(Dayna Smith/ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST ) - Hank Shaw, author of the book \"Hunt Gather Cook,\" forages for edible ingredients in Sligo Creek Park with food blogger, Carol Blymire, which they will later cook into a dish Sunday September 18, 2011.
We aren’t even 20 feet down my street when Hank Shaw stops to pick up one of the thousands of little brown nuts a neighbor’s tree dropped earlier that week.
“Oh, those dang things are so annoying,” I say. “They make this loud popping noise when cars drive over them, and it sounds like gunfire.”
To Shaw, they’re not annoying in the least. For someone in survival mode, he says, they’re a good — and rare — source of fat and starch: butternuts. “Meat and vegetables are easy,” he says. “Plants and fish are everywhere. But starches are really hard to come by.”
Shaw is no survivalist, and we aren’t stuck in the woods needing to fend for ourselves until help arrives or we find our way out. We’re here because we want to be. A self-described “recovering journalist,” Shaw, 41, has built a career out of hunting, fishing, foraging and cooking. As the author of the blog Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, he maintains that the act of finding our own food gives us purpose and provides visceral, necessary contact with the outdoors.
“Think about it,” he says. “Every animal knows how to feed itself except for humans. Whether you forage, fish or hunt — even for just a little bit — that very act fulfills a primal need we all have lost contact with. It’s one thing to go hiking to see nature, but it’s another thing entirely to go hiking with the intention to bring back food. It shifts your whole focus and makes you slow down and really pay attention to your surroundings.”
When I found out Shaw was coming to Washington on his self-orchestrated, cross-country tour to promote his new book, “Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast” (Rodale 2011), I asked if he would take me foraging. It’s something I had always wanted to do, but I never knew how or where to start.
To be honest, it’s a little intimidating. One spring, I tried to hunt for morels, but the mere sight of a snake sent me running home just five minutes into my adventure. With a particular interest in wild mushrooms, but no desire to die young or be rushed to the emergency room with liver damage (like the four people treated this fall at Georgetown University Hospital), I was excited to hit the woods with an expert.
Should we drive way out in the country, or go somewhere more urban? Perhaps wade through a salty marsh or hike the Catoctin Mountains? Shaw’s reply: “As long as I have trees and water, I’ll find something.”
Perfect, because I live along Sligo Creek Park in Takoma Park, where trees and water abound and where I have long suspected that a bounty of food was waiting to be discovered.
So that’s why I find myself walking toward the woods near my house with Shaw on a sunny September day, picking up those butternuts — and having a devil of a time getting them open. (After many rounds of stomping on them, we watch as a squirrel cracks one open on the first try with its tiny jaw. Behold the power of the rat with the fluffy tail.)
Soon, we are on my favorite path in the woods, but we venture away from it almost immediately. “This is where all the good stuff is,” said Shaw. “Off the beaten path.” If by “good stuff” he means a raccoon skull, a pair of cheetah-print Van Halen pants, plastic takeout containers, empty beer bottles and empty turtle shells, then, sure.
The Post Most: LifestyleMost-viewed stories,videos, and galleries in the past two hours
Recipe Finder
Plan dinner, try new foods or explore cuisines with Recipe Finder, a database of recipes tested by The Washington Post.
DC Restaurant Finder
By Tom Sietsema Rating
See how critic Tom Sietsema rated D.C. restaurants in the Going Out Guide.
Best Bets Dining Lists
Free Range on Food is a forum for discussion of all things culinary.
_1337038921.jpg)
Loading...
Comments