This seasonal series shows you how to develop a nutritive relationship and bake, roast, saute, ferment and preserve with the edible landscape that grows all around us. For four weekends over the course of the year, you’ll learn to identify, properly harvest, and cook with the wild edibles and medicinals of the Bay Area. This series will focus on plants that can help our bodies tonify, adapt, and feel deeply nourished throughout the year.
$510.00
Out of stock
Weekend Schedule
Saturday morning
Join Alexandra for an informative herb walk in the East Bay hills. You’ll learn to identify plants and their edible and medicinal virtues, along with proper harvesting and processing techniques. Discussion will include the ethics of wildcrafting to ensure an ongoing bounty for years to come. We’ll focus on invasives and natives that grow and fruit in abundance, and on understanding which wild edibles are rare and endangered and must not be collected. .
Sunday morning
Sunday morning’s classes focus on food preparation with harvested bounty. Join Alexandra at a private venue on the Peninsula, or over Zoom, as she demonstrates recipes that incorporate our seasonal foods into rich, delicious, and invigorating dishes. Chosen recipes will illustrate extraction and food preservation techniques so you can develop the confidence to incorporate these plants into your daily meals.
Seasonal Foraging Focus
These lists are in no way comprehensive, but provide a starting point for our explorations
Spring – Spring’s blessings of greens and flowers to cleanse and tonify our systems after a winter of rich food; including Miner’s/Indian lettuce, Oxalis, Chickweed, Nettles, Spring onions, Watercress, Mallow, Milk thistle, Nasturtium, Wild radish, Wild geranium, Arugula, Chamomile, Dock, Fir and Pine tips, Milky Oats, Hawthorn blossoms, Pine pollen
Summer – Summer’s bounty of heartier leaves, berries, fruits, seeds, grasses, seaweeds (discussed; not harvested); including Oatstraw, Blackberry, Huckleberries, Thimbleberry, Nettles, Yarrow, Mugwort, Pearly Everlasting, Dock seed, Plantain, Bristly Ox tongue, Horehound
Autumn – As the year drifts toward winter, we’ll find the late-ripening fruits, seeds and nuts, dried stalks; including Hawthorn berries, Rose hips, Huckleberries, Bay nuts and leaves, Acorns, Manzanita berry, Nettle seed,
Winter – Time to harvest roots, nuts, and fruits, and with the rains we’ll find young wild greens, mushrooms (discussed; not harvested);, Yarrow, Mugwort roots, Cleavers, Miner’s Lettuce, Chickweed, Redwood, Manzanita berries, Toyon berries, Turkey tails, Dandelion
Support Our Work
Berkeley Herbal Center is a 501(c)(3) organization, so all donations are tax deductible. Tax ID #14-1975183
If you would like to donate by check or cash, please send an envelope addressed to:
Berkeley Herbal Center
1250 Addison St., #G
Berkeley, CA 94702
