{"id":63770,"date":"2021-03-04T16:57:29","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T16:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=500151"},"modified":"2021-03-04T16:57:29","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T16:57:29","slug":"this-tiktok-star-makes-foraging-a-fun-and-revolutionary-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/04\/this-tiktok-star-makes-foraging-a-fun-and-revolutionary-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"This TikTok star makes foraging a fun \u2014 and revolutionary \u2014 practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve noticed more people rooting around their yards for dandelion greens or picking fruit in the local park, there\u2019s a good chance it\u2019s because of Alexis Nikole Nelson.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On TikTok, Nelson<\/a> charms her 600,000-odd followers with raps<\/a> about ethically foraging for ramps (or finding a substitute because, you know, they\u2019re at risk of becoming endangered<\/a>); tips for telling the difference<\/a> between Queen Anne\u2019s lace and its evil twin, hemlock; and culinary delights like seaweed panna cotta<\/a>. It\u2019s enough to make you want to look around your own yard for field onions and hairy bittercress so you can whip up scallion pancakes. Nelson does this all with sustainability in mind, encouraging her followers to eat invasive and pervasive plants.<\/p>\n

For the uninitiated, foraging simply means identifying and gathering mushrooms, herbs, nuts, fruits and other food. Sure, you could go to your local grocery store, but foraging offers several advantages beyond being a great social-distancing activity. It means eating with the seasons, adding variety to your diet, and becoming less reliant on the agricultural industrial complex and monocropping<\/a> that\u2019s led to environmental disasters like the dust bowl.<\/p>\n

Nelson\u2019s interest in foraging sprouted during a childhood spent in the family garden. Her mother would often quiz her on plants while Nelson ran around with a toy trowel, digging holes for bulbs. Nelson soon found herself fascinated by the weeds. \u201cThe things I was most interested in were the useful plants that were not there on purpose,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn’t completely understand why they weren’t \u2018on purpose\u2019 despite being useful.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating from Ohio State University, Nelson\u2019s hobby approached obsession when she found herself broke while between jobs. Instead of spending six bucks(!) on supermarket greens, she harvested curly dock and wood sorrel to make delicious (and free!) salads. Nelson grew more culinarily adventurous, started composting, and gave more thought to sustainability in the kitchen. She forages for about 10 percent of her food through the winter. Come summer, she\u2019ll go days eating only what she\u2019s found, with the exception of olive oil because, she says, making it herself is a real time-suck.<\/p>\n

These days, Nelson calls herself @BlackForager on Instagram<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>, because she didn’t see faces that looked like hers. \u201cBecause of my reach, I have started finding people who look like me in this space, and that’s been beautiful,\u201d she says. TikTok recently took note, naming her one of its inaugural Black TikTok Trailblazers<\/a> in February. In the coming year, she\u2019d like to put out longer content on her YouTube channel.<\/a><\/p>\n

Fix chatted with Nelson about drawing foraging inspiration from the past, dispelling some common misconceptions, and how gathering your own food is a revolutionary act. Her comments have been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

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Q.<\/span>How is forging and cooking with what you\u2019ve harvested a historical practice?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A.<\/span>I love diving into old cookbooks, especially those out of the Appalachian region, because they often focus a lot on making do with what was around. One example that I like to talk about is pokeweed \u2014 a plant that is pretty much universally considered a weed, and a noxious one at that.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, you have folks like my dad’s side of the family saying, \u201cExcuse me, poke salad is a very popular springtime dish made with pokeweed shoots.\u201d It was just a matter of knowing the process of blanching them to make sure that they are rendered completely safe. Poke salad is a dish that could very easily fall out of the national consciousness if folks who know about it don’t teach their kids about it or commit it to a space where it can stay forever.<\/p>\n

I think a lot of us have stories about a grandparent or a parent sharing what is, honestly, ancient knowledge but it isn\u2019t necessarily making the jump from generation to generation. We risk losing a lot of food knowledge, especially food knowledge held by the Indigenous and Black communities.<\/p>\n

\"Alexis
Nelson picks flowers from a mimosa tree \u2014 Albizia julibrissin. Alexis Nikole Nelson<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Q.<\/span>What are some common misconceptions about foraging?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A.<\/span>The biggest hurdle for a lot of folks is the idea that foraging can happen in city spaces. You just have to make informed decisions. A lot of folks think that I live in the middle of the woods. I don’t. I live on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio.<\/p>\n

Foraging is possible for me, but I’m also the kind of weirdo who will ask the parks and rec department questions and do research on parks where gathering things is \u2014 I don’t even want to say this \u2014 legal. The two types of parks I see are parks where foraging is explicitly illegal and parks where foraging is not mentioned at all.<\/p>\n

The next thing a lot of folks have apprehension about is where it is safe to forage. I can’t give everyone an exact answer unless they also happen to live in Columbus. No one wants to do homework and I get it, but I’d also rather be safe than sorry.<\/p>\n

A lot of people say, \u201cI\u2019m never going to get to a point where I know as many plants as you, so there’s no point in me starting now,\u201d which is so not true. I think people believe I woke up one day with all of this knowledge. I’m still learning every single day, and I have been doing this for almost two-and-a-half decades.<\/p>\n

Q.<\/span>How do you see foraging as a revolutionary act?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A.<\/span>Foraging has been a part of Indigenous food ways and the food ways of pretty much every underserved community, whether those people were enslaved or just not very high on the socioeconomic scale.<\/p>\n

After the Civil War, it became apparent that it would become harder to keep Black people on plantations as cheap labor. Folks realized that one way of denying Black people other options was to deny them the food ways they could use not only to sustain themselves but to prepare and sell food to others as a way of building wealth \u2014 not just surviving, but thriving. That\u2019s when we saw the nation’s first round of laws barring foraging in public spaces. Doing so was a civil offense everywhere in the South until after the Civil War, when it became a criminal offense. That affected Indigenous people, who suddenly had their access to food ways taken away. The law also impacted a lot of poor white people.<\/p>\n

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@alexisnikole<\/a> <\/p>\n

Reply to @jaxwellmones #foraging<\/a><\/p>\n

\u266c original sound – Alexis Nikole<\/a> <\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n