2014年经济学人 城市觅食 炫目的沙拉（在线收听）

Urban foraging

Salad daze

Hipsters are foraging for greens in urban parks

SHOPPING for salad in supermarkets is too easy. A bag of ready-washed baby greens costs only 3 at Walmart, and takes no time to lift from the shelf. So a new breed of foodie spends hours foraging for plants in city parks and vacant lots. For what can compare with the joy of ripping up the roots of a mallow plant and eating the mucus they produce when boiled? Many wild American plants are edible but unavailable in supermarkets: dandelion, pig weed, bull thistle, skunk vine. But not everyone recognises them. Enter the foraging gurus, who teach hipsters how to pluck on the wild side.

“Green Deane” Jordan charges 30 for a foraging excursion in Orlando, Florida; demand exceeds supply, he says. New foraging apps, websites and books are making it easier than ever to score free food. But this only part of the story.

Foraging fits the anti-corporate faith of many hipsters. People are “yearning for something that's real”, says Frank Grindrod, who teaches foraging in Massachusetts. Urban parks typically offer more plant varieties than similarly sized wilderness areas. And city greenery holds more calories per acre than wildlands that are picked over by deer, says Steve “Wildman” Brill, who sells a 26-language “Wild Edibles” app and gives foraging tours in New York city parks.

Wild food tastes better than you might expect, enthusiasts say. Cattail roots, roasted until caramelised, have a pleasant chestnut flavour. The mucus of the mallow plant can substitute for egg whites to enrich meringues.

Roughly 18% of Americans forage at least once a year, up from 13% in 1999, says Marla Emery, a geographer at the US Forest Service. ForageSF, a San Francisco firm, serves 100 dinners with foraged ingredients such as beached kelp and fennel pollen. Iso Rabins, the founder, had hoped to employ staff foragers but found that the laudable attributes of folks willing to forage full-time did not include promptness in returning calls or punctuality. He now uses freelances instead.