How to get food for free

The amazing thing is it’s all around us. We just don’t recognise all the edible plants right under our noses.

Two weeds that drive me nuts in my garden have turned out to be edible. I used to feed them to the guinea pigs. Nowadays they’re just as likely to be thrown into a salad as turned into guinea pig fodder.

If you want to eat for free, here are some tips:

Seaweed and eat it: seaweed is an incredibly nutritious food and doesn’t just come dried in packets or wrapped around sushi. There are many edible varieties including the Venus necklace seaweed, which can be found at virtually every beach in New Zealand.

Eat weeds: how often do you pull puha, dandelion, onion weed, or violet leaves out of your garden? Have you ever thought of eating them? Dandelion in particular is packed full of vitamin C. Try lobster with lemon butter and dandelion. Yum.

how often have you turned cat’s eyes over in rock pools and watched them close up. Did you know you can eat them? Other common edible rock pool dwellers include molluscs, limpets, and barnacles. I quite like the sound of limpets dipped in egg batter and fried. Or if you prefer, try limpet chowder.

Video: Sunny Savage Wild Food Blog

Fruit trees on public land: if you’re in the know you can find fruit trees on public land. For example the former North Shore City Council (Auckland) planted feijoas in Browns Bay and olives in Torbay a few years ago. Olives, I can tell you from experience are a surprisingly fruitful tree and tightwads can pickle them using just sea water. Other parts of New Zealand have their own public orchards.

Department of Conservation and local council land: beware that DOC doesn’t allow people to harvest native plants from conservation land. So don’t go chopping down cabbage trees in the Mt Richmond Forest Park. The same goes for council land. If, however, it’s an introduced plant you may be given permission to harvest it. Check with DOC first, however. When I asked about the fennel plants on North Head in Devonport, the local DOC office was more than happy for me to take my fill of this weed from its land.

Knock on your neighbour’s door: very few Kiwis eat all the fruit their gardens produce. If they’ve got a feijoa tree and you haven’t, ask for some of the fruit. All but the mingiest neighbours would share their bounty. If they’re a little bit hesitant, promise to bring them back some Feijoa jam or chutney. When they get to taste the fruit of your labours, they’ll be willing to share their crop every year.

Swallow that pride: Kiwis have foraged for free fish, pig meat, and deer, for generations. We call it hunting and fishing and it’s part of our culture. Why not approach other foraging in the same way. You’re enjoying the fruits of nature.

Read some books: there is no lack of books about how to forage for food. One such book published in 2012 is worth checking out. It’s Find it: Eat it, by Michael Daly. The great thing about a Kiwi book like this is that it covers traditional Maori foods as well as introduced weeds. We’ve probably all heard that Cabbage Tree (Ti Kouka) has an edible centre. Fewer of us realise that plants such as Rengarenga (Rock Lily) can be eaten. It has tubers that can be steamed. The real point here is get yourself a book with colour pictures so you know what to look for and go forth and forage.

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