What is forest beer? How can you collect a yeast starter from the wild? Can lacto-fermentation be successful with little to no brine?

We are surrounded by wild food! In this episode Pascal Baudar shares profound insights into the world of wildcrafting cuisine. His knowlege regarding traditional preservation methods, combined with his passion for flavour, kindles creative and exciting ways to make use of abundant, invasive plants!

Opening tune: Waterplant Waltz by Carmen Porter (https://carmenporter.com)

Pascal Baudar:

The forager and courses: https://www.urbanoutdoorskills.com

His pottery: https://www.pascalbaudarceramics.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pascalbaudar/

https://www.instagram.com/wildcraftedceramics/

Welcome to song and plants.

My name is Carmen Porter.

In this episode, I was joined by Pascal Baudar.

His books, the New Wildcrafted Cuisine, Wildcrafting Brewer, and

Wildcrafted Fermentation offer profound insight into traditional

preservation techniques, foraging and creative wild food preparation.

His flavor combinations, wild concoctions and brews will challenge your expectations

and perceptions about your local flora.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Welcome to song and plants.

Would you mind introducing yourself

So my name is Pascal Baudar P a S C a L B a U D a R.

I'm what you call a wildcrafter.

And that means I kind of forager, with a little bit of ethics

consideration about the environment.

Like what I'm trying to do is really, uh, work with nature and

concentrate on a lot of plants that are non-native and invasive.

And one of my goal is to create a cuisine that is beneficial for the environment

what was your journey to wilds plants?

It started with my grandma.

When I grew up in Belgium, we were pretty much self sufficient for,

you know, I don't recall going to the market , I think my dad used

to go buy meat, but that was it, everything had to come from our garden.

But my grandma used to send me all the time to go collect some

wild food too like dandelion stinging nettle, hazelnuts, walnuts.

and it was completely, completely normal at the time.

Like there was not even a consideration that it's weird and I'm talking about

the older generation people in their, you know, seventies and sixties it was just a

normal way to complement the diet to just.

Go into the wilderness, whatever wilderness was left and pick up food.

And a lot of those weeds what they call weeds by the agriculture system.

Cuz they don't want people to pick them up I guess, but a lot of

those weed are super plentiful and everywhere it doesn't, you don't even

need the forest or the wilderness.

And they're extremely nutritious.

So this time with my grandma and I really wanted to do as a kid, what

I'm doing right now, which is, you know, really dealing with wild plant

and understand all the things you can do and even be artistic with it.

I think I'm pretty artistic.

You know, I do my own pottery with wild clay.

I do my own fibers and cordage with wild plant, but nobody could teach me at the

time in Belgium, there was no internet.

I could not find any books about it.

So I ended up going to the academia or fine art.

Ended up being an artist, graphic artist.

And I came back to wild food in 1999 because Y2K was about to happen and

the end of the world was coming.

So I decided to do a class with a gentleman called

Christopher Nyerges in LA.

He still teaches.

He teaches like survival, you know, city survival, urban survival, but

part of its curriculum is wild food.

And I took a wild food class and I remember I showed up over there

and after the class, I said, I wanna do this with my life.

It kind of like everything came back , my goal as a child really came back and I

basically spent two years doing classes with anybody who could teach me like every

weekend I would spend Saturday and Sunday.

And I would do classes with survivalist, botanist, mushroom people, native people.

I would even , hang out at ethnic store.

Like if there was, you know, olives in the store, like in the supermarket, I

would go to like ethnic supermarket, I would stand near the olives, and

when grandma was picking up olives

I'd be like, please take me home.

You know, like show me what you're gonna do because we have a lot,

olives in California, for example.

So I spent two years doing that and, and really applied to my life to

a point that I even spent a whole year living on wild food only.

and then I realized very fast that if you're serious about it, about

wildcrafting or foraging, you understand it's really a food preservation.

So it's really all about food preservation, unlike to the store,

you know, you can go to the store and buy tomatoes all year long.

It's not normal.

It's freaky.

You know, people don't realize that.

Wild food is not like that, wild food will show up.

And we'll show up for maybe three or four weeks at different stage like the local

black mustard that we have in California.

It shows up as a sprout, which you can use.

Then a month later, you have all those greens and you can start using the leaves.

You can start using the stem.

And at one point you start flowering and you can start using the flowers and make

some kind of condiments with the flowers.

You can ferment the flowers and some of the leaves too.

And then it turns into seeds, which you can then use, you know, so the

plant will have a lifetime of three months and go through a different stage.

And at every stage you can preserve that harvest, including the roots.

And it's true for every single wild food.

You know, you can pick up walnuts and collect them when they're green and

unripe to make pickled unripe walnuts, you can make Nocino, which is a drink,

and then you can wait for the walnuts to be ready, and then you can make pesto

and, and you can preserve those walnuts, but it's more about food preservation.

So I also spent another couple of years to really study traditional

food preservation technique.

And I also did a master food preserver a program at the university of California.

So I realized that really again, wild crafting was really about food

preservation and about traditional food preservation technique.

Then I think what made me special from the start was that I was really applying those

food preservation technique to wild food.

And I started sharing that.

So how to make wine or to make beer, how to do lacto fermentation, how to make your

own vinegars, how to preserve the harvest through canning pickling, dehydrating.

There's probably like 50 different method of food preservation technique that exist.

You think of sheperd's pie, which is really pie with meat in it, well,

the food preservation is really pasteurization and removal of oxygen.

The sheperds had to wait in the mountain for like a week or two.

So the sheperd's pie was basically pasteurization of the meat, put inside

a pie, and then you close the door, you pasteurize it again, but because

it's closed, there is no more oxygen.

And then your pie will last for close to a week without any refrigeration.

So a lot of interesting stuff you realize, you know, when you study

traditional food preservation technique.

I really like unusual wild food like thing that people won't

touch or don't even look at like, insect honeydew, lerps sugar.

I'm doing a lot of grains and seeds right now, things that you find your backyard

and people will not even think of using because they think it's so difficult,

but I'm proving it's super easy.

so I'm kind of a weirdo in that sense, I like to find like unusual

content, unusual wild food, but also educating people and showing that

it's plentiful, it's everywhere.

Food is everywhere and, giving example of what you could do

with it, if you wanted to.

when you're learning or applying these traditional fermentation

and preservation techniques to plants that are somewhat unusual and

might not be what you would expect.

Is it a trial and error or are you looking at older traditions of how they would use

those specific plants and what techniques they would use on those specific plants?

Well, I'm pretty sure they were used.

That's the point.

I cannot find a recipe, but I'm pretty sure they were used because in the old

days and you can go back in time, I do a lot of research, even prehistoric times

and, Neolithic era and all this stuff.

I'm sure they were used is just, we don't have the recipe anymore.

So my job is basically to rediscover the past to a large degree, and basically

figure out how things were done.

And I'm sure they were done, lacto-fermentation of wild mustard and

dandelion and all this stuff is actually pretty interesting, but you can go further

and you can start mixing seeds to it.

Mixing wild seeds and mixing wild spices and nuts.

I'm actually able to research it at that point.

And I discovered that it was already done because now I have the key

word, I can find what it is or even if it was not done, I'm pretty

sure I didn't invent anything new.

It's really, my job is to rediscover the past to large degree I think, and

rediscover for me, what's exciting is rediscover flavors that our ancestors

used to eat or have, or experience that you could not get anywhere in a

modern restaurant or the supermarket.

And I'm pretty much going toward my own ethnicity,

so I do a lot of research mostly from Europe, prehistoric, from middle ages,

and further, and also the middle east, which is kind of my DNA mix of the two.

Which is interesting.

I mean, those are all the invasive plants that I find locally too.

And I, I immediately got attracted to it as a forager.

So I think, we all without knowing it, we can follow our DNA

to a large degree, you know, if we will go deep into something.

Do you start the process with the plant, like

looking at what parts are edible...?

I'm a little bit different and this is something that I tell my

students, you know, when I do classes, is I see a lot of people taking wild food

and try to adapt it to a modern cuisine.

So they are going to make, nettle pasta.

Um, if you taking wild food and use it , in a modern recipe on

my side, I'm completely different.

I basically look at the plant and say, what do you wanna be.

So I'm really trying to zone into, to the flavor.

And I'm not trying to like, take that plant and change it into something

else to adapt it to an existing recipe like soup or polenta or whatever.

So I'm gonna do crazy...

I do a lot of side, dishes and condiments and stuff like that.

I'm gonna mix fermented mustard leaves with wild grain, but I'm gonna mix that

with the wild mustard contentment that I do using the same seeds from that plant.

And then I'm gonna be adding maybe mustard seed from another

mustard that tastes like hazelnuts.

So I'm doing crazy little side dishes that are super tasty and interesting,

but I don't do a lot of modern recipe.

I don't do a lot of recipe and adapt the wild food to it.

I'm really trying to zone into the flavor actually of the thing.

It's not always easy, and then you end up with things like green

pine cone syrup, Russian olive syrups, crazy soda, mugwort beer.

And a lot of those things were done in the past, you know, mugwort

beer probably was a classic and for Celts and Vikings in the old days,

because this is what they were using

I've seen you, harvest wild yeast off of plants

but that's easy.

I thought it was super difficult, but that's super easy.

I'm gonna show you all this right now.

There you go.

I have juniper berries in a little dish right there.

And if you notice there's a lot of white powder on it.

And the white powder is every time you find something sweet, like a

fruit or whatever, the white powder is composed of wax and wild yeast.

So in my book, the wildcrafting brewer, I basically explained you just need

to take a jar and you put 15% sugar.

The rest is water, and you put a bunch of those grapes, berries,

plums, anything has white bloom on it.

In three days that jar is about to explode because the yeast start eating

the sugar and converting it to alcohol.

And you get the fermentation gas that are about to make the jar explode.

And you can use that as a starter.

I'm gonna go get a bottle.

I know we don't have video in the interview, so I'm gonna go get a

bottle of elderberry wine and this one, this elderberry wine was done

with wild yeast, and you can see on top all the fermentation gas escaping.

So it's really nice and fermenting.

It started on day four, which was kind of late, but I'm, I'm living in the mountain.

It's colder.

So usually it takes two or three days, but here it took four or five days.

I was getting very nervous cause this thing was not starting, but

you can see how active it is.

So this is the way people used to do it.

It's very different from what you buy the store, you realize that all

the wine that you buy the store and the beer are extremely civilized.

Those wine and beer and sodas and crazy, sometimes I don't even know what to name

it because I cannot put a label on it.

It's a mix of beer and wine and mead all in the same time, which

is really what people used to do.

They used to use different source of sugar, plants and grains and

whatever will bring a flavor.

There was no rule.

Actually the rule started in after the middle age every time you

name something very specifically and give the rules, then you can tax it.

It's always about the money.

So then you can say what's the wine and the wine can only be made with grapes or

it's a beer and beer can only be made with hops and grains, and then you can tax it.

But in the old days, they're just basically brewing with what

the environment would give them.

And there was no label on that.

They were mixed up.

There were mixed sugar sources, like molasses with honey with berries and

wild herbs and psychotropic herbs sometimes or whatever or mushrooms.

When I work on my book, the wildcrafting brewer, basically went back to study

neolithic and what scientists will find in potteries in tombstone of

what kind liquid people would do.

And I even had one of those archeologists calling me going like, 'Hey dude, what

we're finding is what you do.' So we actually helping each other because

they say, 'what's your process?

What do you do?' I said, 'well I just ferment from the environment.'

And those flavors are funky.

They're not civilized.

And they're funky in a good way.

I mean, people are coming to my class like it, because they are my public.

They're looking for that.

But if you were to serve some of those things to normal people, Some people may

not like it and that's completely okay.

How do you pair the yeast culture that you are producing

with the fruit or whatever you are going to be making into a beverage?

Because the yeast does impart a very different flavor,

different types of yeast...

yes and no, not with wild yeast.

it is the case with, when you buy yeast, because it's really like

one big strain of yeast that can impact some specific flavor.

But I've noticed for me with a wild yeast and I've gone beer with wild yeast from

all kind different places, it doesn't change that much the flavor cause wild

yeast will have different culture anyway, and would even contain acetobacter, which

can turn your thing to vinegar over time.

So, wild yeast very complex, it's just not one strain it's a

whole bunch of different things.

However, that said as much as possible, I will try to do a wine or beer using

the yeast, coming from the ingredient.

In my case, with the elderberry wine, I use elderberry yeast because it's

already there, I have nothing to do really, if I do a, wild beer, I'm

probably gonna use Juniper berries

A lot of the plants that I use for brewing such as mugwort, yarrow,

actually has wild yeast on it.

It's like the plants are begging to be used for brewing.

But I don't have any rules.

If I need a yeast starter from somewhere else, I'll take it from somewhere else.

I have personally not seen a dramatic change of flavor

And when you mentioned using traditional preservation techniques,

so there's lacto fermentation, there's brewing of vinegars and, alcohol.

What are some of the other techniques?

Dehydration, I suppose

You have canning , so you have yeast preservation, you have

removal of oxygen, you have regular canning and, and water bath canning.

You have high pressure canning.

You have lacto fermentation.

if you take all the different fermentation, you also

have soy fermentation.

You have kefir, you have oil and different kind of stuff.

Probably already have like 15 different ways of preserving

the food with fermentation.

And you have making vinegar, using Acetobacter with local bacteria too.

Dehydration, freezing, smoking, the list goes on.

As I say, I found like, I think it was 48 that I found.

And then you go into the modern one, which will include, irradiation, for example,

waxing, which is removal of oxygen.

That's why they wax the fruits.

So they look so good.

It actually makes them keep longer.

and waxing is actually an old one too, people used to put bee's wax.

Preserving in ashes for eggs for example, your eggs will stay for weeks

or putting oil on a fresh egg or butter and your eggs will keep for months.

Crazy things.

And some are really weird.

And the new one was that I found last year when I was doing research, was those

grapes preserved in clay in Afghani.

When they preserve grapes for months, like six months and they stay fresh

and they just put them in a container made of clay, like rough clay.

And it's the perfect environment because they won't dehydrate, but oxygen can

get in to some degree, but there's not enough oxygen to really spoil them.

And you end up with those big, massive clay.

You just crack them and there's beautiful grapes, fresh after six months of being

inside, this is pre- historic technology right there and then, using clay to

preserve food, and you keep discovering, like it's nonstop, you keep discovering

stuff and like, wow, this is mind blowing.

What you are harvesting and processing is all local.

Yes.

I mean, it's hyperlocal.

I can go out and I can come back with 10 plants within two

minutes that would be edible.

I mean, I'm surrounded with wild mustard over here and mostly I would

say like 90% would be invasive.

You know, if I was in LA, it would take me a few seconds to collect 10

things by just opening the door and going into a garden and come back

and probably all would be weeds.

at this time of the year, Los Angeles will be seeds and grains, because we entering

the seeds and grains time, maybe berries.

We have berries too.

Like we have a lot of elder berries right now, currants and all kinda stuff.

It's, you know what I usually blow people's mind when they do a class,

because they realize that food is everywhere at any time of the year.

And 80% percent can be used for culinary use.

Not always edible but it can be used for culinary use.

And in my opinion, only like one or percent will kill

you and the rest is boring.

It's gonna make you sick a little bit.

Maybe you barf or whatever.

And there's not that many plants that are really poisonous like in

California less than 10, probably.

So if you learn those 10 plants first, then you can have guarantee

you're never gonna die type of thing.

the identification, I suppose, is quite key to learn

those few that will kill you.

Yes.

Yes.

But again, if you start with poison plants, then it,

you know, makes it easier.

People have it easier those days too.

There is all kind of different things that I didn't have when I started.

I mean, you can find groups online where you can post photos or like, 'what is it?'

like on Facebook you have a group called , wild edible plants or something like that.

Or foraging California, you have apps.

Those apps are pretty good, like 95%.

Correct.

And even if they're not correct, they will push you in the right direction

where like, I think this is a Brassica.

You see what I mean?

And then you can go online.

You can take your photo and go like, okay, Google image and say here, show me

example of black mustard, for example.

And then you can confirm, so you have, so many different ways

you can confirm all this stuff.

In, in my days it was mostly a person to person, transmission of knowledge.

But I must say that in the stuff I'm doing transmission from person to person

is still very important because frankly, when you start collecting seeds and

grains, how do you identify the plant?

There is nothing left.

It's just, it's a dry thing, like dry thing with pods.

so it's a mix at this point, but I mean, all the main one, like I would say

like all the main edible that everybody knows, like dandelion, mustard,

wild radish, all this stuff you don't need anybody to teach you anymore.

You can actually learn that by yourself and be pretty safe in the process.

But when you start going into the exotic stuff, like Russian olive syrups

and lerps sugar, grains and seeds and crazy things like that, then yeah.

Good luck,

Certain plant families too.

When people are first starting to forage, I tend to discourage the carrot family.

Like just stay away from that one for a little while.

yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Because some of them are super good, some super poisonous, but

then , the lot of the education comes into, the food preservation process.

That's where it really comes and I do my living, mostly doing webinars and,

teaching people lacto fermentation of different wild foods, for example, or how

to make wild beer and wine, how to make elderberry wine, how to make prickly pear

wine and the different techniques and the different, you know, the crazy wild beer.

You can do a wild beer with mugwort, but you can do like a forest beer.

In the forest is beer, what may end up with 15 plants and mushroom from the

forest, including roots and grains and wild nuts, you know, shamanic beer.

And then you go to the psychotropic stuff.

I do shamanic beer.

And when I was in Colorado, it's legal and you can have, plants like

mugwort, yarrow, magic mushrooms.

and you drink that and like my God.

But this is what people will have done in the past.

This is, drinking, for example, alcoholic beverage was not made

for fun sometime it was more from a religious perspective because your life

can sometimes be miserable, without all the comfort of modern society.

I mean, it was not easy.

I'm sure.

And we didn't have any painkiller or anything like that.

And being able to drink alcohol and suddenly your muscle ache

goes away, you start feeling better, you start feeling happy.

That's super valuable.

and if you're a shaman, you can start making brews that

will help healing people.

So not only the brew itself is a pain killer, but you can add, you know, Willow

bark, which will be a type of aspirin.

You can even add magic mushrooms which for some person would

actually turn pain into pleasure.

To some degree, kind of do a reverse.

It's interesting.

I have that.

If I have pain, the mushroom actually will change it into pleasure.

It actually makes it feel good, which is a weird one.

And you can put all kind of different healing plants in the brews.

in the middle age, those used to be called witch brews, which were really

medicinal brews and the church made sure to get rid of those things because

on top of it, I mean, the church was making money from taxes too from the

beers, made with hops and grains, and hops is considered a downer.

You probably will make less sins using a beer that is a downer than

drinking a lot of mugwort beer, which makes you more happy and

more, uh, give you more sexual energy.

Because I heard that hops are also, they have painkiller,

but also, antibacterial they can act as a preservative as well for the beer

Yeah so is yarrow and I mean, I think all the main

plants that were used to make beer were actually preserve the food.

In my book I have like several category.

I have like what I call the Trinity is like the main ones.

And then after that, it is all kind of different one that were used,

like horehound, which is very bitter.

If you use mugwort and horehound together, it kind creates a wild IPA.

Very bitter

and mugwort, is that Artemisia vulgaris

or Artemisia absinthium?

Doesn't matter.

I actually use Artemisia douglasiana, cause it is the local mugwort

It grows like a weed in California, it's a native plant but it grow like weed.

It actually has more flavor than the, one that we use in Europe.

But when I was in Vermont, you know, I found the one from Europe,

which is kind of consider invasive over there, Artemisia vulgaris.

Artemisia absinthium can be used too and has been used, it's a bit

stronge , but that was the one that was used to make absinth too.

So they, I mean, they all have been used to make brews.

When I was doing my research, it was fascinating, cause I

don't know of any bitter plant.

If the plant was bitter and was not toxic, I would find that in recipes,

it's interesting, and beer is bitter.

Beer is really like a bitter thing.

And then you have also bitters.

I could write a whole book from making bitters and you can make bitters for

medicinal use, you can make bitters for drink s, like for flavors.

I probably have a list of 20 books that can still write.

So.

I wish I was like 20 years younger than I could write them.

when you said that, you use lacto-fermentation

of different types of plants.

Very often Brassicas are used for lacto-fermentation, but you're also

doing greens and other plant families.

do you...

and mushrooms too.

And what do you use to get enough liquid?

Do you add any water?

Are you using...

I'll show you an example.

So.

I have a jar in front of me.

I explained because this is not visual.

So I have a jar in front of me and it's a jar of fermented mustard roots.

And if you notice the brine goes halfway, so not everything is

under the brine, which is a big crime in lacto fermentation.

Cause people go like "it has to be, there's a rule!

The fermentation, God say everything has to be under the brine" and you

should notice, this is my fermented mustard leaves, and there is no

brine, no brine what so ever...

maybe a drop, not even a drop.

So here's the secret, the secret is you actually have to work with your ferment.

When I do my fermented root and products to brine, I'm using that for soup stock,

I can flavor tofu with it.

I can do all different stuff.

And basically it was the only way for me to extract flavor from those roots.

This was my experimental stuff.

Those roots are too tough.

You cannot eat them.

Those are wild mustartd, wild radish.

It's like, so fibers, it's impossible to eat, but you scratch

them with a knife and you smell,

it's like a world of incredible smell and flavor is like pungent

and smells so good, earthy.

So by crushing them and putting some liquid and salt, I'm

basically fermenting them.

And the lacto fermentation will extract the flavor into the brine.

I don't wanna put too much brine because if I put too much brine,

I'm gonna dilute the flavor.

So what I do is I basically shake the content.

So every day, twice a day, I'm gonna shake that content.

Sometime I even reverse the jar and leave it, for a few hours reverse.

And what's happening is the content become acidic.

And by shaking it, you put that as acidity everywhere.

And there is no way that this thing can rot.

After 10 days or 15 days, depending if it is cold for fermentation,

you get no more fermentation gas.

That's where you put them in the fridge.

It is guaranteed to never mold.

This is too acidic.

Your pH is already at 3.3 at that point.

So those mustard leaves are, two years old.

So you can see that the leaves even have absorb whatever liquid was there.

I'm aging stuff for five years right now.

And I'm to some extreme aging.

I have some, pickle that I'm aging for 20 years.

Those are for my kids, I may not be alive when they're done.

those are recipe from the middle east where you preserve garlic in

vinegar for like 20 years to 30 years.

The older they are the better they are, you cannot eat them young.

They're gross young.

so it's interesting, it's changing.

Same thing you cannot put on brine for example, a paste, this is fermented

wild garlic, local wild garlic.

It's basically spicy paste.

So it's 75% local wild onion and garlic, and the rest was just a Habanaro product.

That shit is hot.

I cannot shake it because it's so tough, but you can stir it, so twice a day in

the morning and the evening, I stir it and by stirring it, I distribute the acidity.

And after 10 days or 15 days, when there is no fermentation gas, put

it in the fridge has nothing to do.

No brine, it's just gonna keep forever.

Its become, will become more and more sour and the flavor will change over

time, which sometimes can be a good thing.

Sometimes can be a bad thing.

That's where the experimentation come in.

So I've eaten, mustard that was fermented for three year.

It's an aquired taste, but you can still play with it.

You can still take that mustard after three years, it's okay.

This is an ingredient that I have to work with.

So you can still add if it's sour, you can add a little bit of seasoned

vinegar, for example, that will contain maple syrup or whatever.

You have always the freedom to create at any stage.

And I don't have the rule that you cannot cook a ferment.

Why not taking those leaves that are three years old and cook them.

I always get shit when I do that, 'why will someone take something

formented then cook it because you're killing all the bacteria.'

I'm like, 'because I'm don't care.

I'm about flavors.' So those people are so obsessed sometimes.

But guess what, what about the sourdough?

Oh my God.

What a crime?

You cooking all those bacteria to make a bread.

You see what I mean, people have cook with stuff all the time, you

know, you use soy sauce for cooking?

But if you take like a lacto-fermentation it's like, oh, like wake up

In terms of the process, what's the difference between doing

a alcoholic brew and a vinegar?

There's different way you can do it, but if you really

wanna do it the natural way, is you basically only use wild yeast.

If you use wild yeast, there is always Acetobacter.

Those are the bacteria that turn into vinegar and it's

a normal, regular process.

Meaning by that the yeast will start eating the sugar

and convert it into alcohol.

And when alcoholic fermentation is over, then the Acetobacter will take over.

And you can say, well, that's not really true because then in the old days, wine

will always turn into vinegar over time.

And that was not always the case.

Well , you can only make vinegar, this is what a lot of people don't

understand, you can only make vinegar , if your beverage has an alcoholic

content between three and 9% alcohol.

So if I make my Elderberry wine, the recipe will ask

for up to 12 to 14% alcohol.

So it is not gonna turn into vinegar.

Now in the old days, it may turn into vinegar, if you were storing wine into

a clay container, like people used to do sometimes, because eventually the

alcohol will evaporate through the clay.

And when the alcohol will go down to 9%, then the Acetobacter will take over.

Which is how I found out that the amphoras, were in the old days were

lined up with pine resin to make them waterproof, which I ended up using

pine resin on my own pottery and the pottery that I make locally right now.

Pine resin is super beautiful.

You get all shade of brown and black and I tested it, it's waterproof.

and it doesn't taste like rein because I did that at super high temperature.

So it become a glaze.

It's like a glaze, but it works in a pit fire.

So you can make a pit fire and use pine resin to make your,

your dishware waterproof.

It's super interesting.

I saw that you also would use pine resin as a glue.

yeah, I'll show you a tea pot right now, and that's a little

tea pot and you see that, the branch is actually, using the, uh, pine pitch.

You can see the pottery I'm really using the whole environment.

For a top for the teapot, I'm using a stone and then moss.

I can use mugwort or whatever, and this is done with local clay the

handle is made with burned Manzanita from the forest fire.

Oh, wow.

It's gorgeous.

And you're eating local ingredients out of the dishes that

came from your local environment.

Yes.

So this is why I call that the pinyon pine needle teapots.

So actually made pinyon pine needle and the clay come from the same location

where the pinyon pines are growing, the stone come from the same location.

So is the branch that's used.

This is, this teapot is a terroir in itself.

Everything is like, even pick up the moss from the side of the tree it's called old,

old man beards, which is a non-toxic moss.

You have to research that too, because some moss can be very toxic.

And in California we have one main one that's, uh, Wolf lichen.

I use moss or lichen, this is actually a lichen.

Wolf lichen, which was used to, poison wolves.

So you put that inside the rabbit or the deer that was used.

So, you know, and the Wolf will eat it and they die.

Wow.

I know like mushroom people are already weird, but when you

meet the lichen people and the and the moss people, oh my God, this is where you

going to like unknown territory of people.

They're not normal.

What about water plants?

Water plants?

Mm-hmm

what do you mean water plants like seaweed?

Like cattails and watercress...

yeah.

Well, Yeah.

Yeah.

I use that.

Yeah.

I use that all the time.

The thing I don't use are the ones in the sea because of my environment.

I used to live in Los Angeles, and there is no way I would touch the water.

I know what's in it, actually study what's in it.

And I tell you, like studying wildcrafting is a good study of the environment and

you realize, how disgusting humans can be, mostly in the sea of Los Angeles.

Yeah.

I would not touch anything from the research I've done, I would not

touch anything below San Francisco.

I mean, in terms of forging, I would not touch seaweed.

I would not touch anything below San Francisco.

Fresh water?

Fresh water.

Yes.

I live in the mountain right now.

We have fresh water.

I've made, beer with rain, water, and all kinds of different stuff.

I've made snow beer, not, not yellow, snow beer.

It's just snow beer, meaning that I use snow for the water.

So it's nothing special.

Don't do yellow, snow beer.

It's not good.

But in terms of water plants...

yeah.

What are some of your favorite water plants to forage?

it's mostly watercress is a good one.

Cattails is definitely one that I use a lot too.

And you can totally ferment cattail like, you will not even know, you are not using

saurkraut, my ferment is usually like 50%, cabbage, 50% cattail and you will

not even know the cattail is in there.

Like it's a natural and it contents a lot of starch and sugar.

What part of the plant?

The shoot, the young shoot.

I mean, I could use probably the roots.

When I was in LA, I was very careful about the roots because of pollution.

And actually the main problem was homelessness because every time I

would go in nature and follow the river, I would find like homeless camp.

And that's where they cleaned themselves or relieve themselves

all kinds different stuff.

I would not want to use those roots, but in the mountains I could do it.

Actually I've used the roots.

Yeah, I did.

In 2016, it's in my first book.

I extracted the starch from roots.

Yeah, you could brew.

You can make beer because starch is the store that you can turn into sugar.

You can actually brew with cattail too, I've made cattail beer, uh, what else?

The main interest for me is also, most Southern California is what

you find alongside the water.

because again, at any time of the year, if you find a source of water,

you always gonna find green plants.

Another plant that I really, really like that grows in the water is water mint,

super invasive, can really take over an environment, but it's super yummy.

It's one of my favorite mint.

What do you like to do with it?

Brewing tea, sodas, dehydration, use as a spice,

all kinds of stuff like that.

Nothing special, anything that you can do is a mint really.

It just add the flavour.

When you say a soda, what is that process?

Making a soda is the simplest process you can have.

I mean, you can use white sugar if you wanted to.

You basically, make a beverage, a taste a little bit too sweet for your

taste, and then you add some commercial yeast, if you want to, or you can

add a bit of wild yeast starter.

And if it is too sweet you know that the yeast is going to eat

the sugar, so it could come back down the amount of sweetness.

And then I just take a couple of, watermint twigs or regular mint or

peppermint twigs inside the bottle.

And I let for four or five days, I have soda right there and then.

You can add lemon, you can add ginger to it.

You can create, you can add pine needles, you can do whatever you want.

But the process is that simple, one of the feedback I get from people when

they come to my workshop is they seem to realize like how simple the shit is.

We make things so complicated now, like making beer so complicated, they

write like huge book on the process of making beer and you have to buy all this

expensive equipment, but people in the old days used to make beer in pots.

You can totally do it.

And some of those beer were not aged for months.

They were age for days.

If you ferment something for five or six days, you already get

5% alcohol, this make you happy.

We are very good about making things complex.

And then once things are complex, we decide to write the books on the rules.

Then we can tax the liquid too.

And, you make charts and laws that you cannot make anything different, or you

cannot call it a beer or wine or whatever.

But I like to go back on time and go back into anarchy and say, we can do

whatever we want, it gonna taste awesome

and better than what you do.

I had beer expert, like a beer taster who came to one of my class and

taste my mugwort beer and said, 'this better than any beer I ever had.'

Nice!,

And on the reverse I had a group of people who didn't know that

they would be served wild food for lunch.

So those are regular, regular, regular people.

Those are not my public.

Those are not people who come to my class, knowing what to expect.

And I didn't even know that they didn't know.

So they were like, 'what the hell is this mugwort beer?' Like 50%

of the people will not like it.

And 50% will love it.

So, because they're so used to their Budweiser.

Sorry bud, it's not a Budweiser, it's not a Corona.

This is what your ancestor will drink.

You know, welcome to my world.

You don't like it.

Leave .We are not civilized here.

Get out of here!

When you're collecting seeds and making condiments, the

condiments that you're making are combining, I suppose, vinegars that

you're also brewing from your environment.

Are you doing additional fermentation...?

I've done crazy things.

I've actually taken vinegar and, pasteurize it.

So I kill all the bacteria, add sugar and then referment it with wild yeast.

That's a twist.

Yeah,

Going back to alcohol using the vinegar as a base, and it

did work, although the yeast was being like, 'what the hell is going on?'

It was not an easy fermentation and was it worth it if I recall, because

I did that quite a while ago...not really, but it was interesting.

I was able to do it, it was a weird drink, alcoholic fermented vinegar.

So, I mean, you can go like, you know, when you know all

the principle of fermentation.

All the lacto-ferment that I do, it's never a complete process.

Once I say something like fermented mustard leave after one month or two

months or three months, I'm tasting it and going like, okay, what am I

gonna do for that specific class?

Or I'm inviting people to eat or have people eating at my place?

What am I gonna do?

And I always do something different.

If I deal with a lot of American, I'm going to use

season vinegar, which is sweet.

Why?

Because Americans are not used to the sourness of lacto ferments.

When I used to work with restaurant, the chef, asked me to

do lacto fermented food for them.

And their public was like, yeah.

And the chef said, 'you know, they don't like it.' I said, 'well, is your

public American?' They go, 'yeah.' I said, 'okay.' And I replaced the

brine with, season rice vinegar.

And everybody went wild going like, 'this is so good!

I really love those lacto ferment.' I'm like 'it's vinegar.' But you see,

by just changing it, you adapt that ferment for their taste, you know?

So I would serve the, I would serve the fermented leaves with dijon mustard, but

I would make the dijon mustard with the same mustard that I picked up in the wild.

So it becomes more of as a vinegar based thing.

If I deal with Asian public, then I can, I know I can go for those crazy flavors.

And they're like, 'yeah!' Including texture, for example, Americans,

don't like to chew something is chewy,

they go like, 'woo it's chewy.' And in different culture,

it's completely fine to chew.

They're like, 'oh yum!' Asian culture chewing is really part of the experience.

Even in Europe, it took me a while to get used to chewing.

So if I don't cook my mustard, I have a chewy ferment.

If I cook my mustard, before I ferment it, I have a tender a ferment.

It's the same fermentation, same ingredients, the difference is I

cook it first and not cook it first.

So if I go to the American, I would use the cooked one.

If I have a mix and I would lot of different people from different countries

and different ethnic and all that, and I'm gonna go, you know what, I'm

going to go for like the chewy one.

You know, So yeah, you can play with all this stuff.

I guess if you're doing these workshops all at different times,

you've got so many different plants that are going to be

offered from different seasons.

And I suppose in California, you also have plants that are growing all year round.

yeah.

Like fir you can collect fir at any time of the year.

I use white fir for flavoring tastes like tangerine, however,

the flavor would change in the year, in springtime is gonna be

more peppy, more young, more lemony.

And later on in the year is becoming more I call that noble, like more

complex flavor, more experience to the flavor, you know, it's interesting.

Do you collect any pollen?

Yeah, pine pollen, , cattail pollen, those are

the easiest one, I guess you could collect any pollen that you want.

You could do that.

Oh yeah,

uh, super invasive locally, tastes like licorice, wild fennel, wild

fennel pollen super expensive.

By the way, the price of wild fennel pollen is more

expensive than gold by weight.

People don't know that, it's a pain, you have to like grab the flowers into

a paper bag and, let them drop the pollen, which is really tiny, takes an

incredible quantity to get tiny amount.

And usually people fake it and they use the, the dry flowers.

But if you really use the pollen it's more expensive than gold and very

so potent, it's incredibly potent.

and it's an invasive.

It's super invasive in California.

Yeah.

You see, it's so interesting for me.

I do follow , the language of invasive, non-native and all that, but really, I

really can't like don't care kind of, meaning by that I don't associate any

emotional issues that some people have.

You go to groups about invasive plants, on Facebook or social media

and I call those hate groups, because they're very emotional about it.

'Yeah!

Kill it!

Spray round up on it!' You guys are so ridiculous, use the plant, do

something good with it because right now there are no positive solution.

We have thousands of acres of mustard in LA, thousands, tens of thousands of acres.

All those mustards are crops in different countries.

The only thing people are gonna do locally is they're gonna spray

chemical to get rid of it, which really poison the environment.

Or they do a restoration.

That means they grab everything and throw away the resource and I'm

going like, this is fucking nuts.

This is food.

Like you have people in LA who cannot afford their organic

food and you throwing crops.

You are really throwing away crops, under the label that they are invasive.

Meanwhile, wheat has destroyed 72 million acres of native

flora and land that's okay.

Because that's a agriculture.

That's okay.

That's not invasive.

But Black mustard!

Well, something that I do like about your books and the content

that you provide is that it's showing people that they can use these plants

and that there's a lot of delicious things that they can do with them, so

that instead of seeing them as the enemy, you're then seeing as an opportunity.

Yeah.

That's the way.

Yeah, it's really exactly, you know, it's an opportunity.

It's one way to, to add to the diet and those, many of those plants

actually are plants that came from Europe from where I grew up.

So I know those are the plant that grandma used to grow and

say, go collect those for food.

And also in the middle east, there's a big tradition in the middle east

of using those plants, you know?

a lot of the seeds are used as spices

yeah.

Yes,

so they'll impart a lot of flavor.

Yeah, you go to a middle Eastern store, you basically

have a whole aisle that's just different, seeds and herbs.

And you find the plants I forage.

You find like the horehound, the yarrow, you find the, the mugwort, there's roots.

You find the fennel seeds, it's all there.

And I'm not making a dent by the way.

my job speaking of seeds, I'm really planting seeds into people's head.

So maybe somebody will wake up and have enough power or a

position that you can actually say, you know, we can do something.

Why don't we collect all this black mustard and make dijon mustard

with it that we are going to sell.

And all this money will go back to saving the environment and

planting native plants, for example.

It could be done.

But I'm just me, little me somewhere, I don't have that power in any way, shape or

form, but I have the power to plant seeds in people's heads and to show examples.

And I'm really strongly, think that, uh, foraging and wild crafting

is important and can be not only sustainable, but can be beneficial.

I already know that 99.999999% of the population has zero interest in foraging

and wildcrafting, they won't do it.

They don't care.

They, they go to work.

They wanna go to the store and get their food.

They have zero interest in foraging.

So there is a room for foragers and wildcrafters and we can do,

and I think it would be awesome,

if we do it, but we do it with the viewpoint that we are actually

going to help the environment.

Cause we not the one fucking up the environment, the other people do.

And we have to take responsibility for that.

I mean, I remember driving, in Minnesota and I drove for seven

hours in fields of corn and soy.

There is no environment left and there's nothing, nothing left.

It's just corn and soy.

If you wanna find something, you have to go to the ditch, but they

use so much chemical, you don't wanna use something from there.

And those are the people who go to the store and sometimes they

give you shit going like, 'oh, foraging, you stealing from nature!'

It's like, 'oh, come on.' so I think as forager and wildcrafter you have that

responsibility to make up for their lack of responsibility , and really

interact with the environment in such a way that it is beneficial because

sustainable is not good enough anymore.

So when companies say we sustainable, it means shit to me.

we cannot be sustainable when somebody says sustainable, I'm

like, dude, you lazy, it should be beneficial at this point.

I like in the idea of forging, I understand the need for,

responsible harvesting of native plants.

But when it comes to invasives, they're just an opportunity.

it's like you said, a lot of those plants came over as food plants from people who

brought them because they were familiar with them and used to eating them.

So there's so much potential there.

Those are colonizers plant!

Let's eat them, get rid of them!

But you know, it's interesting, when I was in Colorado, they really do a

lot for environment in Colorado, but in the same time, in my opinion, their

view of nature for some degree is to turn the environment into a museum.

So they have this program called, um, green spaces or open spaces and is

everything but open meaning that it's open because you have to follow the

trails, but you have barbed wire on each side of the trails with signs everywhere

saying you cannot go there, you know, habitat sensitive habitat or whatever.

And then you look at it and 99% is invasive food.

You go like 'bullshit!' I mean, sometime they're right, you go to the

mountain and, and those area, pristine, but in some area you go like habitat

sensitive habitat, you go 'bullshit!

This is like 90% invasive'...curly dock, pepperweed, I recognize

all those one cause I deal with all those invasives and garlic mustard...

we should be able to go over there and use them.

Yeah.

And if people knew that they could, I think that's a big one as well.

So many people don't realize that they're surrounded by food.

Yeah.

They don't know, they don't.

I mean, that's why I'm just saying like foraging can be beneficial

because 99.9999999% of the population has zero interest.

Zero.

When I pick up some stuff from the ground, people look at me

like, 'what are you doing?'

Which is why I travel with a camera.

When somebody looks funny at me, I just take my camera and do a fake

photo and they go, 'oh, he's a photographer' and then leave me alone.

but I think part of it is just fear.

There is a detachment from our environment, so people are afraid

to harvest something in case it's poisonous cuz they don't know.

I think if they knew , they might be more open to it.

And I think that that is something that is starting to grow in popularity.

People are starting to gain interest in eating local and

harvesting their own food.

Eating local is usually farming really, which is also like, I

mean, if you look at farming, it's really growing invasive plant on native land.

So you still destroy the native flora and fauna.

How come, you cannot go to whole food and say, 'I want two pounds of acorn

?' People would say, 'well, if we

well, what if we were growing those native plants instead of growing

those non-native plant, you will actually help them in the process.

Europe, you know, all the forests are pretty much gone because of agriculture.

I find it interesting sometime that the farmers or the people depending on

farming suddenly say that you should not go into the environment and take things.

But they are the ones, which really, if you think about that, they're

creating more damage using the diet and they existing preexisting

food system, they really damage the environment by using that.

But they gonna tell you, 'oh, you should not pick elder berries,' come on.

So it's controversial.

yeah.

If I use a lot of native plant, I will plant them.

So I've planted elderberries, I've planted all the different sages, I've planted

mugwort fields, I've planted cattails, I've planted all kind different stuff.

I've planted, you know, black walnut tree.

Would say like a hundred percent of my foraging is pretty much done on private

property unless I deal with super invasive plants, then I don't care.

If I go into the Angeles forest and I see Mediterranean mustard or black

mustard growing, my God, I'm helping the environment by removing it.

A friend of mine was picking up, nasturtium like a whole field of

nasturtium, which can be invasive locally, and the ranger showed up and

basically made him throw everything back.

And you go like 'crazy!

Why?' You know, rangers should be educated on these things too

I think.

A lot of them don't even know the plants that are there exist, instead of

fighting against people who forage or wanna connect with the wilderness, they

should actually create programs where people learn how to eat those invasive

plant and do something that is positive and remove them from the environment.

I tried to have a permit at one point, for a specific section of

the Angeles forest, uh, a permit to pick up only non native plant.

And their solution was to ignore me for five years.

I kept going and I never got any peep, I never got any answer.

I call, I sent emails, I sent letters, I did everything and the

solution was to don't deal with me.

They didn't wanna deal with me.

They didn't wanna say yes, they didn't wanna say no, they just didn't wanna deal.

So their solution was to like put it somewhere and hide it.

Some people could make a living working with, the Rangers and teaching

people, and get paid, to teach people uh, how to interact correctly with

nature, for example, and what are the non native and invasive plants

and what you can do with them.

I think especially the, what you can do with them, because the

identification is really important, but I find in the foraging movement,

there's so much about identifying the plants, but then there's not

enough on what you can do with it.

So bringing in like you do, bringing in the traditional techniques of what

people did with some of these plants before and showing people that it can

taste good, these plants can provide all kinds of interesting nutrients and flavor

potential is really exciting and inspiring!

And I think a lot of people will start foraging don't continue.

I remember my early class were mostly survivalists.

Most survivalists are not really like the best cook type of thing.

So they will boil things.

I remember this person who made crackers, which is of curly dock seeds.

It was the most disgusting thing I ever ate, but you know, then she added sugar

to it and then everybody was munching on it, they were like 'mmm nice!' And

I'm like, oh my God, it was like the grossest cracker I ever ate my life!

So what do you do with curly dock seeds?

I'm actually going back to all the seeds and grains right now.

It could be like maybe a next book project and I'm going back because

not enough is done with them.

I look at curly dock seeds and it's, their mostly, they kind of boring, to be honest,

so far I say they're kind of boring so far

cause I have to like move back and see if we can do something else.

But it's mostly an additive, like a flour additive, you make a bread,

then you put like 20% or 15%.

It's gonna look like a super beautiful primitive bread.

Like it's an aesthetic more than anything else.

And it's adding fibers and could be valuable in a survival situation.

I was talking to my dad, during world war II, bread composed of like 30% to

40% saw dust and the rest was wheat.

So it fills your stomach, but you're using 40% less wheat.

So curl dock could be that way for example.

I go back to it.

I know we did something at the time that was kind of interesting is we,

you add sugar, so you add a lot of sugar water to the curly dock and then

you pan roast it and it becomes kind of like a tiny little rice crispy.

It's a texture thing.

It's very interesting.

Then you can use that for plating.

If you're a chef, to make a dish very pretty.

So it's crunchy curly dock.

There is possibilities of doing crazy things.

Yeah.

well, another one that I wondered about because, lambs quarter

grows so abundantly and it's so closely related to quinoa and orach.

So what would you do with lambs quarter or lambs quarter seeds?

What we did at the past was seed cakes.

So you can mix them with eggs, for example.

I mean, like quinoa, you have to prepare the seeds correctly.

I use them, when we made like acorn burgers, we will put like different seeds.

It was kinda like a vegan burger type of thing, but acorn, mushrooms and

lamb quarter seeds, and all that.

I use seeds a lot as an additive to things.

I mean, I do a lot of ferment and I have seeds in it, and grains

in it because it's nutritious.

don't even know they're there type of thing.

I'll show you one.

What have in my hand is a jar that contains fermented wild radish

roots and wild radish leaves.

The spice are curry-like, and it looks like a mess of little cubes with

green stuff, but it's probably like 10% of wild seeds and grains in it.

It smell incredible, very curry, garam...

so it's kinda like Indian spices, but it's all wild grains and seeds.

You barely see them.

People don't realize that seeds can have a lot of flavors.

I did a course on Instagram, like a couple of days ago about all

the different mustards seeds.

It's people think that mustard seed taste like mustard, but no, it's the

exception only , the black mustard and I think the Chinese mustard taste

spicy, the other one is like hazel nuts, Walnut nuts, very nutty nutty flavor.

really.

Yes.

We have the tumbleweed mustard over here, and it taste exactly like Hazel

nuts, and then I'm gonna roast them.

Then it can bring like a complet different flavor profile.

So I use specific tumbleweed mustard because it's a fantastic

flavor combination with that ferment...curry, nutty, hazel nuts...

that's really fantastic.

And then I use some that don't have any flavor, like, cheatgrass, which

is the most hated plant in California.

People don't know that, but it's a hunter-gather grain from Europe.

Hmm.

It's forgotten grain.

It's people only see it as an invasive.

They have no idea that the grain was actually edible.

You have to boil it.

You boil that grain for 50 minutes.

It looks like the most beautiful red rice.

When you're eating the seeds and grains of invasive

plants, that also reduces the spread

Yeah, but you're not making a dent.

Me by myself, I'm not making...

you get hundreds of thousands of acres of cheatgrass locally.

that thing is taking over, but it'sa hunter-gatherer grain from Europe.

and that's an opportunity when you have a lot of

it growing, if you were planting that field in order to obtain a lot of

the grain, it-would-be a lot of work.

Whereas there it's growing as a volunteer.

So this is a good example.

It's a whole plastic bag, like grocery bag and it's full of cheatgrass.

And it took me three minutes to collect.

I gave those to a famous restaurant in California called

N-Naka, Japanese restaurant.

And they were using the most hated plant in California as a beautiful

grain in their dish because they like to use local product.

So they were using it for plating to make it very beautiful.

And people were like, 'what is that?' And they like 'foxtail.' I

mean, most people call it foxtail.

It was an interesting dichotomy, I mean, because this was the most

unwanted grain that nobody wants.

People don't even know it's a grain , but only the rich people can afford it.

Because I mean, going to a N-Naka is probably going to cost you at least

600 dollar per person, so they're basically paying to eat the most

common, unwanted plant locally.

But as a forager, you have the opportunity because the possibility

is there, to just harvest it yourself!

Yeah.

And you have to be very careful as a forager, Like I'm very careful

not to spread those seeds around.

Like the last class we tasted Russian olives and I was like going

like, okay, people gave me back.

I had a container I used to get back all the, the pits,

because if it grows up...

I thought it was not in Southern California actually, cuz it's

super invastive in Colorado.

Yesterday I went to the store and guess what I passed by and I see

on the side, Russian olives tree.

First one, I like, my God, I didn't know

this was here.

So it is already here in the desert.

I love using it.

I actually love using Russian olives.

What's the name scientific name?

Approximately, like what's the family?

It has nothing to do with olives.

It tastes like dates.

They're very sweet.

The only reason they call them olives is because it kind of look like small

olives and they grow like small olives.

Elaeagnus angustifolia, And I found that out from the national

invasive species information center.

One of the first thing when I go into a new environment and I was in

Colorado, I show up there, I travel all year long, last year in the RV.

I'm always looking for two things, salt and sugar.

if I have salt, I can do lacto fermentation.

And if I have sugar, I can do yeast fermentation.

So finding salt and sugar in the wild.

And I found the sugar mostly in the Russian olives because they're very sweet.

So I basically, I boil them and then I strain them and then I take the

sweet boiling water and keep boiling it until I get molasses at the end.

And the molasses is actually in my opinion, more delicious than maple syrup.

Yeah.

I have a jar, I can show you a jar.

So this is your Russian olive syrup and I found out it's super medicinal for

inflammation, so I'm actually taking it.

But it tastes better, it's more complex and maple syrup.

It's interesting.

And again, this is one of those, like how come people don't do that?

How come even chef locally, don't use that in their cuisine?

Chef should be using this stuff.

I've seen you use lerps sugar as well.

What exactly is that?

I don't think that we have that insect here,

Where are you located?

Quebec, Canada.

Yes.

Too cold.

it's basically a little insect that has a symbiotic relationship with Eucalyptus,

specifically the blue gum Eucalyptus.

When we imported that tree for California, think the tree were supposed

to be used for railway, but they didn't work because it's splits, but

Eucalyptus loves Southern California.

So they grow everywhere.

They actually considered kind of invasive too.

But they imported the fly with it unknowingly.

So this little fly, what it does is it deposit little eggs on the leaves and

you have a tiny larvae that sucks the juice of Eucalyptus and poops sugar.

So it's basically sweet sugar poop.

it's, native food in Australia.

Okay.

So if they were going on a long journey, they will

collect all those from the leaves.

And when they still a bit wet in the morning or whatever, and make a ball out

of it and will be a power bar because it's composed of starch and sugar.

You will find different type of similar honey dew coming from different kind

of flies in different region of the world, including the middle east.

And some experts think that the manna from heaven in the Bible is actually

that, because at one point it falls on the ground and the ground is cover

of sugar and starch, which is what bread is made of, and you can make

them into tiny bread if you wanted to.

So some experts think, this is the manna from heaven that was falling from the sky.

The flavor profile, when you dry it is exactly like rice crispies.

You will eat that as a cereal, you will think it is rice crispies.

It's the same crunchiness is the same flavor.

But you have all kinds of different honey dew.

It's not something unusual, sometime in California, people park their

car and their car become all sticky.

Well, if they look around and make sure nobody's there and they start licking

their car, they gonna realize it's sweet.

So those will be from aphids.

So some aphids can also do that.

Insect are the same way too.

You know, not a lot of foragers are dealing with insect, but there's a

lot of very edible insect you find in the wild and some of them are really

invasive like the gardens snails.

If you take a gardens snail and you shake it and then you listen to it, it usually

goes...because it come from France.

So they're not native.

The story is a guy who came from San Francisco during the gold rush and had the

bright idea, was French, had the bright idea of like selling this to people

as a delicacy, but nobody wanted it.

So he released it and you know, now you find garden snails everywhere.

When I was in Vermont, they really trying to not have any worms

because worms are not native and worms can destroy the environment.

and for farming, they're actually importing worms.

And you have even worm farms.

It's interesting.

Or you have saved the bees, but the bees are really not native.

The native bees don't make any honey,

Mm-hmm

. Pascal Baudar: It's so complex.

The pollinator thing is fascinating.

I found this year in our region, there was massive beehive die off.

but I found that in my immediate region, the native pollinators are just booming.

So the orchards around here didn't necessarily take a big hit, even though

the hives were mostly dead because there was enough habitat for the native bees.

Yeah.

But nobody, they're not interested in native bee because they don't make money.

Really.

It's all about the money again, I mean, you do have people, I

care about the native bee, but

they care about it when the hives are failing.

So when the bee hives are failing and all of the apple orchards around here

are entirely dependent on the native bee population, then they care about it.

It's interesting.

That's interesting.

When I say like, you know, lerps sugar, it's insect poop, people go like,

weh, you look at lacto fermentation, you know what lacto fermentation is?

It's an insect excretion.

That means it a pee or poo.

Same thing with alcohol.

Sorry, your beer, everything is super organic.

Honey is bee vomit.

The yeast will actually eat the sugar and excrete, we use the word excrete, alcohol.

So it's basically changing the sugar into alcohol, but you can call it

different names if you wanted to.

But excrete is more civilized, but everything, everything is

really very organic like that.

Some people say, well, insect, poop.

I'm like, you like, honey?

You like drinking beer?

It's just, what's familiar

Yeah.

And people don't wanna know anyway.

There was a restaurant was using that lerps sugar and call it forest sugar.

It's better of marketing, not insect poop.

what are you eating?

Forest sugar!

Woohoo!

Yeah, commercializing.

So how can people find your work and your books?

Right now I'm located in the middle of nowhere, I'm like a

hour and a half Los Angeles, so mostly webinars and I basically just advertize

my webinars on my social media.

And also to be honest on my social media, I do share everything.

I share recipes.

Everything I do.

I share, share, share.

I don't like to like keep stuff for myself.

I like books cause everything is there.

You know, you can go through it.

Social media is more tough.

Hard to find stuff.

You have a post on social on Instagram from two years ago.

Happens you got 600 post in between.

There is no table of content.

So how you gonna find it?

So books are still valuable in my opinion.

Your books are beautiful.

The images are gorgeous.

Everything is out clearly

Yeah.

I used to be an artist and photographer, so that helps, but I use natural daylight.

So everything I use is daylight.

There is no equipment.

Like if you look in the back of me, you see my camera and you see a window.

This is where I do my photo.

oh, wow.

So there's nothing complicated there.

Everything is just done with daylight,

And you do give some in person, seminars and tastings

For people who are more local.

sometime, I used to do that full time, but

basically I travel for the whole year, it was more difficult to do.

also we had the covid.

I could not give live classes anymore in Los Angeles area.

So I was like, okay, and I discover the zoom and the webinar.

So that opened the, uh, possibilities of going anywhere

and still being able to teach.

And also being able to teach people anywhere, like people from

anywhere can tune into your webinars.

yeah, exactly.

I would say 50% of my public is from Europe and middle east and crazy

country, like far away like China and all stuff and Russia and I had no idea.

And I think I did the first webinar and I did it for like 25 people, I

mean, I put a limit of 25 people and I think I sold out in 20 minutes.

I was like, oh my God.

And I had no idea that I had all those people from Europe who have my book,

were like, 'yes, finally, we can have a class with the guy' type of thing.

Like it was very humbling, like, wow.

the other thing is, your pottery is available.

is there a seperate website for that?

Yeah.

I have a website called PascalBaudarceramics.com.

My, uh, social media account on Instagram is wildcraftedceramics

Okay.

I'll put all of the links in the show notes so people can find it all.

So if there are any other ones as well, you can send them to me

Yeah.

I have urban outdoor skills, which is my main site for classes.

So my urban outdoor skills is more like me as a forger and

then Pauscal Baudar ceramic is about the pottery that I create.

But they kind of mix together because for me, pottery, I'm basically

more and more creating my own little universe with wildcrafting

and branches and stones and clays.

So I'm like a kid I'm creating my own little tiny universe

and having fun in the process.

That's good.

Sorry.

I'm eating those juniper berries right now.

They're so sweet.

Yeah,.

Those are the California juniper.

They are like little fruits.

They become completely like crunchy molasses and you can actually use them

, to make drinks like, uh, fermented drinks.

it's very rare in the desert.

Usually they dry so fast that they don't have the time to really

mature and become dehydrated.

But if I find some in the desert close to a stream, this is

really, this is location based foraging, like, you can do that.

Like you do location based and that will change your flavor profile of a plant.

Like if you collect lambs quarter in the sun, it'll have a different flavor

than lambs quarter in the shade.

Or curly dock in the sun and curly dock in the water is completely different flavor.

So Juniper, right location, near water, and it taste like

it's more sweeter than date.

It's pure sugar.

Oh, that's fascinating.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I found some reference, so.

I have a twenty three year old cat and she's senile.

So she does that every...

Three times a day, daily prayer.

Are you done with the prayer?

Okay.

She's deaf too.

Oh,

so she doesn't hear herself.

So she doesn't meow, she screams at you.

I remember reading a book like in 2010 when I really started to get

into foraging, and the book says that natives used that to make sweet

little pancake for kids as candy.

and I could not figure it out every time I was in the desert, I go, gross!

Was tasting like pine, soil type of thing.

And then one time I see these tree with just incredible berries and I

pick one off from the ground and I tried it and it was pure sweetness.

I was like, God, that was true.

It could be used as a little candy.

And I had no idea.

It blew my mind.

I was like, wow, but it's all about location, location, location,

know, and the timing and location, yeah totally.

You can also follow the animals.

The coyotes love those berries when they're ripe.

if you see a lot of coyote tracks going to a tree then you know,

that those berries are good to go.

it's fascinating the world of wild crafting.

I mean, it's what a lot of people would've known in the old days.

You know, if I wanna know what something is in the environment, for

example, I can look at coyote poop or bear poop and I will, they will tell

me that there is currant over here,

there is, you know, coffee berries and different stuff.

Cause it's basically an email.

They send me saying, this is the food we find locally.

It's the old time internet like I'm just sending you an email this

is what you can find locally.

Yeah.

is there anything else that you would want for people to...?

I think we cover a lot.

I think we did talk a lot.

well, thank you very much for joining me.

I really appreciated the conversation.

But the thing I can say, you know, the more I do this stuff,

more I realize, I don't know shit.

It's the amount of possibilities, absolutely mind boggling and

infinite and you can't stop learning.

Like I'm in a more native environment right here, because I'm high in the

mountains, so you have less invasive plant and I'm finding all those grains and seed.

I do research on it and I found that more than 50% are edible.

I come to the conclusion that there may be hundreds of edible seeds available,

locally in Southern California, hundreds.

And probably half of them are non-native and half of them will be native.

I'm gonna concentrate on the non-native one, because they are

frankly like the more common one.

This is all lost knowledge to a large degree, because the

old world Europe was civilized.

They're not gonna touch those grains.

Like yeah.

You know, poopoo it, because it's been agriculture society for 2000 years now,

or more than that, 4,000 years, probably.

So people have forgotten all those grains and seeds.

They're fascinating to rediscover and eat every single one is a flavor.

And seeds, you go like, , 'We're going to make bread?' No.

What about sprouting, you know, what about sprouting?

What about adding them to ferment?

What about using them as spice?

What about using them?

And, you know, I just posted on my Instagram, I did a

breakfast cereal this morning.

Everything is made from grains and seeds which I collected locally.

Super nutritious.

It is the ancestor.

I mean, use wild barley, which is the ancestor of the regular barley.

Had my biggest epiphany when I was looking at seeds and grains, like two

years ago, was when I was in the store.

And I look at all those civilized stuff around me.

And I went, it was like being in the matrix's like, what if

the weeds were the real food?

if you, when you collect all those grains and seeds and you were looking

at the nutritional value, they probably will be way higher than

your boring grains, that like wheat and millet, because those, I mean,

it's always about the money and time.

Those grains were chosen because they're easy to grow and they yield a lot,

but it doesn't mean they're the most

Nutritional, they don't have the most nutritional value.

If you look back in time and look at the teeth of hunter

gathers, they were perfect.

And when that agriculture came in, all the teeth started falling off because of the,

you know, starch and sugar in the mouth.

And anyway, listen, I'm rambling right now.

no, it's fascinating though.

And I think that there's a lot there to think about,

Yeah,

thank you very much

you're very welcome

Oui, je parle Francais.

As mentioned the links are in the show notes.

I highly recommend checking out Pascal's books.

They're well researched, visually stunning, thoughtfully put together,

creative and deeply inspirational!

Thanks for listening.

This was the first episode for which I've included a transcript.

If you found it to be useful, please let me know at carmenporter.com.

I'll consider transcribing all previous and future episodes if you

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