Is it us, or is fall all about food? BC comes into its own with seasonal foods, from squash and pumpkin to apples and pears, each being found in bounty throughout Vancouver. There is one overlooked seasonal food we don’t often talk about during fall… Mushrooms!
For the past 10 years, Chef Robin has been teaching foraging programs in and around Vancouver. Her experience spans from being a commercial wild foods supplier for Vancouver’s high-end restaurants to bringing agrologists and forestry students into the field for lectures on traditional food plants of BC. With Swallow Tail, Chef Robin brings us to the mushrooms, out in Vancouver’s urban wilderness. And if you don’t fancy mushroom foraging, there’s some online programming to give you a wealth of knowledge when it comes to BC’s plants.
Wild Mushroom Foraging
This foray focuses on how to safely identify wild mushrooms. The ever-popular wild edible identification trips are 2-hours of easy walking, with a wildcraft guide, through BC’s forest. You’ll stop to identify whatever mushies are waiting to be found, including porcini, chanterelle, honey, and wild oysters. Foraging tours run every Saturday until November 15 and sell out fast. Book now to guarantee your spot. (note: this is not a live cooking demo or a harvesting trip, ID only).
Virtual Foraging Survival Trip
Can’t get out into the wilderness or don’t feel comfortable mingling yet? No problem. With this virtual course, you’ll learn where to forage safely on the coast and how to find food in a pinch. Chef Robin will show you how to beach forage superfoods like seaweeds and shellfish and find sustainable edible wild weeds and nutrient-rich plants. In this 2-hour video collection, you’ll also discover simple cooking methods for the food you find, and learn about the poisonous plants you should avoid.
Foraging for Beginners
This is a full beginner foraging training program designed to kickstart your foraging journey. With over 5 hours of video training content, you will be guided step-by-step on how to find delicious edibles in the forest, meadows, ocean, and urban areas of BC.
Each video has a comment section where you can ask Chef Robin your trickiest questions. Swallow Tail have also included delicious recipes where Chef Robin will show you just how to prepare wild edibles in a way that will make your dishes shine!
Medicinal Plants of the Pacific North-West
In this course, you spend 2 virtual hours with videos from Métis herbalist, Lori Snyder. For the past 25 years, Lori has been teaching, studying and researching wild plant medicines. Combining a First Nations perspective and European herbal traditions, Lori’s vision is to create native, edible and medicinal food forests throughout our urban landscape.
In this online program, Lori will teach you to stop seeing ‘weeds and wilds’, and instead open your eyes to tasty edibles and traditional medicines. Follow her through her medicinal urban garden to learn about these amazing healing wild plants, both native and invasive. Learn how to identify, care for and prepare these powerful plants into simple medicines like tinctures, tisanes and balms.
Get $5 off any online foraging course or any November mushroom tour with Swallow Tail. To redeem email Swallow Tail with promo code ‘VanTourism’ – info@swallowtail.ca. For more offers, head to ComeBack Deals.
