Hugs & Kisses

Foraged Foods Shorten the Supply Chain | The New Yorker

"At their farm in Pine Plains, New York, James O’Donnell and Amanda Kingsley grow what they need for a floral-design studio and vegetables, and after restaurants shrank they pivoted from supplying kitchens to a direct-to-consumer weekly-ish Wild Box (Allora Wild Box $45) delivered to the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. I found the operation rooted in careful, sustainable foraging—they lease acres and gather from friends' properties and public lands in the Hudson Valley and on Long Island—and they stress the training and rules (many inherited from indigenous peoples) needed to tell edible plants from poisonous lookalikes. Eating my way through a box felt revelatory: a hefty wedge of chicken-of-the-woods pan-fried to crisp golden edges with a creamy interior that shredded almost like meat; a vial of sassafras syrup that became an aromatically fizzy glass of root beer with soda water; sea beans (samphire) so naturally briny they needed no salt; and tender henbit I chopped into eggs for an omelette. The Wild Box felt like a way to reconnect with the natural world and brought real excitement and wonder to quarantine cooking." - Hannah Goldfield