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The last time I ate at Taco Bell was in grad school after a night of fun and drinking, as the ancient millennial custom goes. I got back to my apartment at about 3 AM, ate somewhere between three and six (I don’t remember) taco supremes, slept for two hours, woke up suddenly, and spent the next 12 hours on the toilet regretting my life choices.

I’ve been sick with food poisoning only a handful of times in my life, but each time, my eating habits are forever changed. I’ve not had a bite of Taco Bell in over fifteen years.

The ability to avoid eating fast food is more a function of my socio-economic privilege than “personal responsibility”. People who regularly consume fast food primarily do so because it’s cheap and convenient, not because it’s high quality. And when something is produced cheaply, in mass quantities, there’s little time for rigorous quality control.

Anti-Indigenous Civilizations (AIC) run on industrially produced everything, which is why it’s not much of a surprise that a cyclospora outbreak popped up in our food system. These outbreaks are common in the U.S. — about 800 per year — and it’s a wonder of industrial efficiency that these events aren’t more frequent.

So, in the spirit of cheap production, I thought I’d share with you a wild food that I was introduced to almost around the same time I had my last Taco Bell meal.

This wild green is truly remarkable. Like Taco Bell, you’re never too far away from one, no matter where in the country you are. It grows without cultivation, in a wide variety of conditions. And, unlike Taco Bell’s food, this wild plant is more nutrient-dense than the more familiar, cultivated versions most people consume.

The wild green I’m talking about is Lambsquarter (Chenopodium album), and I’m willing to bet that after you read this week’s newsletter, you could go outside, find some, and eat it.

I had seen Lambsquarter around all the time before I learned to recognize them. I saw them on the sidewalks, in my potted garden on my apartment deck, in the woods on hikes, and even overseas when I traveled. This plant grows everywhere.

When I picked up Samuel Thayer’s book on foraging wild foods, I was so excited to finally know who I had been seeing, and even more excited when I learned that they were edible. Understanding this wild plant better was a gateway to asking the same questions about the other plants I was seeing every day. Who else was I living with that could nourish me?

Learning that lambsquarter was more nutrient-dense than spinach — my go-to healthy green — only amplified my gratitude for finally learning this relative’s name. I became obsessed and started putting lambsquarter in all the dishes that called for spinach. While living in West Virginia, I even integrated lambsquarter into one of my favorite African dishes, groundnut stew, for an event I guest-chefed with Mike and Amy of Lost Creek Farm.

The soil in your backyard, in your neighborhood, is rich with lambsquarter seed that only needs a bit of rain and a small patch of sun to germinate and grow. I’ve been eating lambsquarter for over fifteen years and not once have I ever planted or cultivated them, nor have I been unable to find as much as I wanted.

Think about that for a second.

Farming is labor. It takes resources, time, energy, and commitment. Lambsquarter simply needs to be left to their own devices, and they prolifically produce food that’s better for you than the stuff that requires hours of work to grow. Bonkers.

I’m being a bit hyperbolic, though. If I were to completely substitute lambsquarter for spinach, I’d need ten times the amount I subsist on now. I don’t have 12oz of lambsquater a week growing in my backyard. But I could if I wanted to, and the work it would take to grow that much food would be far less labor-intensive than growing spinach.

I’m still not quite sure why I haven’t done this.

Pests don’t have much interest in lambsquarter. The plant does get diseases, but at no faster rate than the tomatoes and squash leaves in our garden. Lambsquater plants can be as tall as two meters, and their leaves are milder in flavor than kale.

This plant relative is the perfect gateway to foraging. There are no poisonous analogues you’re likely to confuse them with; their flavor, unlike dandelion greens, is extremely mild by wild green standards, they cultivate themselves, and they grow everywhere.

Now, it’s important to take note of the environment lambsquarter grows. Please don’t forage these plants behind the KFC dumpster and then @ me on socials because you got sick eating them. Just like you wouldn’t have eaten walleye from the Detroit River forty years ago, you shouldn’t consume any wild food regardless of their physical environment.

Like Alexis Nichole Nelson, “Happy Snacking [but] Don’t Die!”

Ever since I started learning about plant relatives that I could eat, I’ve been enamored with the idea of food that grows without human cultivation. I think it’s what I like most about wild food: that the relatives that can sustain us do so without needing us to manage them. We can choose to be in a direct relationship with lambsquarter and cultivate them to mutual benefit, but if humans disappeared tomorrow, lambsquarter would continue. They don’t need us, but we need them.

The other part of foraging that brings me joy is the process of learning about your non-human neighbors and community members. Part of what I’m doing in building the Wild Kitchen is working to live in better relationship with the relatives that have always been here. Learning about each one and my relationship to them feels like finding a friend who’s been waiting for me to acknowledge them so that we can live better together.

In learning about the plant relatives around me, I also feel like I have more allies and more safety. When the next outbreak of E. coli in spinach happens, I feel so much more resilient and grateful knowing that I can go outside and harvest lambsquarter and still meet my nutritional needs. Indeed, studies have shown that indigenous diets are far more sustainable and equitable than AIC diets, and that the diversity of Indigenous foods is related to significantly lower rates of metabolic and autoimmune diseases in those human populations before colonization.

Beyond the science of wild foraged foods, there’s also a metaphysical connection when you take these relatives into your body. I like to think we become more whole, more complete as humans, the more we consume our community members. I wrote about a dramatic connection between myself and the maple trees in our yard, which we tap for maple syrup. When I told that story to some Indigenous friends, they immediately understood why I had such a dream.

“Had you tasted the maple sap before having this dream?”

“I did, yes. I wanted to see what the sap tasted like.”

“Well, there you go. That’s why you had that dream. You were connected, and the tree was talking to you, telling you it was time to pull the taps.”

There’s a whole world of relationships, understanding, and nourishment out here that we literally walk by every day. Our current food system is constantly telling us it cannot be trusted, and that is ultimately bad for us. Our wild relatives are waiting for us to rediscover them, so if you have the means, take a little extra time to be curious, reach out, taste, and listen.

Making a new friend sure beats shitting yourself, I’ve always thought.

The number one thing I hear from people when I talk to them about wild food is not knowing where/how to start. Especially for would-be adult-onset wild foodies, the barriers to getting started are significant. We can make time, but not having community and/or mentorship makes it hard to start and sustain a relationship with wild food.

One way to change this is through this survey I’ve developed. I love taking people out hunting, fishing, and foraging, but I’ve been struggling to find a way to do more of that. As a starting point, I developed two quick, five-minute surveys you can fill out that will give you a better idea of the specific experience that suits you.

If you find the survey results useful and want to know more about potentially fishing and hunting with me, you can click the link on the results page and join my priority list for upcoming fishing and hunting experiences I plan to offer this fall and next year.

Take either the fishing or hunting survey, or both, and let me know what you think. If you find the results useful, consider joining the priority list. I’d love to take you out to experience the joys of wild food!