Something Wild

Michael Amsler

Weed Like to Know More: Wild greens gourmet Doug Gosling eats his words.

Are they weeds–or dinner?

By Marina Wolf

T HE STRETCH OF TRACKS between Railroad Square and College Avenue in Santa Rosa is a short, bleak walk–10 minutes if you stay on the packed gravel and move at a brisk clip. But on a recent Sunday stroll there, I found enough berries, cooking greens, and salad fixings to even get the five sullen men sharing a bottle against the brick backside of a railroad warehouse dressing up for dinner.

Welcome to nature’s supermarket, open 24 hours, self-service only.

Few of us haven’t lingered a little in a dusty blackberry patch or dismembered a head of clover for the bits of nectar within. Such furtive encounters tap into our collective heritage from the earliest days of humanity, when foraging was the way we survived. Now we pay top dollar for gourmet greens while wielding a wrathful hoe at the bounty that pops up in our front yard. Oblivious to the irony, we may even plant domesticated produce in the exact same location where we uprooted its wild cousin.

But there are still a few people who maintain the original connection, in one way or another. The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, for example, grounds its “weed policies” in very practical principles. “Weeds are good for the garden,” states head gardener Doug Gosling, who oversees the two acres of bio-intensive beds at the center. Thriving “volunteers” (“I have a hard time with the definition of ‘weed,'” he chuckles) keep the center’s seed bank diverse, and they also make an excellent living mulch, which holds down the soil and retains nutrients. And, of course, they’re good, dependable eating as far as the menu-makers at the OAEC are concerned. “I’d say that well over 50 percent of the salads we eat, all year round, are made of so-called weeds,” says Gosling.

And why shouldn’t the weeds take center stage? These brazen green marauders are more intensely flavored and, frequently, more nutritious than any froufrou cultivated green stuff. Early-spring favorites–dandelion, lamb’s-quarters, curled dock–have exceptionally high levels of vitamins A and C, which would explain why people of yore placed a great deal of faith in these greens as “spring tonics” after a long winter of poor provisions.

Even into the first part of this century, New York City opened Central Park each spring to the rummagings of Italian immigrants, who loved the tender young leaves of the radichielle (dandelion).

Nowadays you don’t want to do that: a clean civic lawn bespeaks a liberal hand with the herbicides. Fortunately, the urban landscape still abounds with foraging opportunities for those who are willing to stray from the beaten path. This has less to do with iconoclasm than with self-preservation: the beaten path has more cars and fewer buffers against them. A road might be lined with wild food to feed an army, but without a curb, surface pollutants wash off that road right into the soil. “There is no formula of feet away from the road to substitute for common sense,” says John Kallas, a wild-foods consultant who has been leading expeditions in Portland, Ore., since 1978.

Like Gosling, Kallas expresses a certain indifference to the term “weed.” “I get a much higher response when I call them ‘wild gourmet garden vegetables,'” he laughs. At any rate, most of his classes and field trips extend beyond weeds into the underexplored realm of eating the neighbor’s landscaping. “A lot of people plant things as ornamentals,” says Kallas, “and they either don’t know or don’t want to bother with the edible aspects.”

Asking permission is an essential part of foraging in a neighborhood; not only is it courteous, but it gives you a chance to inquire–nonjudgmentally, of course–about past and present gardening practices. You won’t always be able to find out, as in the case of abandoned sites and for-sale lots. But, as both experts say, unless you’ve been gardening your own land for years, there is never any way to know for sure what’s in the soil.

So with all these concerns about safety, why bother to eat wild foods at all? Wouldn’t it be safer and more convenient to go to the store?

MAYBE. Or maybe not. It’s true that, as a forager, you end up biting into a lot of bitter leaves and getting prickly things in your socks. You also have to be more aware of pollution than the average rose-smelling pedestrian does. But even an earnest grower of organic vegetables can legally be next to a major thoroughfare. And foraging connects you to your own food supply in a way that’s truly miraculous: finding wild food in the concrete jungle sometimes feels like tripping over a chunk of manna in the desert.

However, Kallas gives one pause when he talks about foragers’ motivations. “I think there’s an underlying insecurity about having to depend on the industrial food complex.” Hmm. How strangely millennial. And I must admit to an occasional apocalyptic fantasy of the Big One hitting and my being able to hole up in a hedge for weeks, emerging in far better shape than those who had to turn to looting the 7-Elevens.

But mostly I just like to play with my food, and foraging is an immediately gratifying way to explore and get messy. My fingers were purple for weeks when I picked olives from the trees around my apartment complex. I chewed happily on muddy wild radish leaves on the OAEC hillside. And when I bit into that inexplicable December berry near the railroad tracks, I hopped a happy little dance over the glittering fields of broken glass.

The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center hosts volunteer garden days every Wednesday, with a vegetarian potluck lunch (874-1557). For a more focused look at foraging, John Kallas offers his quarterly newsletter, The Wild Food Adventurer, for $12 a year. See his website for more details.

From the January 29-February 4, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Garden Variety

Michael Amsler

His Cup of Tea: Mark Presley of Taylor Maid farms enjoys an herbal brew.

Taylor Maid’s organic teas perk up the cup with wild flowers, leaves, and savory herbs

By Paula Harris

T HIS COULD USE more lavender,” remarks one woman as, like a professional “nose” creating the latest designer perfume, she deeply inhales a fragrant liquid and swirls the concoction around in a pure white bowl.

“I can taste the licorice notes, but the finish is a little astringent,” adds a man, reverently sipping the heady fluid and rolling it around his palette before deftly spitting it out like an expert winemaker.

It’s late afternoon and the pale winter sun hangs low as three men and three women stand around a wooden table under the shade of an old oak tree at the edge of a huge Occidental garden leading into a deep forest.

The group is wearing gardening attire and heavy boots, and everyone is grubby and tired after a day of working on the land. They could use a break, but their attention is now focused on the white bowls as they swish the liquid around and watch the steam rise into the chilly afternoon air.

But it’s not perfumes or pinots inspiring this particular group of connoisseurs–they’re blending organic loose-leaf tea.

“We analyze the qualities, the different notations, whether the finish is bitter, sweet, or spicy,” explains Michael Presley, a tall, lanky, athletic man, who is the chief cultivator for Taylor Maid Farms, which currently produces 15 blends of tea. “We’re looking for a real harmony–it’s very sensual.”

Taylor Maid, which also roasts organic coffees, opted to begin farming ingredients for teas five years ago, deeming that the necessary crops (many of them native to the area) would be a good environmental fit with west Sonoma County. “We felt that growing wine grapes would be bad for the land and that herbs were the way to go,” says Taylor Maid co-owner Mark Inman. “This is the easiest method to work with to keep the farm in sustainable fashion.”

Now some 50 acres overlooking the coast on the hilly west side of Occidental are devoted to tea farming. The picturesque scene includes flower fields, bicycle paths, and frog ponds, where the amphibians are used to naturally control pests.

Taylor Maid cultivates traditional culinary and medicinal herbs and flowers, including peppermint, lemongrass, sage, hops, nettles, ginger root, rose hips, hibiscus, sunflowers, and English, French, and Spanish lavenders to blend with imported organic green and black teas.

Presley says eventually the company would like to grow its own tea plantation under the extensive canopy of the conifers and redwood trees shading the property. “We live in the Banana Belt here and it’s favorable to all kinds of horticulture,” he explains. “But growing tea is a future plan for down the road.”

The company’s final product is caffeine-free, 100 percent organic, and void of the man-made chemicals frequently used in tea production. The blends contain only leaves, flowers, seeds, roots, essential oils, and fruits.

The specialty teas are available at many local stores and at the Santa Rosa Farmers Market. Bestsellers include Herbal Gardens, Black Lavender, and Vital Green (a tasty blend of nettles, lemon balm, and green tea).

“People really like these teas because what they taste is the real herb; there’s nothing boosting the herb and no artificial flavors sprayed into it,” says Inman. “The natural flavors are subtle but deeper–it makes tea-drinking a more poignant experience.”

While some of the blends border on being medicinal, the company makes no specific health claims. However, Inman is quick to point out that nettle is a reputed blood tonic with antiviral properties; spearmint, raspberry leaf, and chamomile have proven calming effects; and lemon balm and rosehips are said to fight colds.

“Our whole thing with tea is that it’s a natural food with healing properties–not just a beverage,” says Inman. “Remember, the natural healing properties in herbs have been used in tea form for centuries.”

Presley agrees, claiming that our “oldest interaction with plants” has been to brew up a batch of hot, soothing tea. “It’s our common heritage, all of humanity shares it: Europeans, Asians, Native Americans,” he explains. “Now we’re realizing that it’s a global art.”

“Art” is an apt description. From the planting to the harvesting, drying, milling, and blending, a common thread of creativeness runs through the operations at Taylor Maid, elevating the beverage way beyond the common cuppa.

Indeed, when you pry open a vacuum-sealed tin of, say, the company’s Flower Power blend (an intoxicating mix of hibiscus, rose hips, orange peel, cinnamon, calendula petals, cornflower petals, lavender, rose geranium flowers, and essential orange and cinnamon oils) the sensation is almost overwhelming. The dried blend is alive with color, like a burgundy and orange-hued potpourri–and it smells like Christmas cookies. Tempting enough to bury one’s face in the reusable container.

“It’s almost like aromatherapy,” says Ananda Johnson, part of the Tea Tasting Team, assistants to blending expert Julie Morbitz. “When we stand there and taste–sometimes from silver goblets, sometimes from white china bowls so that we can see the color–Julie tries to pull responses from each of us about what we see, smell, taste, what it makes us think of, and how it makes us feel,” Johnson says. ” We’re really committed to this. It takes a lot of work and study. I guess you could say that tea is our destiny.”

From the January 29-February 4, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Mystery Meat

Michael Amsler

Can Do: Like a terrible, horrible Manifest Destiny–Spam is as American as mom, apple pie, and baseball.

For Hormel’s notorious luncheon meat, it’s still a Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam world!

By David Templeton

IN EARLY JANUARY, the tiny U.S. territory of Guam, in the western Pacific Ocean, was all but devastated when powerful Typhoon Omar raged across the 209-square-mile island, almost literally threatening to blow the place–with its 150,000 residents–right off the map. The populace has been left without electricity, and with only limited supplies of food and water. There is, however, some good news.

The Spam just arrived.

According to Mary Harris, spokesperson for Hormel Foods in Austin, Minn., the historic company–long aware that Spam is something of a dietary staple on Guam–has generously donated 40,000 cases of the belly-filling foodstuff to the Salvation Army’s disaster relief effort on the island.

Forty-thousand cases. That works out to around six and a half cans of Spam per islander. Or 5,760,000 Spamburgers by the time the last can is scraped clean. Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of Spam. The good news doesn’t end there, either.

As a kind of bonus, the grateful Guamanians are among the first humans on the planet to gaze upon the brand-new, updated, and redesigned Spam can, featuring the first change in cover art since the canned meat’s initial unveiling in the not-yet-refrigerated spring of 1937 (yup, the product just celebrated its 60th anniversary as a sort of American food icon). The original cannister–oddly rectangular, with that nifty little key you’d have to twist around the top of the can to remove the lid–was proudly emblazoned with a full-color photo of a gleaming slab of Spam, whimsically studded with cloves to resemble a fine holiday ham. On the new cans, they’ve lost the loaf, and now display such appetizing entrées as Spamburgers and Spam salads, Spam casseroles, and something that looks like Spam-and-broccoli rigatoni.

The can’s trademark bright-blue color remains intact, as do the bold, yellow all-capital letters spelling out the name SPAM (the key was replaced with a pop-top years ago), so the islanders are unlikely to confuse their Spam with any other product. Still, the change is a significant one.

Spam remains one of the most successful food products ever created–Hormel representatives have deduced that in the United States alone, 3.8 cans of Spam are consumed every second, much of it by college students who use it as a dormitory staple. But the image of Spam has taken a number of hits in recent years: witness Monty Python’s famous Spam comedy sketch–“I’ll have the Spam, Spam, eggs and Spam; that hasn’t got much Spam in it”; and the new techno-term “spamming,” which refers to the distribution of unsolicited, unwanted junk mail over the Internet.

These days, hundreds of private websites now exist primarily, it seems, to speculate on what exactly is in Spam. Furthermore, in spite of the numbers proving that Spam is still widely consumed, you’ll be hard-pressed to find many folks who will publicly admit to liking the stuff. Hormel, unwilling to let its prized product be further transformed into a cultural joke, has begun taking steps to ensure Spam’s future.

“It’s a generational thing, you see,” explains Spam spokesperson Harris. “Young people view Spam differently than their parents did. They don’t necessarily want it to be the same Spam that mom and dad had. We also felt the label should reflect the desires of the more diverse and calorie-conscious tastes of today.”

As to the rumors about what Spam is made of, Harris rankles at the outrageous claims made by certain spurious websites, listing such odds and ends as hooves, ears, brains, and even whole baby pigs as among its routine ingredients.

“Spam,” she patiently repeats for the umpteenth time of her career, “is pork shoulder, ham, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrate. Period. I’m afraid the government simply wouldn’t allow us to do the things that have been said of us. Nor,” Harris–who claims to love the stuff–adds, “would I eat it if we did.”

F OR 61 YEARS, Spam has withstood such taunting and teasing, and it endures nevertheless. Along the way, a bevy of apocryphal stories and shoddy historical “facts” have been attached to the mythic meat, all of which–false or not–only shore up the assertion that Spam has become as intrinsic a part of American popular culture as baseball, happy meals, and presidential peccadilloes.

The name itself has, from time to time, served as something of a national guessing game. It is an acronym, many people believe, which stands for any number of things: Specially Processed Army Meat and Salted Pork And More are two of the more plausible guesses. But why stop there? Certain whimsical people have suggested that Spam might even stand for Super Pink Artificial Meat; Squirrel, Possum, And Mouse; or Some People Are Missing.

The truth, according to Hormel historians, is that Spam is not an acronym at all. When the product was first put on the market, it was with the name Hormel Spiced Ham, and it soon had numerous competitors with similarly uncatchy names. On New Year’s Eve 1937, a Hormel executive threw a party at which he offered a prize of $100 to the guest who could come up with the best name to set the luncheon meat apart from the others. It was the executive’s brother, Phillip Daigneau, who came up with the most striking name simply by combining the words “spiced” and “ham.” Daigneau won the prize, and in doing so secured Spam’s place in culinary history.

A forthcoming book by Linda Eggers relates this charming creation story and more besides. The Spam Cookbook: Menus from Main Street (Longstreet Press; $5.95)–served up in the shape and look of an actual Spam can (the new one)–will feature numerous informational tidbits, along with such recipes as “New England Spam Chowder” and “Chicago Deep-Dish Spam Pizza,” even a Spam and goat cheese appetizer.

“For a lot of people, Spam has always been that extra-special little secret ingredient,” laughs Eggers’ publicist Brian Peterson. “The largest group of folks with a common food affinity are the eaters of Spam. It’s almost a secret society. But it’s a very big secret society.”

IT’S A SOCIETY that’s not always that secret. Just ask any resident of Hawaii. Or Alaska. Per capita, the 49th and 50th states are the largest and second-largest consumers of Spam, respectively, in America. Hawaii’s excuse is a lack of reliable refrigeration. Alaska’s high Spam consumption rate, according to one Mr. Whitekeys, the proprietor of the Fly-By-Night Club in Anchorage, can be summed up in three words: “Spam don’t freeze.” The Fly-By-Night, predictably, serves a number of Spam dishes, including a Spam and champagne dinner. “That one’s for the lovers,” Whitekeys says.

Spam’s temperature resistance has, in fact, made it a must-carry item for soldiers, who have affectionately called it the prime rib of the U.S. military. Even Russia’s former premier Nikita Khrushchev made no secret of his love of Spam. In a letter to Hormel following World War II, Khrushchev wrote, “Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.”

The universality of the Spam influence can be further proven by the success of Hormel’s latest ancillary industry: Spam Merchandise. The Spam Catalog–supported by an ever-evolving website (www.spam.com) and a 24-hour phone-line (800/LUV-SPAM)–is a certifiable global phenomenon, raking in millions worldwide for such novelties as Spam T-shirts, baseball caps, boxer shorts, beach towels, wall clocks, mouse pads, coffee mugs, umbrellas, even Spam earrings, Spam snowglobes (turn one upside down and snow falls on a tiny can of Spam), and a stainless-steel Spam golf club.

So will Hormel be releasing a 1998 commemorative Guam Disaster bomber jacket? How about a little globular bauble featuring a can of Spam sitting monumentlike on the island; turn it over and a typhoon swirls madly, eternally unable to unseat Spam from its place of honor.

“You can knock it all you want,” replies Hormel’s Harris, ever-so-patiently. “But Spam,” she laughs, “is Spam. And that’s all there is to it.”

From the January 29-February 4, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.