Le Sensorium Autumn Equinox Foraging Tour

Hunter or Gatherer? If only life choices were still that easy. Umm...Giver please...

We've come a long way from the hunt and its less glamorous friend. Up until this weekend, the foraging world was invisible to me, a part of that distant land known as romanticized exoticism, where you can also find the "greatest hits" of Africa and some heavily filtered (and perfumed) images of the Victorian era. 

I showed up to Parc Lhasa de Sela in Montreal on Saturday sans woven basket or arrowhead. Turns out everything a modern forager needs could be found in my apartment.

butter knife (for digging out roots)

sharp knife/scissors

water (to stay hydrated...how much depends on what texture you like your lips to be)

bags (for the loot)

gardening gloves
The tour, organized by Le Sensorium, took us around Montreal's Mile End. Our guide, Vanessa Waters, first began foraging at a young age with her grandmother. She opened our eyes to all the plants that grow in the city, whether planted there for aesthetic purposes or as part of a public garden. We were a mixed group from all over the world, from experienced foragers to those who were simply curious. Vanessa shared practical foraging tips, recipes, and plenty of botanical knowledge, but the tour also opened up a discussion about society's relationship to food as well as issues of food security.

We talked about how society is distancing itself from the natural origins of our food. How we're losing the foraging culture, just as we're losing thousands of languages from disuse. How so much food goes to waste because no one but the squirrels sees the greenery as a food source. How our taste buds have changed to prefer processed and sweetened foods, so that most of us would be unaccustomed to the raw taste of foraged fruits and vegetation. How foraging can be a means of attaining food security, taking advantage of a food source that goes unseen by so most, and becoming more in tune with the natural environment one lives in. I was so impressed by how knowledgeable Vanessa was about the defining traits and seasonal cycles of all the plants we came across.

For us novices, however, foraging can be quite daunting, so here are some tips I picked up along the tour.

Foraging Tips

1. Cover up! 

One thing I learned on this tour: food is everywhere! But so is itching and death.

Wear gloves, long sleeves, long pants, high boots. Flashing a bit of ankle would be ill-advised. Poison ivy is not fun, despite what Batman may have told you, and it only worsens each time you come into contact with it.

2. Be aware of your surroundings.

There it is: a whole patch of sumac bushes. Right there, beside the road. Just think of how it will taste: tangy yet sweet, with just a smoky hint of exhaust fuel. 

While plants on the side of the road are easy to get to, they are sprayed daily with car fumes and whatever else passersby leave in their wake. Try to find foraging spots that are out of the way, where there is less vehicle and pedestrian traffic. If you do find something by the road, only pick it if it's on an uphill slope.

3. Take only what you need.
It's important to remember that you are foraging in a public space, and that there are others (even if they are squirrels) who sustain themselves off the same vegetation. Leaving some of the fruit also helps to continue the growth cycle, which means you can keep coming back to the same spot later on. Vanessa's personal rule is only to take when there are 30 or more plants, and then to take 1/3 of it.



4. Rinse and repeat.
Wash what you forage, just as you would wash supermarket produce. It may be scary at first to think of all that could have contaminated what you find in the city, but as long as you are prudent about what you do pick (see #2), you can take the same precautions on your foraged goods as you do with the pesticides from supermarket produce.


Later this week I'll introduce some of the plants we came across and how you can use them in your cooking...Well guys, this is it. I'm ready for the zombie apocalypse.


#lesensorium #montrealtours&tasting #urbanforaging

Le Sensorium Autumn Equinox Foraging Tour

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How to Pack for a Place You've Never Been

Montreal. That's cold, right? It's a magic word, Montreal. Say it and the other person shivers on cue. 

So you fold up your sweaters and you sit on them, because without those vacuum-seal bags as seen on TV, ass will have to do. You fold up your underwear and your bras, because even seals and polar bears have a skeleton beneath all that blubber. You too will need one under layers of down and wool to prop you upright like a human being. 

What else? Your suitcase is small and yet your life, even just a year of it, demands much.

Your gray peacoat with the puffy shoulders may have done well for the cold and rainy North of France, but it won't hold up to - shiver. You fold it up anyway in anticipation of the sliver of time just before first snowfall. 

Leather jacket, for transitioning autumn days. For walking down streets hazy with the cloud of unfamiliarity. For faking it 'til you make it, or 'til the cold stiffens up the sleeves and chases the leathery blend of polyester and sweatshop essence to the back of your tiny closet. Whichever comes first. 

A pot. A knife. Even Robinson Crusoe needed one of those. Your passport and documents. Skirts upon skirts upon dresses. If you're going to look like a marshmallow for six months, you may as well be a delicate flower underneath. You'll wear them just for yourself, you say, in the way some girls wear underwear emblazoned with the days of the week. That is, as a reminder of your femininity. Try saying that five times fast come January. 

The orphaned polar bear figurine from your last stop-motion short. Polar bears belong in the cold, don't they? It only seems right after you tossed his mother in the trash earlier this year. Three, four months from now, in the throes of the harsh Canadian winter, you might wonder, what is the point, at which point you need only gaze upon the yellowing cub and feel the artistic inspiration of twelve nine-year-olds flood back into your veins. 

And let's not forget your biography of Lincoln, half-finished and half the size of your head. You always feel immense guilt about not finishing the books you buy. If you bring it, you'll definitely finish it. Imagine a snowy Sunday morning, curled up on your lumpy couch (it came with the apartment), getting to know the 16th president, flakes falling aimlessly just outside the window. Look at it. It's so dense it'll last you the whole year. You're saving the space of three other books, really. 

At last, there is nothing left to pack. The animals have entered the ark. You grasp the two sides of the case: now kiss. But like tortoises in captivity, they refuse to meet. Though you summon your ass once more, it doesn't work the same magic on plastic shells as it does on sweaters. 

So you haul everything out. Yes, even the sweaters. And you start again. Just how many sweaters do you really need anyway? If you don't leave the warmth of the house two days out of seven, that leaves...five sweaters. You don't have five, you have four. A couple of tank tops should make up for the fifth. 

...And why don't you throw in those suede flats for good measure?

How to Pack for a Place You've Never Been

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Inside Out at the Palais du Tau

Now that I've been home for about a month, the 30 kilos of clothing, books, and savon marseillaise* I brought home have largely been scattered throughout the house. But there's one thing that has remained propped up against my suitcase in the far corner of the living room, and it's my face.

Before I left France, I sold my toaster and oven, donated my books to the school library and clothes to charity, threw out all my pots and utensils, dumped a bottle of that coveted Bioderma micellar water in the midst of airport “ma’am your suitcase is seven kilos overweight” panic, but one thing I kept and that is my face, blown up in black and white on a sheet of butcher paper that is as long as I am tall. I have to raise my arms above my head in order to unfurl this monstrosity.

Months and months ago, I saw that French street artist JR would be stopping in Reims as part of his “Inside Out” project. So when the time came, I dragged a friend with me to the Palais du Tau, where his photo truck was parked. A queue stretched from one end of the courtyard to the other, but it looked manageable enough. We were also on our way to dinner at a friend’s flat, so I had a head of lettuce in my backpack. We did not end up using the lettuce.

As part of some modern art exhibition at the Palais, two mannequins, covered in light plastic sheets, had been placed at the entrance to the inner courtyard. They had been hooked up to some sort of sound system and whispered incantations with increasing urgency. As the hours passed, we inched from one screeching mannequin to the other, wondering if this was really worth the wait. It hadn’t looked like that many people when we entered the line, but I was starting to suspect photography hadn’t improved since the Victorian era. Not to mention it was a cold, windy day in Northern France and I had been carrying a head of lettuce for the last five hours.

Part of “Inside Out” is for people to paste their portraits in public spaces - he was there at the Palais du Tau with a bucket of glue to cover the courtyard’s cobblestones with smiling faces. The final destination of his truck was the Pantheon in Paris, currently undergoing renovations, where he covered the interior with his favorite portraits.

I…chose to take mine home. And I could try to justify it, but it wouldn’t be very convincing and I’d probably end up showing more ego than I’d like to think I have. But was it worth it? Sometimes I think about pasting my enormous face into the back of my closet and leaving it for the poor unsuspecting individual who next inhabits this house and I think, yes, it was all worth it. My parents, however, may feel differently.

*Okay, one block of soap. I did not bring home 30 kilograms of soap, as I am not about to enter the cutthroat world of soap trafficking**.

**At least if they cut your throat you can easily disinfect the wound.

Inside Out at the Palais du Tau

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First Impressions | Prague

Prague. I was there. It was Prague, land of defenestrations and the epic orchestral piece that is the Moldau (also the river). Where beer is cheaper than water. Old as balls but still keeping pace with the world. 

I had a good time in Prague, not the same kind of good time as everyone refers to with regards to Prague, a knowing look in their eye, but I enjoyed the urban legends and myths behind each building, trying to reconcile what was before me with another time, coming across Refu Fest in Kampa Park and discovering the world in an afternoon, resigning myself to a hot dog only to realize with delight that the Czechs have put their own spin on even the most mundane of foods. It was a good three days. Was it three days? They're starting to run together now...

First Impressions | Prague

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First Impressions | Vienna

Some cities you fall in love with, others you can only appreciate. Vienna was one of the latter. The streets are lined with one beautiful facade after another, to be sure, but I found it all a bit distant and untouchable. 

At one point, unsure of what to do with myself, I walked around the Schönnbrunn Palace grounds and felt quite thoroughly unimpressed. I've been to Versailles, and I'm starting to suspect that one decadent palace is enough for my lifetime. 

I just find it difficult to appreciate how fancy some dead guy's life was. The point of half the tourist sites in Europe is "look at how much money these people had and look at the shiny things they made with it!" It's like I've eaten too much candy and now my teeth are numb and I just want to see what ordinary people did and do and how they perceived and interacted with their world. 

So I found Vienna to be mostly that: appreciation of long-ago fanciness. In places like this, the fanciness becomes so sacred it begins to oppress the present and stifle life until people are living in the shadow of some other great era. 

I love birds. I love how they have absolutely no regard for our precious monuments and statues. It's all just another comfy rock to perch on. 

First Impressions | Vienna

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Patisserie Discoverie | Apfelstrudel

Patisseries - Vienna edition! Does that make it a viennoiserie ohohoho

I have just returned from the depths of Google and I have no answer. As you are by now very aware, I'm not qualified to categorize pastries in any category other than yum and blegh, and there aren't any bakers in this hostel that I know of, so we'll just have to live with not knowing. I know, life isn't fair. 

At the end of my walking tour in Vienna, I stopped at Cafe Central for a coffee break. This is where Freud and co. hung out way back when. I'm skeptical of all these "so-and-so hung out here" claims. I sometimes hang out in the downstairs common area of TDC, doesn't make it worth the trek. How many times does a famous person need to visit a place for it to claim that they hung out there?

My personal standard for strudel has long been that scene in Inglorious Basterds.

So tense. Much acting. Such pacing. But all I can focus on is the strudel. It looks so damn good. This strudel? This strudel was good. But it wasn't wait-for-the-cream good. Still, I can take heart in that the fumes of Freud's breath must have infused into the powdered sugar and elevated the strudel to the next level. Or something. This is how these things work, right?

But what do I know about Austrian cuisine? Is there even such a strudel out there? Or did I fabricate what one tastes like based on ten seconds of film?

Fun Fact! Strudel is derived from Middle High German for whirlpool. There's some appropriately ominous rock music coming out from the basement of this hostel right now. 

It's a layered pastry made of very thin dough, with a filling that can be either sweet or savory. The dough is wrapped around the filling until it has been used up. Apfelstrudel filling usually consists of apples (I should hope so), sugar, cinnamon, raisins, and bread crumbs. It is then sprinkled with powdered sugar and can be served with ice cream, custard, vanilla sauce, and yes, wait for it...cream. 

I don't know, guys. It was a great strudel, it was just shy of the strudel of my dreams. Does that strudel even exist? Or do I settle for ingesting Freud breath-fumes? Will I start obsessing over my father?

The only way to find the strudel of my dreams, I guess, is to eat more strudel until I do. 

Patisserie Discoverie | Apfelstrudel

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First Impressions | Budapest

Classes are a thing of the past now as I set off on a month-long trip through Europe before I return home. The itinerary currently looks something like this: 

Budapest - Vienna - Prague - Copenhagen - Oslo - Edinburgh - Dublin - London - Paris - Lyon - Aix - Strasbourg

I'll get to processing my experiences with thorough city posts once this is all over, but I wanted to bring you along with me as closely as possible, so I'm doing my best to Instagram with my wonky phone and spotty wi-fi (surprisingly, buses have provided the most stable connections) and to post here on the go. Short and sweet is the key, I guess, and I am breaking that now so without further ado, Budapest! 

Budapest was beautiful. It was a great setting for a much-needed break between end-of-school activities and the rest of my travels. I stayed with a friend who was gracious enough to host me and order food for me while the language barrier rendered me a giant baby. Similarly, my brain refuses to function right now, so I'll leave the philosophical thoughts to the full Budapest post to follow. 

First Impressions | Budapest

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Patisserie Discoverie | Nid de Pâques

Happy Easter, everyone. 

I swear I walked into the boulangerie fully intending on buying the prettiest patisserie there. But, as in many a quirky rom-com, intrigue outweighed beauty and I went home with an open-faced box filled with brains.

Perhaps my craving for ramen has begun to cloud my judgment. Or the dream I had two days ago about worms taking over the world traumatized me more than I thought. Whatever the explanation, I can't believe I paid three euros for Justin Timberlake's hair from the 90s.

I should have seen the signs when the woman at the boulangerie walked around waving the box on its side, almost certainly smashing half the patisserie. ...Isn't half the price of a patisserie for the aesthetics? By the time I got home, it looked like someone had been overly enthusiastic about patting Justin on the head. He is a pop singer with a penchant for eight-minute-long loops of a single chorus, not a dog (seriously though, "what goes around comes around" - we should have known he was singing about song structure).

This patisserie just confuses me so much. It looks like off-color noodles, so my brain prepares for saltiness. And...noodles on cake? Is that a good idea? And then I think, what tool did they use to pile the noodles on like that? And then I think about how it's all really just a pile of cream that looks like separate strands of cream, but when you eat it it's just cream, and my mouth goes numb and I can't feel my tongue anymore.

At least the eggs make up for it by adding a spot of color to what otherwise looks like processed noodles, right? Wrong. The "eggs" are jellybeans with a hard candy shell, like the lovechild of jordan almonds and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans no one asked for...and one of them was licorice, the one flavor that needs to disappear from the face of the earth.

I ended up eating all the jellybeans first to get them out of the way, because the mixture of jellybean and coffee cake was bizarre and way too sweet. May I suggest chocolate eggs next time? The cake itself was soggy coffee cake layered with cream and then topped off with a nest of cream (now there's a phrase I never thought I'd say). The creamy greasiness and the mouth-numbing sweetness with a hint of coffee overpowered my taste buds. And the almonds along the side added unwanted texture to the whole affair - now I know what it feels like to have a million tiny leaves in my mouth.

There are not many things I would avoid eating - licorice, bitter melon, fruits of unknown origin...but Nid de Pâques can now join that merry band of misfits. I'm not sure if I should apologize for it, because I'm afraid of anyone who takes pleasure in eating nest-like things and thus identifies with large rodents. Chinese people do eat actual nests, but I still feel slightly nauseous when I think about that time I had to pick feathers out of swallow's nest soup for three hours for my grandparents. Filial piety, man...

Patisserie Discoverie | Nid de Pâques

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Charleville-Mezières

As I wrote in my encounter with the edible brick, the Carolo, I visited Charleville-Mezières several weekends ago. Birthplace of Rimbaud, home to a major puppetry festival, an aging population and a parking crisis - I was there for an urban studies project so this is the information you're going to get. 

But being neither in need of parking nor in possession of an aging population (if you don't count my brain cells), I found Charleville to be quite a charming lens into the everyday goings-on of a small French city. We saw an exhibition of artwork by mentally disabled artists, the puppetry museum's (terrifying) clock giant that puts on an hourly puppet show, the restored Place Ducale, the Meuse River, a tree monster reaching to pluck the moon from the sky...

If you listen carefully, the wind in Charleville goes "Carololololololo..." As do the birds.

Carolololololololo...

Charleville-Mezières

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