111 Cardoons, Medlars and Hipster Toilets

...Angeles Bread Bakers (sign up for an invite to the monthly pizza party) Our 2010 post on cardoons. Our original post on medlars and a follow up post. All you need to know about Toto’s Eco Promenade toilet (with elongated bowl–round bowl version is here). If you’d like to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected]. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitc...

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Eat Your Bamboo

...Bamboo Shoot Image from Wikipedia Via BoingBoing, a how-to video on foraging and preparing bamboo shoots. It’s splitting journalistic hairs, but we’ll note that the reporter at the beginning is actually in our hometown–Los Angeles....

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Thank You Chicago!

...Magazine (note especially her take on the swine flu), view some video of a foraging walk she conducted, or take one of her classes. Also, thanks to Chicago Reader reporter Martha Bayne for writing a nice article about me. Bayne’s also the force behind Soup and Bread, a pot luck which takes place during the winter at a tavern. Folks bring soup and everybody chips in a donation that benefits a Chicago food bank. It’s a Depression 2.0 idea that needs...

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Loquat season is here!

...om place to place–which is reflected in the comments below. *** *Re: fruit foraging: I consider it fair/legal to snag fruit from street trees, those trees growing on the strip of public land between the street and the sidewalk, and fruit which overhangs the sidewalk. Now, of course, you don’t want to be a jerk about this–I pay attention to context, and won’t take fruit that people seem to be using, or which seems precious in any way. (Loquats I cl...

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The Virtues of Gerard’s Herbal

...rnets, Archive.org, hosts a copy of John Gerard’s 16th century bestselling foraging manual, The Herball, or, Generall Historie of Plantes. I’ve embeddified it as an alternative to spending an evening staring at the Netflix browse menu or as an opportunity for workplace dinkering. Here’s how the University of Virginia describes it, Gerard was superintendent of the gardens of William Cecil, advisor to Queen Elizabeth. Gerard was one of the most resp...

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