Presentation: Foraging Foods of Northern California

Chef John Farais will teach you how to identify the edible, wild and native foods growing around the Bay Area. Most grow wild, on hiking paths, open fields and cracks in the sidewalk. He will show us how to make identification easy, and provide suggestions on how to prepare these indigenous plants.

 Farais is a lecturer, cooking instructor, native plant specialist, and food educator, and founder of Indigenous Edibles. Farais has been cooking with ingredients native to The Americas for over 10 years, specializing in the history, taste and promotion of California’s, and The Americas’ indigenous, edible plants. He makes his own Acorn flour and forages for Mesquite, Bay nuts, Elderberries, Madrone berries, Nettles and Manzanita berries along with many other native plants. Farais has cooked for Carlo Petrini, the creator of Slow Food International, Actor Peter Coyote, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, The California Indian Conference and Heyday Books. He has lectured for Slow Food, The Oakland Museum, San Francisco State University, College of Marin, UC Berkeley and California Native Garden Foundation.

Connect:

Indigenous Edibles - Website