After a freak wind storm that lasted three or four days, hundreds of avocados fell from the avocado tree that borders our property. Talk about abundance. This got me thinking: life gives you so much, you just need to know how and where to look. Also, it got me thinking about "urban" foraging. Even though it is all enclosed in our property, it is essentially still urban foraging. Plus, I also let the "weeds" grow wild which I then use to make food.

In this post, I muse and philosophize about urban foraging and abundance, but also the health benefits of leading such a lifestyle in our modern era. Avocados are the metaphor through which I speak. I also show you how I make a sandwich with my local and indigenous weeds. This is going to be a wild ride! Please join me if you please.

Abundance and "Urban" Foraging

I did not count how many avocados I picked up. But it felt like hundreds. The above image is one box of about three or four others. It feels like it rained avocados. I felt like an urban forager that walked in upon a room full of gold. Are avocados not referred to as green gold though? In any case, abundance. The lady next door planted the avocado tree on the border of the property about thirty years ago. She tells the story with glee when she reminisces about the past. But the eventual "conclusion" of the story is that each year or every second year we are blessed with food that literally falls from the tree.

They cut down vast amounts of forests so that they can plant avocados and similar "crops" so that we can have an endless supply of food in the supermarkets.

But think of a world in which our urban cities are lined with avocado and similar trees and it is the job of the urban forager to supply the supermarkets with foraged food.

Think of a world in which scarcity is necessarily built into the system and people anew start to appreciate seasonal foods.

We lost the idea of scarcity and seasonality. I want strawberries now, and I want a box of them! This mentality is the norm and we have normalized something abnormal. Imagine a world in which avocados killed you if you ate them out of season. That is a little harsh but we are killing our environment because we want avocados year-round in places where avocado trees cannot even grow.

Again, think of the urban forager as someone who plants produce along the roads, who harvest fruit in the early morning when everyone is buzzing around going to their work. Imagine the urban forager planting seeds she has collected throughout the years along vacant properties. Imagine another urban forager harvesting the crop and providing the locals with locally grown food without the need of farming virgin land.

Health Benefits (?) or Environmental Healing

Much of our cities are covered with concrete, tar, or alien vegetation. The Health benefits of food are a hot topic and probably will always be. But how healthy can food be when you have not foraged/farmed for it? I know not everyone can be a farmer/forager but we have delegated the sourcing of food to supermarkets. Do you really think that their "ethically sourced organically grown" food has your best interest at heart? Most things are about profit. And sadly I do not think that can be healthy for you or the environment.

Anyways, Health Benefits of Avocados!

A little hypocritical, but maybe some food for thought, let us take a look at some of the benefits of eating avocados (which hopefully fell from a tree near you).

Healthy fats, lots of vitamins, and all the good things you can think of. One can easily google, and find article after article citing how healthy avocados are. But how healthy are these reductionist thoughts about food? I have never really given any attention to it.

If you really think about it, will it help to think about food in terms of its macronutrients and vitamins? Or is this thinking not a by-product of our era in which food sources are sometimes so nutrient-deficient that we need to put a label on it to tell you you cannot get your daily dose of XYZ from a mass-produced cookie?

When Life Gives You Avocados...Make Avo on Toast (With wild Herb Pesto)

This might be a preference or confirmation bias but food grown by yourself or food you sourced yourself just tastes better.

I picked up at least a hundred avocados.

I picked five or six lemons from my lemon tree.

I picked copious amounts of so-called "weeds" from my garden and the area in which I live.

And I started to make some awesome sandwiches on bread I baked myself.

But alas, this lifestyle is underpinned by the fact that I have the luxury to work/study from home, and that someone else had the foresight thirty years ago to plant a tree. But again, think about a society in which this lifestyle is the norm, one in which we still have supermarkets but they are full of locally sourced/foraged food.

Can We Heal With One Sandwich at a Time?

Cape Sorrel (Oxalis pes-caprae) grows everywhere. Yet, no one really knows you can eat it. It is a local "weed" with a sour taste. It is high in oxalic acid so you cannot eat a lot of it, or so they say, but the point is, all along the roads a local food source is growing. Dandelions, wild rocket, mustards, and other leafy greens grow so easily and distribute their own seeds so quickly. Yet, we pluck them from the earth and plant alien plants that the local insects and birds and animals do not know or like.

I pick up some of the cape gooseberries that spread like wildfire in my garden. They are better than tomatoes, and they grow so easily. Imagine a street lined with cape gooseberry plants where anyone can forage and eat and heal their own bodies.

Imagine one sandwich at a time we can heal our bodies and the environment.

Postscriptum, or an Avocado Toast with An Avocado Tree in the Background

This whole post presupposes that we can eat the food grown in our urban concrete jungles. We cannot always because the soil is so dirty and polluted. It also presupposes that people will forage only for what they need or that they will care for the plants/trees. There are loads of presuppositions but think about a world in which this was the case, where people planted food in their gardens rather than merely flowers. Alas, I live in a utopia.

I hope you enjoyed this rather philosophical post. All of the photographs are my own, taken with my iPhone. The musings are also my own. Safe foraging and enjoy! Do your own research and do not eat what you cannot confirm is safe to eat.