- I feel like a woman of the wilderness right now.
Oh, there's an enormous grub.
- Basically insects taste like whatever they eat.
(bites into grub)
(squeals)
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
- Hello, I'm Merle,
and I am a video producer for Goodfull.
I spend a lot of time making these kind of crazy
vegan recipes and having my coworkers try them.
- And I'm Rob Greenfield, an environmental activist
and I just finished an entire year
of growing and foraging a hundred percent of my food.
- Today we're gonna be making a three course meal.
- With all ingredients that we foraged
from the streets of L.A.
(calm music)
- This is our family garden.
On the median, and all our neighbors
are welcome to come and harvest from it.
- Thank you so much.
(laughing)
- And we've actually announced it in the LA Times
so people know that this is for everyone.
- I think it's basically a crime
for anybody in Southern California
to buy rosemary at the grocery store.
- I'm definitely guilty of that.
- Then you won't be guilty after today
because look at this, this is rosemary.
All the way to the end of there.
This is a good beginner plant,
'cause you're familiar with rosemary and you had it.
See how here it's a woody stem?
- [Merle] Yeah.
- [Rob] And then up here it's actually green the stem.
So when you harvest plants like this,
you wanna pick at about the green spot
because then it will regenerate.
Oh I just saw something else we can eat.
- What this?
- This, this is another landscaping plant.
And this is a berry that I've seen everywhere.
I mean look, look at the shrub,
there's berries all up it.
So this is a hedge that probably 99% of Angeleno's
and anybody where these hedges exist
walk past and never realize that it's a delicious fruit.
- Well 'cause we were told as children
never to eat the berries off stray bushes.
- This isn't stray, this bush is our friend.
(chewing)
It's a nice fruit. - It's pretty good.
- Look at the color.
- Oh my god the juicy ones are nice.
- You know that's got some nice antioxidants
in it with that color.
It's nice when you're foraging to have different bags
so you can keep the different ingredients separate.
Should we get some sweet potatoes?
- Let's do it.
- All right, cool.
- You know, I can't help but notice
that you're not wearing any shoes.
Is that like a foraging tactic?
- Really for me it just comes down
to the fact that I simply believe
in the design of the human body
and I don't think I need shoes.
And I've been doing it for about like,
maybe eight or so years and it's workin'.
Let's find some sweet potato.
So there's a whole bunch comin' out right here.
So that's generally gonna be a nice scent
to where there might be a good potato under it.
All right here, this looks like a good one.
See this thick vine?
Like how much thicker it is than this thin green one?
So that's a good sign, so dig right down here.
Have you ever dug up a potato?
- Absolutely not.
There's an enormous grub down here that I found.
It's the juiciest grub I've ever seen.
- [Rob] Really let me see if it's juicy.
- Oh no.
No, no.
- Basically insects taste like whatever they eat.
Do you wanna eat it?
- Absolutely not.
(bites into grub)
(squeals)
(laughing)
(spits out grub)
The crunch.
- That was a bad grub.
Some grubs are ugh.
- It woulda been better if you at least enjoyed it.
- I know I usually like grubs but that was a gross grub.
- [Merle] Oh, that's a good one.
- I think I might have found the biggest one yet.
- [Merle] Here we go, here we go.
- [Rob] I'm glad we didn't give up.
- [Merle] Woo, yay.
- [Rob] We got us a potato.
- Oh my god.
- So this, is amaranth and I grew a lot of this in Florida.
And amaranth grows wildly.
The reason it grows wild all over the place
is that it has a ton of seeds.
So watch this.
These seeds are a grain, amaranth is a grain
you can buy at the grocery store.
For the sake of time we can just grab the seed heads
and pop 'em into this bag
and then we can separate 'em when we get back.
So yesterday Merle and I didn't get quite enough food
to complete this meal so I'm out this morning
walking the fringes of some of the urban parks
to get more greens and hopefully find some citrus.
So I'm really excited to have found some nasturtium.
It's really spicy and this is gonna add
to the mix of greens we're making.
So I'm gonna harvest a whole bunch of this.
Walking on the street here I found a really great patch
of sorrel and sorrel is another great green
that grows wildly an abundantly.
It's actually got kind of a lemony flavor.
I found a great score of lambsquarter here.
One of my favorite greens.
I'm walkin' down the sidewalk in a neighborhood
and I found a tree with some lemons falling to the ground.
And this is often what you'll find
is tons of fruit falling to the ground.
Sometimes if there's a whole bunch falling to the ground
I'll just grab 'em right off the ground
or a couple off the tree that are right on the sidewalk.
So I found some young, tender, nopal cactus pads here,
that I'm gonna harvest.
- Now we're back in the kitchen.
This is the game plan.
For the first course, we're gonna be doing
a sweet potato soup.
- And for the main course or the second course
we are going to make sauteed nopal cactus,
with the sea salt that we're making.
- And finally for the dessert course,
we're going to be making a sorbet
with some of the lemon juice from the lemons we got.
I've never made a sorbet without sugar.
- And I've never made a sorbet, ever.
(laughing)
- So we're gonna start with, let's start with that.
- Sorbet.
- So what are we gonna do for salt.
- So this is salt water.
This is Pacific Ocean water from the beach.
And this is how we're gonna make our salt.
Basically we're just gonna pour this
into this pan, turn the pan on and all the water's
gonna boil off and then we'll be left with salt.
- [Merle] Wait that is so cool, so I live in L.A.
There's not reason for me to be paying for salt.
- [Rob] Pretty much there's no reason for anyone
in California to buy salt at the store.
It's right there in the ocean.
- So let's start with the sorbet.
What we're gonna do is just juice these bad boys.
I got us two juicers.
- [Rob] Cool.
- So you keep juicing those,
in the mean time I'm gonna start zesting,
from the peels that we already have.
- [Rob] How would it be just to bite one of these things?
- [Merle] Give it a shot.
- [Rob] Heh, I guess I'm a little scarred
from the whole grub thing.
- Honestly so am I.
We're gonna blend up our sorbet.
So we got about a cup of lemon juice.
- There's a couple of seeds in there.
- [Merle] I have a sifter.
- [Rob] Cool.
- This is lemon zest,
that you solemnly get from Meyer lemons.
Now, we need a little water.
Normally with a a sorbet we might do
two cups of lemon juice and one cup
and three quarters of water.
But since we don't have sugar,
other than the sugar in the lemon,
we don't need to dilute this any more
than it already is.
So let's add this in.
(pouring water)
But this is pretty simple.
If it turns out good, it's just lemon juice,
a little water, pinch of salt and some lemon zest.
- Frozen.
All right let's blend 'er up.
(blending)
Smells really good.
We're just gonna be using this flat sheet pan
for the sake of time.
And also I'm thinking possibly it could when we scoop it out
make really beautiful kinda like shaved ice.
- [Rob] Mmm, that'd be nice.
- That's the dream.
That's the hope.
- Its a nice hope.
- Thank you.
So we're just gonna pop this in the freezer
and then we will check on this in a little while.
(cheerful music)
I think we should, to be fair call it a shaved ice.
Serven with the berries to garnish.
All right sweet potato time.
- Sweet potatoes.
- We're gonna get our water a boilin'.
All right, so we've got our potatoes,
and we've got our rosemary.
Let's just slice these up into little cubes.
Do you think that foraging is something
that's accessible and possibly
achievable for most people in the U.S.?
- Generally food is growing abundantly
whether it's in the cities in the urban environments
or out in the countryside in the woods,
the lakes, the rivers, the oceans.
Everywhere you go there's food growing.
So I think it's something that
most people can do a little bit of.
- All right, I'm gonna add a little bit
of our salt in here just so you're abreast
of everything that's going on.
- Yeah, rosemary?
- Okay now we're gonna add some of our rosemary.
You wanna add some in?
- Sure, you just throw the sprigs in?
- I just throw them right in.
To let them season, you don't wanna crush it up
too much 'cause we're gonna strain this.
I have never cooked with cactus before.
So you're gonna be teaching me a thing or two with this.
- This is nopal, or prickly pear.
It's edible and the key is you just need
to get rid of these spikes.
I'm gonna make a goal of us not eating spikes today.
- [Merle] That'd be nice.
- Which is not too hard.
Basically I cut around the edge,
'cause that's where a lot of the spikes are.
So I just kinda cut around the whole edge.
To get rid of a majority of them.
I cut this base.
(cuts nopal)
And that looks nice, you can see good color.
- Yeah, let's set these aside for a second
so they can boil while we're doing this.
Mmm, this smells so good.
I love rosemary.
Okay, so let's slice these up.
How do you cut these?
- [Rob] Yeah I just basically do chunks, like that big.
Squares.
- Okay so for the next step we're gonna separate
the seeds from the amaranth which he's gonna show us
a really cool way to do that.
- I'm shaking this to get the seeds
to fall to the bottom and then I can pretty much
take this stuff right off the top.
This heavy stuff,
we've gotten most of the grain outta there.
- Are you gonna blow all that off?
- Yeah.
So you ideally do this outside,
and definitely not over your potatoes.
Do you wanna blow?
(blowing)
Yeah. - Oh my god.
- Maybe we should put a lid on that--
- Okay you can do the rest.
- Soup just in case.
You do that then.
It's good team work.
(blowing)
So this is called winnowing.
- Okay, feel like I'm earning my food today for sure.
(blowing)
This is all set to go.
I think we're good on the potatoes.
So we'll let those sit for a second.
And this requires a three to one
ratio with water.
- One.
Two.
Three.
- Maybe just a teeny bit more.
Just a little bit.
(pours water in)
Okay, and then I think to add to this
to add a little flavor maybe we can add
some of the sage 'cause we foraged it.
- Yeah I think that's a good idea.
- And our magical salt 'cause
it's gonna make everything better.
We're gonna set this to boil,
I'm gonna cover it up and then we're gonna let it simmer
for about 20 minutes.
Okay so we're removing the rosemary
from our sweet potato, and then we can just drain the rest.
We're gonna be blending our soup together
so we can get it as smooth and as creamy as possible.
I know what some of you might be thinking,
that's not soup that's just water and potatoes,
however, I got this method from a recipe
I saw by Gordon Ramsay
where he did the most simple broccoli soup.
And it's just broccoli and boiling water,
and the boiling water really brings out
the complexity and the flavor of the vegetable.
We're gonna apply that same method here.
But we've got the rosemary and some salt,
so we're already ahead of the game.
- It's soup.
- This is our stock, and we're gonna just add some of this
to the sweet potatoes until we get it
to the consistency that we want.
(blending)
Nice.
Now it's time for us to saute.
We're gonna saute up our cactus with our greens.
We don't have oil.
- Yeah.
- So how're we gonna saute up this cactus?
- So basically just in water.
With salt.
I've cooked this enough times where I feel like
one of the keys is not to over cook it.
- I feel like I can already see the water
getting pretty slimy, this is lookin' pretty wild.
- [Rob] What if we just dump this out and see what we have?
- Wow, clover.
- That's actually sorrel.
- Oh.
(laughs)
- [Rob] Should we take the grass out?
- I've come this far,
I'm not turning my nose up to grass.
This looks like a big ol' pot of greens.
Beautiful, smells good.
And then we're gonna do our sweet potato leaves too?
- [Rob] Yeah, let's take the most tender, young ones.
- All right, now shall we just add a little bit of water?
- [Rob] Yeah.
- [Merle] And then super low heat?
- All of this, a lot of people
would throw this in the garbage
but this is all earth,
it's all what can be turned into compost.
So this goes into the compost,
makes good soil, can grow more food with it.
- When it cooks down it just
looks like any other green thing.
- It does.
- I eat in a salad.
- If every American just did this every day,
it would change the American diet.
- Just 'cause it's so nutrient dense?
- Yeah, it's just so much nutrients and so good for you.
- The greens are all done,
we're gonna plate everything and eat.
- Sounds good.
- [Merle] Okay, we did it.
We made three courses.
Now let's try it.
- Let's eat.
Soup first?
- Yeah.
(chewing)
(cheerful music)
Pretty good.
Honestly very impressed by the consistency of this.
- It's good.
- I fought grubs for this soup.
(laughing)
I'm happy with it. - Me too.
(laughing)
- All right, I'm gonna try
to get a little bit of everything.
Oh my god.
The amaranth really helps balance out the sliminess.
- [Rob] Hmm, really?
- [Merle] 'Cause it's crunchy.
- Mmm.
- Right, so good.
- I love it.
The greens are definitely my favorite part.
- Me too.
They're packed with the most flavor for sure.
We have to high five on this one,
I feel like that's very, very well done.
- It's a nice plate.
- So this turned out to be more of a shaved ice
because we didn't forage sugar
so we weren't able to get the consistency of sorbet.
But I still think it's gonna be incredibly refreshing.
- Yeah let's see.
(chewing)
- Whoa.
(smacking lips)
- Lemony. - Lemony.
- It's definitely a nice treat.
- Oh my god you need more berries with yours,
it's so much better with the berries.
- Yeah more berries.
Considering I've never foraged in Los Angeles before,
I'd say we did pretty good.
- I'm very happy with it.
Honestly.
Yay, we did it.
(laughing)
Okay the sound of you crunching on that grub
is gonna haunt my dreams forever.
_ One good thing to say though, at least.
I spit the grub back onto the ground.
I'm cycling nutrients.
I'm surprised though, honestly I usually like grubs.