify
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• cooking
• edible
• plants
• nat bletter
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• york
• city
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• guerrilla

[sunnysavage]

so glad y'all are enjoying the videos and finding them helpful.

Luckyfire...Washington State has so many incredible foraging spots. Look for public lands, friends with land...parks...etc.

aloha*sunny

[underneaththeveneer]

Isn't there an issue with pollution if you pick up weeds and leaves in New York City? Wouldn't it be better to drive out of the city and look for them in a forest where there is less pollution? I also wonder how far from the city you would need to drive to find less polluted plants...

[sunnysavage]

great questions. driving outside of the city creates more pollution. wash your plants well. use common sense. everyone has different sensitivities to pollutants. they might even be cleaner than what you get in the grocery store. how many of the foods you buy in the grocery store are grown in pristine forests? if you live in the city you're breathing the air and drinking the water there.

~sunny

[holyblizzz]

please lose the music, it is distracting, thanks for the vid

[greasemo12]

you are so incredibly annoying after 30 seconds of listening to you I wanted to poke my eyes out.

[MsXlibris]

Oh my gosh, he's so cute! And he's foraging! *love*

[musclesmatthews]

I love ur videos! They help me out a lot...

[Khono]

Does anyone know which species of mulberry that is? Is it Morus rubra?

[Khono]

Ideally, local sources like experienced guides. Do you mean Washington state? I know that, here in Canada, there seem to be many more intact first peoples' cultures on the west coast so it should be easier to find first hand info there. Over here in the east, I still haven't found a local expert around me. Books are always useful and there are many useful out there. You can try looking in nearby state parks for a larger variety and maybe they can take you on some trails too.

[luckyfire3]

Great point sunny. really love it. where is the best place to find info on foraging say if I lived in washington.

[Khono]

Indeed, nbletter, I totally agree that it doesn't make much sense to drive out to pick wild. Not driving means it's very difficult for many of us to forage for wild goodies, but that's a consequence of the way we've designed our communities.

I'm very glad to hear someone else worrying about the "intellectual property" of plants as many of these high priced medicines and foods we have today were really developed, in large part, by native cultures who get pushed out!

[nbletter]

Forgot to add, if you want to learn more info like this, but in a beautiful tropical setting, I'm co-leading a culinary, medicinal plant, and music tour of Bali in July that should tons of fun for the ears, tongue, eyes, and nose!

Look for Nadabrahma and Bali Tour and you'll find the info.

EatTheWeeds, been loving your informative foraging videos, and I'm glad I could teach you something new as well.