Man helps masses see forest as food source
PORTLAND, Ore. - The tools of John Kallas' trade are few and inexpensive: a Bowie-type knife, a large pair of orange-handled scissors. Both of these are holstered, gun-like, as he leads his clients around particularly muddy spots in Forest Park's Wildwood Trail.
The capital investment may be small, but the risks are great, as he scrambles half-way up a steep slope to get cozy with a wild rose bush.
"I fall a lot!" he says cheerfully, obviously comfortable looking foolish, on occasion, after 18 years in the business in search of wild food.
His experience is so deep - he tells me in a tone that expresses a little shock I didn't already know this - that it would be impossible (and unfair to his customers) to properly train an assistant. He is experienced, all right, but nothing in his nearly two decades of teaching city folk the difference between vanilla leaf (not edible, but a good insect repellent) and water leaf (edible, and in season now) prepared him for this year. For the untrammeled demand.
Scramble for wild food know-how
In years past, Kallas, who leads several-hour wild food excursions and weekend-long "rendezvous" expeditions in Portland, Sauvie Island, the Oregon Coast, the Mount Hood National Forest and Washington as his full-time job, would break even. When I met him last July, he'd already covered his expenses for the year.
This year? All heck has broken loose and eager students are booking his Wild Food Adventures classes several weeks ahead of time.
When a Forest Park walk scheduled for a recent Saturday filled up three weeks ahead of time, Kallas added a second afternoon session. That, too, filled up in the space of 10 days.
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TV exposes Kallas to the masses
A small part of Kallas' success could be attributed to his appearance on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Oregon Field Guide” program over the winter, where he was shown leading a group digging for clams and sea vegetables. At the end of a class I recently attended, about a quarter of the students raised their hands, indicating they saw him on OPB.
But most of the other wild food ingénues found him this way: "I was looking around the Internet for something, and I found him." Serendipity? Chance? A desire to take the exit ramp from the corporate food industry, perhaps? Some ancestral longing to reconnect with nature so it doesn't disappear? A hunger to learn the truth?
The truth about eating wild
The truth is what we're getting. The truth, for instance, about Oregon grapes and sumac, which are not, after all, poisonous. My husband is shocked when I tell him I've been snacking on Oregon grape flowers (lemony! sour, and almost sweet!).
"I've always heard you couldn't eat Oregon grape," he says. "EXACTLY," I say, triumphantly.
It's exactly as Kallas described: A mother and her children are walking along, and the children instinctively put things in their mouths, bright yellow flowers and leaves, and mom says, "Those are POISONOUS!" because she can't be sure. The kids grow up and tell their children.
Oregon grape flowers are great on salads, says Kallas; I'm imagining a jam with tart apples and crushed buds. The fruit, while not, after all, a grape, is still wonderful in jelly.
The forest is alive with salad
There are many other flowers to eat in the forest, like violets, the flower clusters fallen from the big-leaf maple tree, the blossoms of red huckleberry, salmonberry and currant bushes.
The forest is alive, in the spring, with salad.
That water leaf is a good salad ingredient, as are the tender shoots of fairy bells and Solomon's Seal, or the very tippy tops of cleavers, those barby weeds that grow everywhere. Wild mustard blankets roadsides and hills; in a month or two, lamb's quarters will sprout in backyards and parking strips.
The hills are alive with salad.
In fact, Kallas has just finished work on a book. It's the first of a series of four books he's contracted to write and should be available early next year. Its theme: Edible greens that grow in your neighborhood.
The food is everywhere
Before I went on a walk with Kallas, I wondered how you could write a whole volume on the subject. But as I wandered only a quarter-mile up a muddy trail in Forest Park? My eyes were wide open. The food, it's everywhere!
As weekend trail runners slowly made their way around our group, wandering and nibbling and discovering treasures that popped our eyes (wild ginger! sweet cicely!), I wanted to grab their arms, yanking them to a stop, and say, "Stop running! Don't you realize what's here? All around us? It's food!"
I allow the runners to pass peaceably, refraining from accosting them with my knowledge, but I go home and tell my friends. And, my appetite for wild foods now intense, pore over the list of future workshops, deciding which to reserve now, before the inevitable rush.