| Gathering wild food from the sea is one of life's great pleasures,
bringing you closer to nature's bounty and beauty. Walking along
the seashore, wading through tide pools and listening to the ocean's
rhythm is an exhilarating way to energize your life and refresh your
soul. Not only will you gather wonderful delicacies from the seashore,
but you will also explore a vibrant—almost paradoxical world
of elegant colors and mysterious creatures.
And of course, we will gather wild foods. Wild foods are natural
foods—grown without pesticides or human manipulation. Certainly,
wild foods are the most organic of foods. Learning to harvest wild
food brings a new twist to home cooking, parties and camping. We
are going to break the myth of foraging as some kind of a hunter-gatherer
survival training and show you how to create delicious gourmet
dishes. You will learn that foraging is very satisfying when you
become a gourmet forager.
Each class includes an evening session for planning followed by
a day of collecting and preparing a gourmet meal from the sea.
Finishing touches for the feast will be assigned to students.
Winter and Spring tide pools are a glory to behold. Every
glassy pool is a crescendo of colors and textures, plus our beaches
in this season are quiet and pristine. We will focus first on bivalve,
clams and mussels then we will augment our quest with limpets and
sea vegetables in pastas and salads. Our final outing in early
spring will concentrate our menus on the abundance of sea plant
life growing on every rock. With luck we will have our main dish
with the king of shellfish, abalone.
Summer is the time for warm sand and calm seas. We have
an excellent minus tide to observe the artistry of nature's ocean
in the windows of pristine tide pools. We will search these glassy
puddles for sea vegetables to make salads, soups, and pickled delicacies.
We will introduce the technique of poke poling to catch fish and
crabs to stuff our sushi and seafood pastas.
Fall is the best season of all. The north coast crescents
of white sand and beaches are warm and uncrowded. The ocean is
crystal clear. However, the best treasure of this season is that
shellfish and sea vegetable are prime. Our feast for this season
will focus on soups, pastas, and BBQs with the delicious bearded
clam. We will augment our recipes with spicy sea vegetables in
salads and pickled hors-d'oeuvres.
Private group outtings are also available, call (831) 458-3648
for details.
Trip Flyer
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