Outside my grandparents’ home was a walnut tree. It stood uncomfortably close to their front picture window, creating an off-putting darkness that I tried to escape. When I walked from the sidewalk to the front door, I gingerly stepped around its detritus: thickly hulled green orbs that dropped from its branches and rolled around. They would get crushed, blacken, and, eventually, open to reveal a magical wrinkly nut. My memory holds the walnuts there, even though I’m sure the tree did not produce nuts every year of my childhood. There are other plants I remember too: olallieberries grew in the backyard, thickly covering a red fence. The word seemed plucked from a Dr. Seuss book. I thought they had made it up because, well, the berries looked exactly like blackberries. Over that red fence I could see a slide that went into what must have been a pool. This was the San Fernando Valley. This was my early life. Despite the messy debris, it felt urban, clean.
Read MoreForaging, urban exploration, finding surplus in local parks or growing at the base of your neighbors tree, are all options for eating a meal that is far left of the mainstream. However finding these ingredients might mean you need to pick up a few un-city-like tools, like say, a shovel. Don’t want to buy a shovel? No problem. In most cities you can find these formerly frowned upon weeds at your local farmer’s markets.
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