Forager of the Future: Nick of North on Purpose, Plants & the Power of Paying Attention

In this conversation, Nick Chindamo (@nickofnorth) shares his journey from traditional restaurant cooking to foraging and educating others about sustainable food practices. He emphasizes the importance of finding purpose in one's culinary career, the philosophy behind foraging, and the need to connect with nature. Nick discusses his daily life as a forager and educator, the challenges of navigating regulations, and his community initiative, the Island Collective, which focuses on zero waste cooking. He encourages chefs and food enthusiasts to look beyond individual ingredients and understand the broader ecosystem they are part of.

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Nick of North and the Podcast's Purpose

01:31 Nick's Journey into Foraging and Cooking

07:22 The Influence of Family and Early Food Experiences

09:50 Seeking Purpose in the Food Industry

12:07 The Intersection of Foraging and Restaurant Consistency

18:07 Realization of Identity as a Forager-Cook

18:56 The Whimsical World of Local Cuisine

21:07 Landscape Literacy in Culinary Arts

22:51 A Day in the Life of Nick of North

28:15 Navigating Foraging Regulations

34:32 The Economics of Foraging and Commercialization

36:03 Exploring Flavor Families

37:03 The Island Collective Initiative

40:17 Zero Waste Philosophy in Cooking

43:00 Connecting with Local Ecosystems

46:02 Education and Community Engagement

48:50 Finding Purpose Beyond the Kitchen

52:06 Understanding Ingredients Holistically

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
So hello, everyone, and welcome back to Fugitive Chefs, the
podcast where we talk to people who have reimagined what it
means to be in a kitchen, peoplewho are not working as
restaurant chefs and they're building some sort of a life
that is something more freer, slower, and in their way, more
meaningful in food. And today we have the honor to
have Nick Chindamo, or maybe youknow him as Nick of North.
So welcome, Nick. Thanks for coming to the

(00:20):
podcast. Thank you for having me, man.
You know, ever since we've we'veconnected, I think I've watched
every single one of your podcasts and I think you're
doing something really special. So I am honored and very
appreciative that you'll allow me on your on your platform.
So it's nice to meet you. No, thank you so much.
The honor is all mine. And Nick comes recommended from
Eddie who is on our podcast. And yeah, I'm glad to hear that

(00:42):
you've seen all the episodes because the idea of the podcast
now before we get into it and also for listeners who have
possibly forgotten, you know, why did this podcast start in
the 1st place? Because I myself, and maybe you
can relate to this later, Nick, but I myself was in a in a
juncture where I was, I know what I'm doing in restaurants.
I like what I'm doing it. I know I can do it in a
different place at a different scale and I could keep on in
this career. But at some point I felt like I

(01:05):
don't want to do that. And then a job came into my
laps, which was something very connected with food, where I was
say, not impacting the 45 dinerswho eat at Norma, but much more
beyond that, the whole food system.
And I felt, wow, there must be more people who don't go into
these carriers with academics, but more by just pure instinct
or there are industries or like companies which are valuing your

(01:25):
kitchen past. So that's the global idea of, of
exploring this. And we're going to learn a lot
from Nick, I think, because Nickis, I mean, where, where do I
start? Nick is from what I see is a
forager, somebody who cooks withwild food.
He's also the founder of an island collector, which I want
to hear about because was just before the podcast, we were
talking about this place where you live, right?
The Prince Edward Island and thewhole concept of these dinner

(01:45):
series you've create created mostly around 0 waste and other
concepts of living in the wild. But before we deep dive into all
of that, Nick, tell us about your connection with food.
Like how did you end up somebodywho works in in food?
You know your first connection with food.
Yeah, that's a really intricate question for me because, well, I
guess to start, I should say that, yeah, I'm a forger.

(02:07):
I pick plants and mushrooms for a living.
But that's usually where the conversation ends when I say
that to people. Yeah.
Or it goes a little bit further and they say, like, have you
ever poisoned yourself or like, what's your favorite thing to
forge or whatever? But to me, it's much, much
deeper than that, Right. I focus really heavily on
something that I call replacement research, which we
can talk about, and also something else called landscape

(02:28):
literacy, that's teaching chefs how to actually read a landscape
and, and translate that information into the kitchen.
That's a whole other subject that we could talk about too,
but it's really important. And so beyond just picking
plants and mushrooms, I'm very deeply integrated into my native
ecology. I found that when I was working
in restaurants, because I workedin restaurants for like nearly 2

(02:50):
decades, I, I was constantly like craving something more.
Like sure, I was happy feeding people, everything was great,
but I needed something more. And I didn't know what that was.
But I saw around me that there was a lot of chefs who just

(03:10):
cooked and not a lot who cooked with purpose and intention.
And I wasn't going to let that be me.
Not because I wanted to change the world or anything like that,
but because I wanted to change my world, right?
And I wanted to be a part of something a little bit bigger
than just feeding people point blank, right.
So I, I have always picked plates and mushrooms.
I've done this my entire life. I'm in my early 30s now.
Some of my first memories are like picking wild berries on the

(03:33):
train tracks in northern Ontario.
And, and I always took that withme into restaurants.
I never really lost that. I just didn't know that when I
moved from Sioux Saint Marie, Ontario, where I was born down
to like Toronto area and startedworking in better restaurants,
that the knowledge that I had was kind of odd and not known
necessarily. Or if it was known, it was quite

(03:53):
surface level. Like a forger would show up at
the back door of the restaurant and they would drop off a, a
poorly cleaned mushroom that waslike in a big basket smashing
other mushroom. It was just like, and the chef
was very stoked on it anyways because it was a great, a great
ingredient. So then I would have to be the
one or my, my Co chefs or whoever was around.

(04:15):
We had to be the one to clean itand I was the only one.
I feel like that was thinking deeper, and though I wasn't
expressing this information, I was thinking deeper about this
ingredient and how, like, they should be treated a little bit
better. And sure, it's exciting.
And sometimes they're novel in restaurants.
These novelty ingredients make their way into North American
restaurants quite often. Like, for example, wild ramps,

(04:35):
right? Do you know the the word ramp
when I say ramp? Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's, I mean, luckily innormal all they did was collect
wild ramps. But but you mean the the herb
itself, right? The the garlic he tasted, Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah, they call it over here in,
in, in Spain. They call it also in German.
Actually it's called Bello or inGerman it's called ajo deoso,
like the bears garlic because the, the, the forest and the

(04:57):
garlic connection with you. It's a super interesting, I
think it's also very sustainableherb when you look at like how
much you can use it. I think the most popular is
living pestos and stuff with it.But that is, I mean, it's, it's
an invasive plant also because so you're, you're like taking
something from the nature, whichis abundant.
Yeah, totally. But then even building off of
what you just said, I, I, I can appreciate that they are wild
garlics, but none of those that we mentioned so far are actually

(05:20):
the same species, right? And they all have different
things to offer, right? So here we have two varieties in
North America, OK, And one has awhite stem and one has a reddish
stem. And they are different species
and they offer different flavor profiles.
But often foragers would bring them to the back door, just kind
of mixed in together and had no idea that there were two
different species, right? And isn't there one just to

(05:41):
interrupt you? Isn't there one which is like
kind of poisonous? Because very often during summer
there are cases in Germany, for example.
I don't know if that's the case in North America as well,
because there's one which looks very similar, but it's nothing
to do with the same same plant. I don't know if you've heard
about this one. I mean, the, the closest thing
that we have to be a look alike to a wild garlic.
Actually, I should backtrack fora second because on Prince

(06:02):
Edward Island here, we have no native Allium species whatsoever
because we're, and I can give you a little bit more
information on where I live specifically, but just to kind
of set the, the tone here. I live on Prince Edward Island,
which is a sand bar 12 kilometers off of the mainland.
It's a sand bar. We don't have any rock here
whatsoever. If you find a rock, it was

(06:23):
brought in as a glacial deposit or somebody brought it in
themselves, That's it. It's a sandbox.
Our ecology doesn't facilitate the growth of alliums and and
therefore we have no native alliums, meaning we have no
ramps on our island. But I can go just off of our
island into the next province, which is only 12 kilometers into
New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. And it's quite abundant, right?

(06:45):
The only thing that we have to look alike that looks alike,
this wild garlic is like a Lily of the valley, which isn't
really a look alike. It kind of is a look similar and
there's no garlic smell. There's no worries there.
It's mostly when people are justlike out clear cutting things.
They might they might get one intheir basket or whatever it is.

(07:06):
So that would be the only thing that would be a look alike crazy
to that. But yeah, I mean, I I think your
original question was like related to how I like got into
restaurants. Is that right or?
Yeah, exactly. Like food in general.
Like why? Why restaurants or why kitchen?
Why food as a career, you know. I come from an Italian family
and my grandparents had a restaurant growing up, but I
didn't work in that restaurant. That was too young before they

(07:28):
sold it. But still, my, my father would
always tell me stories about howhe's like folding pizza boxes
downstairs. And all of his brothers, my, my
aunts and uncles, they're folding pizza boxes in the
basement and, and they talk about how popular their
restaurant was because what theycooked was just Italian classics
that didn't exist in this small northern Ontario town before.

(07:48):
And they didn't, how would you say it, conform to the food
systems of that area? Instead, they went true to
themselves and incorporated their own foods into the system.
And it worked, right? So they grow, they grew their
own food. And I was always surrounded by
food, really growing up around my grandparents and just down
the road from their house. I was always in their garden

(08:10):
picking tomatoes, doing all thisstuff.
This is classic story, right? Yeah, yeah.
But it's. But you know, like I said, when
I moved down to southern Ontariofrom there, I realized how
removed people were from their food systems.
And that was quite shocking because I had never not been
around food before. And this is not saying that my
parents were good cooks because we ate very, very basic food.
My parents were quite young whenthey had me as well.

(08:31):
So they were just focused on getting by, right.
So they didn't have a lot of money and, and they were just
feeding us what they could. And that was amazing.
But it also allowed us a lot of freedom to kind of go out and
wander through the day because they were young and they wanted
to be young as well, right? So they'd open the door in the
in the early morning and my sister and I would just leave
and we'd come back for dinner, right?
And that was a beautiful place there because I mean, where we

(08:54):
grew up was it was like a, a trailer park essentially with
like I seem to remember 8 or 10 different trailers.
There were stationary trailers, but we knew everybody in them.
This was on the outskirts of town, just on the edge of town,
right when you come in to Sioux Saint Marie.
And like I said, all the kids would just kind of go.
And then we'd come back for dinner and we'd go pick sorrels

(09:15):
from the grasses or we'd go eat wild berries along the train
train tracks, or my grandparentswould go pick mushrooms in the
fields or whatever it was. And food was always a thing, but
I didn't know it was a thing because I was so deeply
ingrained in it. I didn't know it was a thing
until I moved away, like I said,and I was kind of disconnected
from it and I realized how disconnected everyone else was

(09:38):
from it. And since then, I've, I've never
really looked back, but I've always sought more purpose
within the industry. And, and just to sort of wrap up
this thought, I, you know, I, like I said, I, I was seeking
purpose in the restaurant industry and, and I couldn't
find it. But even though I've technically

(09:58):
left the industry in the conventional set sense, because
I've connected so deeply to my food system around me, I'm
actually more deeply ingrained in the restaurant industry than
I've ever been. And that's a really interesting
feeling to have because I don't,in fact, cook online anymore,
right? Yeah.
Yeah. Don't do anything like that.

(10:19):
But still, I'm more deeply ingrained in the restaurant
system than I've ever been. It's really cool.
No, definitely. I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't
say it better, Nick. I mean, honestly, what you've
said is, is, does summarize all that we are trying over here
with this, with this show, the podcast.
And the idea is this that we start looking at people who are
not actively in the restaurant serving diners.
But there is so much to the foodsystem beyond it.

(10:40):
And somehow I feel it's also, I mean, there has been good coming
out of chefs getting attention, be it through Master chef or be
it through award ceremonies and things like that of chef getting
this mic that they can speak about things.
But that also puts out a very unreal picture of the world
where chefs are the only people who have a voice in the in the
food industry, you know, in the food system as such.
And I think it's people like youwho have also like what you said

(11:00):
about foraging of something, youdid something growing up.
And I feel that is why it's so deep rooted in you.
And that is more important to know that where that feeling
comes from or where that knowledge comes from, because
then the other side is all foraging is not good.
Because I know, for example, I come, I was, I grew up in Bombay
in India, there are restaurants serving, see Buckton Mousse and
things like that, which is again, it's not foraged from
anywhere. It's foraged somewhere.

(11:20):
And then again, it enters this whole commercial food system,
which is what foraging tries to avoid, you know, And I think
that's why it's important to know the purpose, the way you've
explained it, so that what you're doing is, is not a cool
thing or a trend. I mean, trends are good because
the people catch up on it. And there are like people now
going for mushroom foraging, butI think the essence of it has to
be the purpose behind us, which is what you left restaurants for

(11:42):
in the end of the day. So for me, the question over
here is more coming towards as somebody who knew this, who
comes from a family where say your grandparents had something
with food you were foraging as akid.
And then you go into restaurantsand you see an industry which
works, which is based on a lot of numbers.
So that is why foraging I see many restaurants doesn't go well
together if a restaurant is trying to be because I don't

(12:03):
know if I think it was Joseph who said in the podcast that
restaurants always want consistency.
They are not the is the least creative place because it
doesn't just wants to be consistent with one form of
creativity. And then foraging is something
which depends so much on the weather, the climate, if it has
rained yesterday or not. How did you see that match?
Like was it, I don't know, was it something that you had to
face in restaurants reality and kind of take that skill forward?

(12:26):
And how did you find this balance between, say, foraging
and the food system the restaurant is?
Yeah, that's a great question. I think about this one a lot
too, because when I'm reflectingon my time working as a cook in
restaurants, I think about how Iwould always offer to bring
certain ingredients in that maybe the chef hadn't heard of
before. And they were almost like
hesitant or fearful to incorporate that into the menu

(12:47):
because they were inexperienced with it.
And it's really interesting to see a chef attempt to or not
attempt to disconnect from theirego for a minute and learn
something new. And consistency is amazing, but
but so is innovation. And I don't mean innovation in a
I'm trying to change the world way, but I mean innovation
within oneself, right? To be able to use and adapt to

(13:10):
new ingredients specifically within the restaurant.
So I would use, for example, well, how about this?
There would be times where we would run out of carrots in the
restaurant. There'd be no carrots left.
You know, it'd be a sundae as well or something.
We're open. So we can't contact a farm.
We're not going to go to a grocery store and buy them.
We have no carrots for today. Right?
But it's late May. And I say, OK, well, what are

(13:33):
you looking for from a carrot? And that chef doesn't really
have an answer. What do you mean?
What do you mean? What am I looking for from a
carrot? I want the carrot flavor.
That's what I want. But I really thought much deeper
than that. And what people fail to realize
is that the flavor of an individual ingredient doesn't
belong to that ingredient belongs to the family that that
individual ingredient resides within.

(13:55):
So the flavor of carrot doesn't belong to a carrot.
It belongs to the APACA fan, OK,Belongs to the carrot family.
So when you think about it that way, if you run out of carrots,
you can see carrot flavor through another carrot family
plant. OK, so we run out of carrots in
the restaurant. I know that there's a riparian
zone, a wetland area or River Valley down just behind the

(14:20):
restaurant. I can run down there in 5
minutes. And because it's late May, early
June, I can at this time say I can harvest the flower stems
before the flower has opened of cow parsley.
Cow parsley is a beautiful carrot family plant.
And these stems are three to four feet tall and they're

(14:41):
thick. They're about as thick as a
carrot even. And if you peel them and crunch
one of those, it tastes identical to a carrot, but it
has the texture more of like celery.
And there's nothing. Yeah, it's it's wonderful.
It's incredible. And this is just one example of
how, again, backtracking for a moment earlier I said
replacement research is something that I work on.
This is a prime example of replacement research.

(15:02):
How can I, if I run out of carrot, still get the same
result by using something else, right.
So I would try and incorporate that into restaurants that
mentality at least. And it wasn't often it didn't
like stick because again, based off, again, just like your
question implied, like the, the the like continuity within

(15:25):
restaurants is what you seek, right?
Or consistency. So if I'm introducing a new
carrot family plant, is it goingto do the same thing as that
carrot did? Pretty close, but maybe not
exactly in the mind of that chef, right?
But you need to be open to ingredient swaps here and there
in order to showcase what you'retrying to showcase.

(15:45):
And if the your ecology in the plants around you is not
necessarily what you want to showcase, and instead it's just
this plate of food, then, I mean, that's how it is.
That's how it has to be. But I knew that that wasn't the
restaurant that I needed to be in at that time if I was
consistently having those sorts of interactions.
Right. And so I moved around quite a
lot. Yeah.
And I found places that were open and receptive and that was

(16:08):
a beautiful thing to see. Like I said, a a chef detached
from their ego as the, the head chef in this place, I know
everything blah, blah, blah. Whatever it is to ACDP saying,
hey, I have a a new ingredient that can replace that thing that
you're buying for X amount of dollars, save you money,
introduce a new very special ingredient, teach your team at

(16:31):
the same time about something new and also create longevity on
this menu because it's availablefor longer than whatever that
ingredient was. Does it make sense?
No, definitely, definitely doesn't.
I feel the more the more you speak about it, it also makes me
me understand that how many people have got foraging wrong
because I think foraging has just been seen as a skill.
Like how can you identify a certain mushroom or where do you

(16:52):
know when, what plan grows next to which plan.
I think that that part of information is important, but I
think it's also a philosophy as an extended philosophy of like
doing it with a purpose and not foraging for the sake of
foraging or innovating for the sake of innovating, but
understanding how you can add these kind of colors to your to
your picture. And I mean, if you're open and
if you're somebody who can get over their ego or get over

(17:13):
knowing everything, it can be a new, I don't know, great set of
tools to have to design these menus.
Because also what I'm seeing rapidly in restaurants and the
right restaurants which are ahead in the game, what they're
doing is at some point, I think you could still impress guests.
Maybe like even 20 years ago, you could impress guests by
putting like lavish plates, foiegras, caviar and all the
expensive ingredients. But at this point where I see

(17:34):
all the leading restaurants today, none of them usually go
for the most expensive thing to impress.
But it's the experience in the end of end of the day or the
exclusive exclusivity of the ingredient, which is mostly the
case in foraging. So I feel like what you have
here to share and what you have to say is so very valuable for
the right person who's is like open, as you said, to go over
what they already know. But for you, how did you

(17:55):
understand at which which point did you think that the skill
that you have or this philosophythat you have can be made a
voice by itself? Or like what was it in a
restaurant or what setting did you get this this kind of wake
up call? Many moments working in
restaurants where the realization came to me that I
was not a cook who forged, I wasa forger who cooked.

(18:15):
And it's not that I I just immediately quit the restaurants
and cooking in restaurants afterhaving that realization.
But again, it provided me guidance and purpose and, and,
and some more intention within what I was doing direction.
And and I ran with that for so many years before I actually
left restaurants. Yeah, like I left restaurants.

(18:35):
But again, I'm very deeply ingrained in the restaurant
system here as well. Still even more than before.
Like I mentioned, I work currently with a with a
restaurant actually called the Innate Bay Fortune, which is an
extraordinary restaurant out here.
Extraordinary because they they grow all their own food on their

(18:56):
property. They only serve things that are
from here. They provide this really like
whimsical, magical sort of experience through the evening
that's unlike anything you ever seen.
It's really impressive. But I work with this restaurant
because the head chef, the owner, the person in charge of
bringing everyone together, his name is Michael Smith, and he's

(19:16):
a huge voice in North American food.
And he's a very special person because he gives you the ability
to do whatever you want to run with in his space.
If you have an interest in something, he says, cool.
I don't know anything about that.
Teach me about it. Let's run it.
It's impressive. It's incredible.

(19:36):
So I was working in his kitchen as a fish cook for a couple of
years. And then COVID hit and they
closed in the conventional senseand started adapting and
changing. And I showed up at his door in
the middle of winter and I said,hey, you know, I spend my lunch
hours out in the backwoods picking mushrooms.
And before work, I'm down in by the river picking, you know,

(19:57):
this for our menu. And after work, I go out here
and I do this. And what do you say?
I backed off from the line and Ijust like, did this full time
for you. And he said, I've been waiting
for you to ask. Wow.
Which was a special moment for me because that's when, like,
everything changed. OK, important to realize now
that that didn't mean, hey, you bring in an abundance of

(20:22):
ingredients and we'll give you cash and then you leave.
I don't do that. Instead, he said on one
condition, you can have this jobif you educate our staff.
So now my main responsibility isnot bringing in bulk
ingredients. It's taking out these kitchen
staff members and teaching them about what I call landscape

(20:44):
literacy, how to read a landscape, and then how to bring
that information back into the restaurant and translate that
into the menu that changes everysingle day.
So that's a special opportunity.And of course, I have to provide
and I bring really interesting ingredients and stuff like if,
if I, you know, I, if I spent the day bringing 3 or 4 and

(21:07):
chefs from garment J out into the field to learn about a
certain ecosystem. And we come back empty handed
because the intention for that day was not to bring back an
ingredient, but rather to bring back a little bit of knowledge
and inspiration then that is. Good enough.
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
No, I mean, there's not many chefs, there's not many
restaurants like this with this kind of a vision of something

(21:29):
with a long term plan and not just, you know, get by.
So I mean, kudos to this this this restaurant.
The chef, you said? Mike Michael Smith, if I'm not
wrong, right? Yeah, Michael.
Smith super interesting. I mean, yeah, I mean, I think
it's a it's a privileged position for the people working
there to get this access and to have somebody who's supporting
growth of individuals and not seeing them as just one more,
but seeing them for their uniqueness.
So the Super interesting, yeah, position that that you're in.

(21:52):
And was it then that you start yourself like Nick of North as
a, as a brand or whatever you you kind of call it of this
channelling that all into socialmedia and mediums like that, or
when did that start? About a decade ago that someone
in the kitchen just because someone said Nick, where are you
from? I said Northern Ontario, they
said Nick of the North and drop that just like Facebook, drop

(22:12):
the the Facebook, they dropped the north and nick of north just
stuck and there's nothing reallymore to it.
It was just like a rolled off the tongue, that's what it was.
And now people don't even know my last name.
Yeah, yeah. I had to look it up.
I had to look it up. I had to see like when I was
texting you on Instagram, I was like, yeah, OK, it says, says
would they let me not call him Nick of the North?
But yeah, it's a nice, nice thing that stuck around.

(22:33):
That's what I'm known by and that's how it goes.
But yeah, I mean, that's just how it came up.
It's a very simple story. Yeah.
And what, what do you do today, Nick?
Like as if if like you had to like explain us your week as
what do you do for work today? Like let's say what is your
career today when it's not completely in restaurants?
You said you're working closely with the restaurants, but what's
your week like? Yeah.

(22:54):
So I wake up in the morning and I'm immediately outside right
away. And I keep what's called the
phenology calendar phenology. Are you familiar with the term
phenology? No, no, please.
What was that? Well, phenology is the study or
the perception of the changes ofthe landscape.
Perception is not the right word.
It's the the like when you see, I'm trying to put it in an easy
way to understand. Yeah, yeah.

(23:15):
Phenology is, is the study of the changes on the landscape
over time. OK.
And so a phenology calendar thenyou can visualize a calendar.
Yeah. And I'm studying the changes on
the landscape by the day as the day goes by.
OK, so I'll start the day by adding to my phenology calendar.

(23:36):
So I'll step out my back door and I'll look at the space
around me and I will mark down the changes that I see.
And then through the day, I willkeep notes on a little
pocketbook that I have, but little things that I see through
the day, what stage a certain thing is at or just whatever I
see. I write these things down.
And then that's also how I finish my day.
I write all of these things down.

(23:58):
And I, with that, have a system,just a simple Google Sheet
system where I have over a decade of accumulated years of
calendars that every single day have what I'm seeing.
So now I can study this calendarbefore I leave the house and say
over the last two to three years, if I reflect on what's

(24:18):
today, June or July 25th, if I reflect on July 25th, last year,
the year before, the year before, the year before,
etcetera, what was I seeing on this day?
What was I seeing on this week? And then I could begin my day
there. Wow, pretty cool, right?
Yeah, it is definitely is, Yeah,yeah.
And this is all about if you're doing this or like is it, is it
somebody asking you to do this? It's just for your own records.

(24:41):
Yeah, I've been doing it for so long and I encourage you to do
it as well. It's it's just like, even if
you're not using it to, to forage necessarily or to go like
look for plants or whatever, it gets you really deeply with your
environment and, and, and kind of forces you to be present
wherever you are because you're looking for subtle changes.
Now, does that ever translate into the kitchen?

(25:01):
Man, it's unbelievable how well that translates into the kitchen
because if you develop a habit of meticulousness in nature, you
bring that with you into the kitchen and now you're noticing
little, little intricacies aboutevery.
And that makes you a better cook, makes you more attentive
as a person and so many more things.
So I start my day that way and Ifinish that way.

(25:24):
So after I've decided where I mean to go that day based on
what's ready, I will actually head to a restaurant 1st, to the
inn, and usually connect with a cook or two and figure out who's
coming out with me. And we're going to go to a space
and we're going to learn about that space and we're going to
spend some time and we're going to maybe harvest some food or
we're going to really, really take in that environment.
And we'll head back to the restaurant.

(25:45):
I'll show them how to process those ingredients, how to cook
them. Maybe we turn them into a
different products for future use.
I do a lot of like fermentation and stuff.
So I have like a little lab in the basement of the restaurant
where I do like all of our, you know, a lot of misos and chouyos
and this and that whatever. And then so we can turn a lot of
these cool wild plants and mushrooms into really unique

(26:06):
ingredients. But I mean, we'll process these
ingredients and we'll develop like a sort of taste of the day,
and we'll let the other chefs taste it.
And then when guests arrive, there's 70 guests per night at
this restaurant. I'll, you know, gather them all
together when they arrive and they get a taste of this wild
food. However we prepared it or

(26:28):
however that chef has decided toprepare it.
And we talked about this plant and it's often a completely new
ingredient for most people having it or maybe it's not.
But ultimately it gives the chefwho came out with me a chance to
kind of express what they learned that day.
It's a little bit of pressure onthem to to like retain through
the day. So that's a special thing as

(26:49):
well to watch them kind of like stumble through what they
learned or like, look to me for like, is that right?
Was that clear? Like, you know what I mean?
Which is amazing. I love that.
That's super cool. And then I leave, and then I go
somewhere else and I focus on whatever else I have to focus on
that day. And then I come home and again I
reflect and I figure out what I'm doing.
Hopefully the next day. I fill in my Physiology

(27:10):
calendar. I do a bit of writing.
I'm working on a couple of booksat the moment.
And then I, I hang out with my partner and relax and have a
glass of wine out on the deck and, and yeah, sort of smile at
the at the ridiculousness of my life.
Yeah, it is super. Yeah.

(27:30):
Sounds super interesting. I mean, the way you'll see
you've painted it, it's like makes it very easy to imagine
this, you know, And what I'm curious, like all this time that
you were talking about this, I was curious about how is
regulations around your kind of a job?
Because I know that we had some issues, like for example, in
Copenhagen, we had issues when you go for like picking up
ramps, they can be, you can be stopped by the Rangers.
And I'm super interested in how that part of the kind of forest

(27:51):
reserves work. Because for example, in
Copenhagen, they have a program called Wiltmad.
Wiltmad basically trains foragers to look for, to become
kind of get a chef's eyes. So it's the opposite like what
you try with chefs, they do the same with forage.
It's too with forest Rangers to understand what kind of stuff
they should look out for or whatcould say what to them.
So have you any time had problems with regulations,
governments or is this somethingit's your playground?

(28:16):
A bit of both. We cannot forage in national
parks, OK, So these are protected areas.
We also there's a handful of plants that are endangered or
threatened species. You can't touch those or
interact with those in any way. OK, so there's a weird, there's
some weird rules about harvesting invasive species and
how, like, you're not allowed totouch them.

(28:37):
Yeah. But like the forest Rangers and
stuff are because they know how to handle them, which is
actually often so contradictory to what they're actually trying
to do. And, you know, I've had
experiences where I'm after, youknow, let's take something,
something pretty well known, like Japanese knotweed.
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or garlic mustard. Actually, garlic mustard is a

(28:57):
super invasive plant that sure spreads by seed, but it also
spreads underground. And if you disturb the roots by
just pulling it up, people thinkyou're just pulling it up and
then now it's gone. But if you break one of those
roots, it will just develop tenfold in that area.
So now I have people who are part of our our local groups who

(29:21):
focus on some of these things who are kind of just pulling
things and saying, look at how good we're doing without the
deeper knowledge about how to actually harvest it.
And then it just goes in plasticbags and out to the landfill,
right, Instead of to chefs, yeah, who can use it.
So your question about regulations, we don't have any
specific regulations. We have like, unless it comes to

(29:43):
national parks and stuff like that.
Other than that, it's pretty free.
We're pretty free and we can usethem on our on our menus no
problem. Chefs all across the island can
use them no problem. Mushrooms, there are no There
are no regulations around mushrooms, which is kind of a
freaky one for a lot of. People, yeah, you're lucky over
here. It's it's not the same over
here. Over here, it's like when, I
don't know, things come out, that is like when chancellors

(30:05):
come out, you'll see like there are like horrible pictures from
last year, I think with bullets,bullets.
I don't. There was like somebody who I
think I don't even know how manykilos, but there was a picture
in the newspaper of a car full of just mushrooms and he could
barely sit inside and people go crazy.
I think people also need to knowwhere, because I'm in this
region where it's it's very goodfor produce.

(30:25):
And yeah, some regulation is important, but I'm very
surprised what what you're saying because I think also I
feel regulation always is the last one to catch up.
So I think it's nice that you'rein a scenario right now where
you have some flexibility to do things.
And I think you could be an important voice to when these
regulations get into place or get framed to be giving an
opinion, you know, what's realistic to put as a as a
regulation. So yeah, it's you.

(30:46):
Bring up a good point there where the issue that you you
found, and please correct me if I'm wrong with that, this portal
came up where he was in his vehicle and he couldn't even
send it because there was so much much, so many mushrooms,
right? Yeah.
So the regulation that you're talking about is a regulation on
quantity. Exactly.
You should be able to pick 10 lbs of chanterelles instead of

(31:07):
200 in a day, right? Exactly.
I'm kind of on the opposite sideof things where I don't think
quantity necessarily matters, but it's more like regulation
from a different perspective. Where, And this goes back to
like that, that I mentioned landscape literacy earlier.
Yeah, to read landscape, it's about stepping back and before
you harvest, you understand the greater ecology and what's

(31:28):
happening in this place, right? If I step through here to
harvest that patch of chanterelles, first of all, it
doesn't matter if I if I harvest100% of those chanterelles,
nothing is affected. But how I harvest them is a
totally different story. And I don't mean cutting or
pulling, that also doesn't make a difference.
But I mean how I get from point A to those chanterelles causes
the most damage, right? Am I trampling because I

(31:52):
trampling all of these native species along the way?
Because I don't care what's between me and those mushrooms.
Those dozen plants, I just killed off all of them to get to
those mushrooms. That's where things become a bit
of an issue. So regulation is a is a
interesting word for me. I like because I see it a little
bit differently where I think that there should be an
understanding of of more than just that individual plant that

(32:16):
you're after or that individual mushroom that you're you're
after. Because when you can develop the
ability to understand what's around you, you approach nature
differently and you approach foraging specific wild foods
differently because you're not, you know, you're not so much
after just like an abundance, but rather how you can be the

(32:37):
least intrusive to that environment as you possibly can.
So again, I have to reiterate, regulation is an interesting
word for me that requires much deeper conversation.
But when it comes to quantity, that's a tough one for me to to
get behind unless it's a threatened species of some kind.

(32:57):
And even then, a mushroom that'sa threatened species, that's a a
different story as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, definitely. And how do you see it?
Because I understand like, you know, restaurants which create
value of like, I don't know the the carrot you spoke about, is
it the, the, I'm actually confused.
The one you spoke about, I thinkyou call it the cows something.
Parsley. Cow parsley?
Is it the one with the with the small tiny white flowers on top?

(33:19):
Because that's one plan that I've tried, which tastes like
kind of carrots. Kind of, yeah.
It looks like a lot of carrot family plants.
They have that umbrella for thatflower that grows like, you
know, Queen Anne's lace has thatand.
Regular stuff that, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Like a fan of flower. Yeah, yeah, that's super
interesting because, yeah, that leads me to the question that

(33:40):
now these things are forage. So we are paying a price to a
restaurant because we are valuing the time they have put
to go to that hunt that or have the talent which can go and look
for that. But what happens when these
things become commercial? Like for example, that is like
the whole Berry business with the berries were all foraged to
certain extent. Even today I have friends in
Germany who have a lot of forestand big berries very, very

(34:02):
famously in summer. But a lot of these berries are
now to be like a big industries,which is also like for still
kind of foraged but being bottled and sold to people.
So that again changes the whole value system around these kind
of products. You know, how do you see that?
Have you seen any examples of like what is the like?
It's very difficult to understand what is the just

(34:22):
value for the product and then the whole scaling up of it beats
the point of the foraging philosophy.
How do you see that transactional side of foraging?
That's the thought that I'm really working on development
really, because it's not as easyas just saying this or this.
Yeah, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's a, it's a really

(34:43):
first of all foraging in generalwhen it comes to like the, the
specifics of the conversation that we're talking about, like
within the restaurants essentially and the food system
here. We're not really talking about
like people at home who are out foraging for just for their
family or, and they work a tech job or whatever it is.
I think we're talking about something different here,
specifically. Totally.

(35:03):
But it's such a such a niche skill that not a lot of people
have. And if they do, it's like, you
know, there's maybe 5 things that they are after.
And most of those things, you know, they're after them because
they're super abundant and they're comfortable with them.
So like ramps, for example, are sold at every farmers market,
Morels are sold at every farmersmarket.
But cow parsley, not so much. You're not going to find that

(35:25):
anywhere. You'd be troubled to find that
on a restaurant menu anywhere. But it's incredibly abundant,
incredibly abundant. People just don't look beyond
those, you know, dozen wild foods that they're used to, to
find these things. So it's not to say that in the
future they won't be. But like if I fed you one of
these, I have in my in my fridgebeside me here, one of those cow

(35:49):
parsley stems. I'm not one like a hundred that
I've preserved in a, in a specific way for this coming
winter. If I fed you one of those next
spring, you would do nothing butseek that vegetable.
People have to be experienced with it first of.
Course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
People have to find it. They have to find that the not
only find the ingredient, but find the desire to find that

(36:11):
ingredient. Exactly.
There's something that can really facilitate that in people
and I encourage people to try and find these things.
One thing again is that understanding of flavors in the
family, not the individual. Because when you're looking for
a placement for something, thereis always a replacement by
looking deeper into that family.And that's how I that's how I
find food. I don't look for individual
things. I look for that family.

(36:32):
Or I look for a flavor and I find that flavor somewhere.
Yeah, that's super. Interesting.
And this leads me to the next question, which I had planned,
for example, like because I think it's very important what
you're saying because it's not just about teaching people what
they can get, feeding them in the right sense of it, because
you've already tried what technique works?
Like is it going to be preservation or fermentation?

(36:53):
What's going to work best for it?
And giving them the best representation so that they
inculcate this kind of habit to go look for these ingredients.
And that makes me curious about what I read about an island
collector because when you look,when I looked you up, I heard
about this initiative. Like, tell us, for those who
don't know, what is it and why did you create it?
Like what was the necessity for this?
OK, so another little side, I struggle calling it a passion,

(37:17):
but like what I have always beeninterested in when it comes to
food, like since I've started inrestaurants was not wasting food
and just I'd be that guy who would accumulate all the carrot
peels to try and do something. And like it was ultimately like
a silly thing. I didn't need to do that, but I
was just curious on what I coulddo with it.
And I took that with me all through my career.
And then maybe 5 or 6 years ago,myself and my partner, she's a

(37:40):
sommelier. We, we decided that we wanted to
like do something just for, justfor local organizations, just
like to raise money for local organizations.
So I should say that an island collective, which is a, a dinner
series that we do twice a year where we gather 10 different
chefs, eight of which are from around our province.
One, I fly in from somewhere andthen myself to cook a like 10 to

(38:03):
15 course menu for like 35 guests and twice a year.
And the price tag is quite high,but every bit of profit goes to
a local organization. So we don't make any money off
of it. It's not about that.
But the whole like philosophy around this is like, hey, we
have these ingredients, you haveto use them in their entirety.
So these chefs that don't usually use ingredients in their

(38:25):
entirety and instead will use like the perfect piece of
something will come in and be forced to kind of become
beginners again where they have to like rack their brain for
methods to use an obscure piece of a vegetable or a piece of
meat or or whatever. So we make sure that 100% of
this dinner, 10-15 courses is 100% zero waste.

(38:48):
I have a course in there that I created so long ago that never
changes. This is the only course that
never changes. It does change, actually
completely changes every time, but the premise of it doesn't
change. And that's something that I
called compost tea. This was based off my time
working on farms. I worked on farms for quite a
long time and, and instead of using like traditional
fertilizers and stuff, they would make like a compost tea.

(39:10):
So they would grow compost and they would brew a tea out of
that and that's what they would spray on their plants for
fertilizer. So I was like, so you're using
all of the wasted product to brew a tea to feed and nourish
your future plants, right. So I took that premise and I
developed a, a sort of like a bridge course between savory
into like a sweeter section thatwould be a tea that was brewed

(39:33):
from any wasted materials through the evening.
So it just has like notes of like past courses and future
courses. And it always tastes different
100% of the time because the ingredients are different every
time, right? So we clear all everything off
the tables and we just put down a cup and we pour this, this
compost tea over it. And it was a wonderful thing.
And I used to do that at like private dinners and stuff and

(39:55):
little restaurants that I workedat.
I'd just throw that into the menu.
And I was like, well, this needsto be like a central point of
this, a central focus. So we built this whole island
collective sort of around that compost tea.
Not as a, it's not like talked about differently during the
evening. It's not, there's nothing like
that. But I mean the premise of.
Taking wasted ingredients and nourishing others with it

(40:17):
instead of putting it in the trash was something that was the
philosophy that we shared here. So, and I don't flex, it was
based on that and raising money for people and getting our
community cooking together and showing these chefs different
wild ingredients that they coulduse for collaborating on new
ways to utilize otherwise wastedingredients.

(40:37):
And then ultimately just feedingguests a good time, good food in
a unique space. We just build out a pop up space
wherever, put some good music inthere and send people away
happy, nourished and knowing that they're supporting their
community. Yeah, and it's a super, I mean,
cool concept. I mean, especially the composty,
as you explain, it's like a veryritual sort of thing to kind of

(40:59):
culminate all of these great ideas, you know.
And I think there's so much goodthat comes out when you bring,
especially in the context you live of bringing all these
people who maybe not often work together even though they know
each other. I think, I think this reminder,
even if it's like biannual, it'sso important is to like reflect
and and I mean that I think thatis real creativity to try to
create something out of sort of things that you did not even
consider as the ingredients. So I think that's.

(41:20):
So many, so many people doing something like this too.
Like this is not necessarily a new concept and it wasn't to
some innovative thing. It was just a thing that we
built around doing all of the things that I mentioned.
You know, there are so many people in this, in this food
world that are doing things likethat.
For example, I used to work witha guy and down in Dundas ON
Southern Ontario, who at the time was a kid, but it's now a

(41:41):
man doing something really special and his name is Leif and
he has Eat wasted. Do you know Eat?
Wasted. Yeah, I think it's rings a bell.
Yeah, they just popped up at Silo.
They did want to, you know after.
That is why they make pasta frombread waste, right?
Yeah, I know. Yeah, He was in Copenhagen.
Yeah, because he approached. I think he approached Rene, then
he went approached Massimo Bottou.
He's been travelling. Yeah.

(42:03):
So it was a bread waste pasta, right?
So Leif at the time was, I thinkwhen, when he worked the
restaurant that I was at, he was, I think 16 or something
like that. And you just saw in this guy
that he was going to be like, hewas much bigger than this
restaurant situation. And we haven't talked since
then. It's been that long.
But I still been following his career since.

(42:24):
So there are people who are utilizing food waste in
interesting ways and very like inventive and, and, and, and
important ways. And that's just what we're
trying to do here, as well as just a side project.
I should project here that we have because my first job is
foraging. That's what I do.
But foraging, of course, I thinkas we've, we've started to

(42:48):
understand in this, in this short conversation that we had
is, is that, you know, the word foraging is an umbrella term for
so many things. It's not just about picking a
planter mushroom. So much more than that.
Yeah, I think it's like connecting with your, connecting
with your surrounding, right. And I feel like that's, I mean,
how disconnected we are is always very surprising.

(43:08):
Like for me, when I was between like between leaving restaurants
and starting this job that I do now, I was spending around four
months in, in a small birish in this southern Germany in a
permaculture farm. And they worked with this
concept in Germany. It's called Solavi Solidarisch
land with shaft, which means yougrow vegetables for like we were
all like woofers. And these are people living in
Munich who pay, I think, a monthly fee and they get a

(43:31):
basket of vegetables every week.And that was like the, the basic
idea of it. But actually the farm was based
in the street, which is called the hops transit.
The, all the hops in the world, most of them come from Germany,
from this street. And that's the most abusive form
of farming possible because hopsare very, they're grown very
tightly close. They grow a lot of diseases.
And these are like the most highest sprayed with pesticides

(43:54):
and stuff. And there was one guy who said,
you know what? I'm not going to sell my plot of
land to any beer brewery and I'mgoing to just grow vegetables.
And we did like we did, it's very funny.
We did experiments of like putting AUV light on both these
farms. And even like in a very small
plot, you can still conserve themicroclimate and still make it
ideal for so many of these bugs,which, yeah, thrive over there.

(44:15):
And I feel it's, it's really sadhow disconnected we are.
And it's a first like this, likethe people you've mentioned, the
kind of efforts, not just foraging, but the whole
connecting with your surroundingin any form possible, which is
hopefully saves us. Hopefully it's not too late by
the time we wake up to this, these solutions, you know?
While you were talking about hops and hops farming
specifically, of course these farmers farm hops.

(44:36):
That's what they do, right? They're growing hops.
I guess we'd call that agriculture, right?
Agriculture is cultivating land,right?
Yeah. Well, what about ecoculture?
Cultivating an ecosystem, right?You're talking about bugs
thriving and some things that are thriving because you're
creating a hospitable environment for everyone while
also getting what you're lookingfor specifically.

(44:59):
That's another thing that I focus on over here.
It's like, how can we move beyond just this square plot of
land and understand that when wepass those boundaries, there's
more things happening, right? We can kind of connect to
everything together and blend everything sort of into one and
create a natural environment andecosystem to grow hops or to

(45:19):
grow whatever we choose, right? Exactly.
Creating a thriving environment is is the key in cultivating
this ecosystem and caring for this ecosystem rather than a
specific thing. OK.
Culture, I guess versus equal culture?
No, no, super interesting. I think I love the concept, the
way you explain it of like seeing beyond your purpose and
not, I'm just just keeping in mind what you're dealing with in

(45:43):
the whole sense of it and not just the ends or the, the output
that you want from it. But how do you reach this?
I mean, I know you're doing a lot of it through your work with
the restaurant of educating these, these these chefs and,
and people in the in the kitchen, but I also saw you do
workshops about these concepts or what are your, how are you
trying to get this education forward?
Yeah, I, it's also important to recognize that I don't host

(46:05):
foraging classes or work like necessarily workshops in the
conventional sense where people pay money to come sit like a
classroom. I've never charged anyone for a
walk. I don't charge people for those
things. Instead, I just offer to sit on
whatever panel or in spaces where people are interested in
in like communicating the importance of foraging but

(46:26):
aren't sure how to actually get points across that they're
looking for. I'll come in and do that for
them, but I am not a, a greedy person.
I'm not after money. I'm not after anything like
that. What I'm after is again, I have
to reiterate, like I said earlier, I'm not trying to
change the world, but I'm tryingto change my community and the
perception around food in my community.
So I start here. I'm not, you know, of course

(46:47):
it's reached other places and, and that's great, but ultimately
my work is here. And anybody who's interested in
listening, I will talk to you asmaybe you've you've discovered
it. I can talk for as long as you
give me, right? But I'm really passionate about
this and not just because I'm interested in it, interested in
it in the traditional sense, butbecause I see the potential for

(47:09):
change in so many facets of lifeby implementing, forging an
understanding of your native ecology and your local ecosystem
or ecosystems into your life changes everything.
And people can take that into their other careers or just
their day-to-day life. And that's what's important to
me, and that's how I try and communicate information like

(47:30):
this, an approachable way. I'm not bombarding you with
Latin names or other things. What I'm trying to do is compare
this to your everyday life and show you how this can actually
make what your specialty in lifeis even more interesting.
No super. I mean, I'm, I'm very impressed
by the way you've like expressedthis, you know, because I think
of course there are ways to monetize this.

(47:50):
But the way the with the, it's very humbling the way you're
doing this because of course, italso shows that you're not just
somebody who's picked up this, this art or this technique or
the scale or this philosophy andis trying to like, you know,
scale it up. But even in this world where
things are moving very fast, everybody wants to scale
everything up. Everybody wants to be earning
passively an income from a concept they created.
I think it's very humbling to see there's somebody who who

(48:12):
believe because I think it's, it's only possible when you
believe in what you're standing for.
I think that makes your job a little easier.
But at the same time, I feel it's like, I'm really glad like
Eddie connected me to you because I would have like not
been able to tap into someone, Someone Like You who has so much
knowledge to share. What I wanted to ask you next
from this is like, how do you see your past?
Like when you look back? Because for me, you are a
fugitive chef. You, you are somebody who

(48:32):
doesn't actually actively work in a restaurant.
You do work with them, but you do much more beyond the job.
A person when they think about achef.
How do you see that when you compare your life today, as you
said, you know, come back sitting, sitting with your
partner on the porch, this kind of life that you have today, How
do you compare it back to say, working in a traditional
restaurant? Yeah, I, I was lucky.

(48:53):
And I often say that I've been blessed with like a continuity
of interest in my life. So I've always been interested
in what I do. And that's really special
because it's guided me through my past in restaurants.
But the one thing, the one thingthat I'm grateful for in
restaurants was my realization that you needed a purpose in

(49:14):
order not to burn out. You can't just cook just for the
sake of cooking. I know a lot of people you'll
say, like, they'll be asked the question like, oh, why do you
like work as a chef or what? And their, their answer is like,
oh, I just love feeding people. That's, that's beautiful and
all. But like, that's, that's not
gonna get you far enough to be able to fulfill your, your,

(49:36):
your, like, your personal drive to remain within the industry.
So I was lucky enough at a earlyage, you know, I started working
in restaurants at like 13 or so,like regular 1314.
And, and I realized quite early that my purpose was, was bigger
than just serving a plate of food.
I didn't know exactly what it was like I do now, but I did

(50:00):
spend a lot of time getting to where I am now and developing my
understanding of how I feel about what I do.
And that's like the biggest piece of advice that I could
give to young chefs. It's to find your individual
purpose in the restaurant or within food because it's not
enough to just cook good food for people.

(50:20):
You need more, not to grow and become something bigger in this
world and change whatever, but just for your personal
well-being. You need drive, you need
purpose, you need passion. And that's not always going to
come from mentorship or guidance.
It's got to come from you and understanding yourself, right?

(50:41):
Understanding yourself and what you're interested in might not
be forging. That doesn't matter.
It's just what happened to me. But there's so many outlets that
you could find yourself in within the restaurant industry
without working within a restaurant specifically.
So when I compare my past to where I am now, there's been
like a very slow progression to get where I am now.

(51:01):
And I'm very grateful that I realized so early that I needed
more, even if I didn't know whatthat more meant at the time.
Yeah, no, I mean, I could, I mean, I could not frame this
better because I usually ask people, you know what, what
advice would you give to say, younger chefs or people who
want, who know they want to get somewhere, but they do not, they
are not brave enough or they don't feel it's their time right

(51:23):
now. But I think what you have, the
response you have given like before me asking that question
is even more interesting. Like knowing this purpose, like
not just wanting to escape something, but wanting to get
somewhere, which is not say scaling up or like going up the
ranks or finding a better position or whatever.
But I think what the way you express it, that what will keep
you say lasting long into this in this game is once you find

(51:46):
your purpose and any direction, all your energies and all things
that are good for you, the things that work in your favor
towards that one single direction.
And yeah, that's, I mean, super,super inspiring all that you've
shared, Nick. But before we let you go, I
would love to hear from you. One ingredient that we would not
know about and, and what kind oftechnique or things that you
have used for this. One ingredient that you can
leave us with, which is which ismaybe not around all our

(52:07):
surroundings, but maybe from your atmosphere, your
environment. What is this 1 forage
ingredient? And that's a tough question
because you know what I, what I,what I can really pass on is
more of like a, instead of looking at things as like
individual ingredients, like let's take something very, very
sort of basic or, or, or well known, like a, like a, you might

(52:28):
call them like pine shoots, but they're like spruce tips, the
tips of spruce. That's a very well known
ingredient in restaurants, right?
But people think that the harvesting from that tree ends
as soon as that gets too big, right?
And that's like the end of it. Or they'll harvest like a bunch
of pine needles off of it in thelater on and blend them into oil
and get like a super bitter product lacking in air mats and,

(52:52):
and whatever. But like there are different,
there are different parts of plants.
And when you look at an ingredient before you harvest
it, understand what that plant or mushroom or whatever is as a
whole. So we're harvesting, I'll go
back to cow parsley for the sakeof of our conversation and
continuity here. Perfect.

(53:13):
Cow parsley plant itself grows Ataproot like a carrot, carrot in
the ground, the taproot. And out of that comes the shoot,
right? And from the middle comes a
flower stem and then an unopenedflower head and then an opened
flower head and then unripe seeds and then ripe seeds.

(53:34):
And then you can harvest the root.
All of those pieces are cow parsley, but they're harvested
at different parts during the year.
And that's one example of thousands of plants that maybe
not I, I pick and eat about 350 different species of wild plants
on PEI, but 150 species of wild mushrooms on PEI.

(53:54):
But I know somebody who, who eats and picks at 500 species
that have eaten, has eaten 900 species, right.
But understanding that an ingredient is part of something
greater and bigger. Learning the anatomy of a plant
or mushroom and understanding that you can harvest this flavor

(54:16):
at different parts during the year is the most special thing
that you could do. When it comes to foraging.
Don't think of an ingredient, think of something greater.
So one ingredient, just to go back to your original question,
one ingredient is really tough for me to answer that.
And of course, I want to focus on just instead of thinking of
ingredients, I want to think of the plant as a whole, of the
mushroom as a whole. But cow parsley is going to be

(54:37):
my answer because it's incredibly delicious.
It's incredibly abundant, it's versatile, it's approachable,
it's scary, and it's incredibly,incredibly delicious.
Perfect. I mean, yeah, I mean, Nick,
thank you so much for this. It's been like, yeah, the way
you have. I think when I, when I was
preparing for this interview, when I was approaching you, I
think my directions in my head were way different and how

(54:59):
you've opened my eyes to about because what he just said.
I mean, nature is abundant. I think nature has a lot of
things for us with the numbers you've mentioned.
It's just like with the demand of in the past few years being
industrializing things in in this economy that we work in
today where you want to scale upthings the most possible, have
the carrots, which are the most standard size, the standard
weight. We have unfortunately lost a lot

(55:19):
of this. I think nature is still offering
it. Nature is very kind and humble
to still offer it. We just need to like change our
perception and look at the bigger picture.
And I think this, this conversation, this short
conversation has helped us to like remind ourselves about how
food is beyond what we just knowas sold as supermarkets is the
whole landscape around us, the intimacy between US and the
food, us and nature. And how this paying attention

(55:41):
and attention to details how important it is, especially if
we call ourselves chefs who are creative in the food area of
things. I think it's important we look
at the bigger picture of things.So yeah, I'm going to put all
the links to Nick to the add in collective, all the work that he
do. And it's been it's been a
pleasure and I hope to to cross paths with you once again.
Thank you so much, Nick. I will come visit you when I'm
in Saint Sebastian, how about that?

(56:01):
Please do. Let's do that.
Thanks for this conversation, I really appreciate it, it was
amazing. Thank you so much, it's been a
pleasure.