Looking Down: Urban Foraging and Historic Preservation

I’m a preservationist, an architectural historian by education and training and a lover of good buildings. By good, I mean interesting. By interesting, I mean provocative, generating curiosity and further research. For an architectural historian, “further research” may involve breaking and entering, that is, snooping around superficially abandoned buildings. Those of us who like to do this tell ourselves it’s fine. It can be like forensic vigilante history, and feels a little dangerous, even when investigation is a part of paid work.

Recent fire damage. Unheated, unventilated attics with unknown historic treasures and structural system insights. Large creepy historic industrial sites with great reuse potential. Natural disaster-damaged heartbreaks. Part of historic preservation is seeing through scary and envisioning amazing. We like challenges. We’re curious.

The impulse to find edible wild things in the city fits into this line of thinking. Or at least for me, at least in the beginning. I tend to look ahead, around, and up. I size up a building (nice cornice, good brickwork, lots of integrity, etc) and make judgments. Until recently, I’ve considered wild things weeds, something someone needs to take care of. Wild plants = neglect.

While this is often true, it isn’t the entire story. And stories are the life blood of the field, after all. I’ve found many stories about these wild things. Encyclopedias, field guides, web sites and blogs are dedicated to the topic, and many of this include the history of wild plant uses.

Chickweed is a good example. I’d never eaten it until I started research urban foraging. I am fairly picky about greens and found these above average. I later read that chickweed got its name because poultry like it. The English used to call it ‘hen’s inheritance.’ It resists the cold, so its been a winter green as far back as classical Greek and Roman times. It was also popular in ancient Japan. It grows wild in temperate regions all over the world. Now I look around for it everywhere, especially where my preservationist eyes tend to wander.

Interest in urban foraging tracks with urbanists’ reevaluation of solutions for good living in our cities. Euell Gibbons’ Stalking the Wild Asparagus was first published in 1962 and sparked interest in looking for natural food everywhere, even in vacant lots. Gibbons was a late night talk show regular. In the 1960s, vacant lots in most American cities were a lot scarier than they are today for a lot of reasons. While today, urban foraging seems a little contrary, within the context of American urban history in the 1960s and early 70s, recommending people eat wild plants in urban vacant lots seems downright revolutionary.

Both foragers and the historic preservation vanguard reasserted the value of what existed, the value of variety, and the importance of seeing through conventions.

I’ve spoken to a number of people who forage. We fall into a handful of potentially-overlapping categories. We forage because: we’re short on cash or enjoy the economy of free found food; we like diversity in our diet (In The Primal Feast: Food, Sex, Foraging and Love, “Susan Allport notes that of the approximately 50,000 edible species of plants in the world … the average American eats only 30.”); we believe in gleaning what is available and not wasting food opportunities; our cultural tradition or “foodways” include wild edible plants; we learned from our parents; we are into making statements about the food we eat and/or our urban environments; we are connected to nature everywhere; we are creative cooks; and/or we are simply curious.

I fall into the last category more than any of the others. I take great pleasure in seeing the outline of an oak leaf on the sidewalk and knowing what acorns from that particular variety of oak taste like, or what acorns roasting smell like, or all the different ways acorns have been processed into iconic dishes. It’s similar to the satisfaction I take in correctly dating a building based on visual cues. But unlike visual history work, this natural education taps smell and taste to make sense of things.

Combining foraging with historic preservation has also deepened my connection to other foragers who bring unique perspective to the experience. Walking with others, new friends who know more than me, or equally curious loved ones makes looking down that much more rewarding.

How Not to Cook Acorns

Image: upper bowl, acorn meal; lower plate, partially eaten acorn muffin with apricot raspberry jam.

I’m working on an article about urban foraging in Washington, DC, that is, finding and preparing edible wild plants downtown. Other cities, like Portland, Oregon have extensive urban foraging communities. I have been in contact with a handful of Washington’s urban foragers, but have not yet found a cohesive community. I plan on looking harder.

I have, however, met some interesting people with extensive knowledge of local edible wild plants. Based on my initial research, I’m finding that many of the areas wild plant gatherers look for food in DC’s expansive green areas, like the city’s northeastern and northwestern neighborhoods.

My neighborhood is kind of brown by comparison. Although many wild edible plants grow within a block of my house (including dandelion, chicory, horse mint, wild mint, wood sorrel, and nasturtium), green spaces in my neighborhood are either private landscapes or the grown-over remains of demolished old buildings where many dogs pee often.

I’m also researching whether or not the city sprays its vacant lots with pesticide before I make a ghetto grass salad.

Acorns seemed safe by comparison. They now litter the sidewalk and, it turns out, are not just for squirrels (or pigeons, pigs, deer, mice, rats, and lots of other animals). Humans have been eating acorns for millennia, though today they are not especially popular except in North American Indian and Korean cultures. Acorns are nuts and contain high levels of protein, carbohydrates and fats, and essential minerals. But they are often too bitter to eat without processing. My dog hoovers most everything he finds on the sidewalk including napkins, cigarette butts, diapers, and mysterious lumps but consistently spits out acorns.

Tannins cause the bitterness (the word comes from the Old German “tanna,” which meant oak). Tannin levels vary depending on the species. Most DC oaks are high-tannin red oaks. White oaks’ acorns are reportedly low enough in tannins to eat without leaching away the bitterness. Acorns in my neighborhood are bitter and require a lot of work.

I collected a bag of acorns from a red oak in the Giant parking lot a block away from my house and experimented with various tannin leaching methods outlined on various websites. In all cases, acorns have to be shelled (of course) before eating. Hitting an acorn with a standard hammer squarely at its pointy tip generally splits the shell in two and makes harvesting the nutty innards (called ‘meat’ or ‘nut meat’) pretty easy.

Boiling was recommended by some and discouraged by others. I tried boiling some of my acorns and don’t recommend this because it takes too long and uses a lot of water and energy (both the kind you pay for and your own). According to Wikipedia, boiling unleached acorns may actually make them “unleachable.”

One website written by a Native American noted a friend who leached her acorns in a cloth sack in the back “clean” part of her toilet. He didn’t recommend this because 1) the tannins stain porcelain and 2) nobody really wants to eat anything processed in a toilet. But should you ever be caught in a drought situation or after an apocalypse or siege with little water and only acorns to eat you know what to do.

I found the following process the easiest and least resource-demanding: 1) put acorns directly into food processor after shelling; 2) pulverize into a meal; 3) leach meal by placing it in a wash cloth and rinsing it repeatedly with hot water (requires that you “milk” the wash cloth, which will be permanently stained) and 4) lightly roast on low heat. Mother Earth News recommends using the heat leftover from cooking something else as it dissipates. This is a good idea because acorn meal is pretty fragile and burns easily.

Acorn meal can be used to make bread and muffins. So I tried the following recipe from the blog GroupRecipes.com. I simplified the recipe a little. The original entry was submitted by “julesong.” They're quite tasty -- the acorns make these muffins (or bread) very hearty.

Ingredients

1 cup acorn meal
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar (I used brown sugar)
1 egg, beaten
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons butter, melted

Preparation

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Butter a loaf pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine the acorn meal, flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Stir well.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, and oil, then gradually whisk in the melted butter.
4. To the bowl containing the dry ingredients add the liquid ingredients and stir to combine all,
5. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake in 400 degree F oven for 30 minutes.