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This Months Mission is to expand your edible criteria embracing a synergistic logic for consuming fast growing, hardy, sustainable if somewhat strange resources in an effort to restore balance to fragile eco-systems. Consider a different diet, a more cost and conservation friendly one and open your mind to alternatives as outlined below.

Abundant, destructive to native environs and edible―sustainable food trends have a new mantra on modern menus ‘pest to plate’. The shift expands on the movement ‘paddock to plate’ revised to emphasise foods we often overlook or throwaway.

In 1972 Richard Mabey wrote the seminal book Food for Free and the world began to look at weeds amongst other locally cultivated edibles in a new light. Urban foraging emerged as a culture and the phrase “if you can’t beat them, eat them” reflected a peoples desire to cut costs and perhaps help conservation.

Now as global resources run dangerously low and our eco-systems are compromised by climate change, competitive ‘pest’ species and human impact―Mabey’s sentiment has new value for us all.

The potential to restore natural habitats by consuming competitive organisms of nutritional benefit and unique flavour makes perfect sense to foodies seeking sustainable ingredients.

To spice-up their sustainable menus many chef’s now source long forgotten or foreign flora and fauna which flourish in excess and deplete nutrients required to support the regrowth of endangered resources. Introducing strange but sustainable foods to the public such as edible weeds, wild foods, cownose rays and insects.

In the UK dishes are being transformed with colourful ingredients both good for conservation and restaurant recognition―plates with piles of chickweed, clover, daisy (flowers and leaves), dandelion, fat hen, garden orache, ground elder and young goosegrass in combination with sorrel, wild garlic, lady’s smock and hairy bittercress for that extra bit of kick. Pest plants boast quite a following and not just for foragers―the folks of Dorset, England hold a World Stinging Nettle Eating Championship to express their love for edible weeds.

New harvests on the horizon―Chesapeake Bay the largest estuary in the US has become overcrowded with cownose rays which swarm there each summer taxing the fragile eco-system. Gobbling shellfish and bowling over seagrass the marine menace is said to taste of tuna and officials agree plating this pest is a perfect solution for seafood lovers with sustainable principles.

Cuisine on the crawl―comprising approximately 80% of the world’s species insects constitute a viable food source―abundant, rich in nutritional value, cost efficient to farm ‘requiring less land’ and at 1,000 species are already a food staple in several countries. For instance, Mexicans liquefy stinkbugs for sauces, Thais deef-fry giant water bugs and Australian Aborigines chew on lemon flavoured ants and witchetty grubs. Promoting the consumption of minute critters worldwide the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation are working to convince consumers of the benefits to eating bugs. Nutritionally the premiss is sound with a small serving of grasshoppers delivering almost the same value of protein as ground beef.

Australia’s native grasses could go gourmet―imagine that, mowing for your meal. Accelerated domestication of Australian grasses as new and sustainable food and fodder crops once more leverages fast growing potential pests as dinner options. Grasses have been part of the menu for many years it’s no secret that all the cereals―wheat, oats, barley, rye, corn, rice, millet, and sorghum―are cultivated grasses. Feeding all animals, grasses possess a wide range of nutrients and medicinal properties considered important ingredients in both herbal and folk remedies, as well as for use in distilling beverages.

Beware the poisonous pest!

Always refer to reputable identification resources before picking or preparing any wild food. The internet is abound with open source tools and knowledge repositories to use in the field or when contemplating the correct method of cooking (toxins can be removed through cooking in some cases). Take your iPad on a forage and zoom in on species snapshots to access suspect varieties then google recipes you will be surprised by the creative content available.

A few resources to get you started…

Edible Weeds and Wild Foods

Weeds for Dinner recipes for the food forager.

Knowledge of Australian Edible Plants includes pictures, history and toxic descriptives.

Bush Food of Australia a bibliography of bush-foods and Aboriginal uses, prepared by the Library staff at the Australian National Botanic Gardens.

Traditional Cooking Methods Australian Aboriginal food preparation and traditional cooking methods.

Native Australian Grasses uses, varieties, availability.

Edible Ferns, Nuts and Grasses good overview of different species, uses and historical background.

EatTheSuburbs.org a blog devoted to urban and suburban adapatations to peak oil and climate change topics edible gardens.

New Plant ID Apps list of useful botanical apps for on the go identification.

Sustainable Seafood

Charting Nature Sustainable Seafood Guides/Posters.

Seafood Choices Alliance an international program creating opportunities for change across the seafood industry and ocean conservation community.

Heston’s Fish Feast a synopsis of celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal’s sustainable fish documentary  (includes a list of suppliers).

Fish Phone instantly puts Blue Ocean’s sustainable seafood information right at your fingertips, giving you access to all of our seafood information from your mobile phone.

Edible Insects

Edible Forest Insects UN FAO guide to good grubs.

Eating Bugs recipes and Indian use of insects for food.

32 Edible Insect Foods You Can Buy Online includes ants, crickets, larvae and worms, scorpions and water bugs.