Foraging

It is late summer in southeast Alaska and that means it's time for foraging! The chantrelles are thick in the spruce forest and the smoker is filled with sockeye salmon. The trees have been thick with cherries, and the blueberries are everywhere. Gardens are filled with kale and chard, peas, and lettuce. Every night is a potential seasonal feast- pizza piled high with mushrooms, halibut and salmon, shrimp and crab, berry pies and cherry cobbler. Alaska is wonderful!

But foraging can happen anywhere. Last spring I noticed snails all over K's San Diego neighborhood one morning. It had rained and they were crawling all over the sidewalk and into the sea fig that lines the canyons of the city. Turns out, these guys are the descendants of snails brought to California by a Frenchman during the Gold Rush. They escaped and thrived. Commonly viewed as nothing more than a stubborn garden pest, these were in fact the esteemed escargot snail, Helix aspersa .

I captured around 60 and put them into a small wooden wine crate with holes drilled into it.

They enjoyed a nice diet of beet greens, pasta, and beer for a couple weeks. Their systems thus flushed, they were steamed and sauteed with butter, garlic, shallots and herbs, and baked in a puff pastry.