A rainbow plate

I just went to Heidi's second Conscious Nutrition class, it was called Beyond Greens and discussed and showed how to use wild edibles in your daily nutritised life.
We got to create our own rainbow mandala salad from all the beautiful little glass bowls of fruits and vegetables Heidi had cut up, eat bowl was filled with one coloured ingredient. She spoke of how each chakra coresponded with a particular colour and hence how foods can be used to stimulate and bring balance. We were invited to create our own rainbow with intention of bringing balance to our own beings. It was a most wonderful meal and I could feel how the whole space and each ingredient had been blessed by this most wonderful lady. Thankyou once again Heidi for facilitating such beautiful classes in food wonder.

Cholocate coated kawakawa berries

Kawakawa ice cream

Wild food walks in Daylesford

Alexis Pitsopoulos, locavore, DJ and Edible weed expert, runs regular on demand wild foods workshops at the Daylesford Neighbourhood Centre. Call DNC on 5348 3569 to enquire about the next one or you can join Alexis' mailing list.
Also check out this awesome blog post by Patrick Jones on a recent weed walk with Alexis.

Feral food future

Eating weeds, as I’m beginning to understand, is the most radical food supply available. It is one that attends to the desire to make the transition to ecologically embedded modes of existence, transitioning to a feral food future perhaps more suited to non-Indigenous Australians. We are, after all, weeds ourselves. However, with expanding populations a relocalised food supply system is going to rely on biodiverse modes of supply that Malthus could have only dreamed of. Permaculture shows us how to cohabit the earth again alongside non-human nature while generating an abundant and diverse food supply. Permaculture is a transitional ideology, a framework for putting all the local food supply options back on the table – foraging for feral fruits and nuts, growing annual and perennial vegetables, eating edible weeds, developing reciprocal relationships with other species, eating much less or no meat, understanding the importance of micro-fauna and micro-fungi networks to enhance soils for greater food abundance
Patrick Jones from Greenwash #13 article published in In Trouble

Verde Provodores

Wow! Every now and again you stumble across someone amazing who is in love with life and food and conducts themselves with effortless heartfelt integrity. Verde Provedores is an artisan food producer based in Daylesford specialising in Organic, preservative free handmade dips made from locally sourced ingredients.
Have a look at Kylie's lovely website!

Wild fennel and whitebean dip!

Wild fennel foraged from the train tracks around Daylesford made into a fine fine blend with white beans and fetta.

Nutrition

My new naturopath Heidi is wonderful, she just gave me this big bag of flowers and wild edibles, including Clivers (Stickyweed's other name), dandelion, chickweed, viola and pansies. So exciting!

Wild food foraging

What is important to me, and what Frank also taught, is people need to re-learn foraging, healing and celebrating with wild plants. These humble, undomesticated, feral beings. Domestication leads to docility, to a slow death of our senses and a loss of connection to our soul.
I believe individuals need to start learning ‘skills for self reliance’. We live in challenging times with global warming, peak oil, food security and sustainability being the new buzz-words.
Re-discovering the lost art of foraging is a joyous and pleasurable way to reconnect our fragmented souls back with Nature, back to the ancient roots of this land, and ultimately back to our true kinship with each other.
The coming years on an individual and collective level will be challenging, it is up to us to face those changes directly, to re-empower ourselves and support each other. And the humble plant kingdom has a lot to teach us all.
-- Robin Harford
Wild foods foraging courses

Wild edible resources

Food under Foot,
unleash the energy of wild edibles

Eat Weeds
Wild food guide to the edible plants of Britain

Herbs are special getting to know and use wild edibles

Self nutrition data Dandelion greens

Health benefits of dandelions
Much of what dandelions purportedly do in promoting good health could result from nutritional richness alone. Vogel considers the sodium in dandelions important in reducing inflammations of the liver. Gerasimova, the Russian chemist who analyzed the dandelion for, among other things, trace minerals, stated that "dandelion [is] an example of a harmonious combination of trace elements, vitamins and other biologically active substances in ratios optimal for a human organism" (Hobbs 1985).