“Why have we lost faith in wild food?” This is the question that biologist César Logan Costas is addressing to the public at the beginning of his interventions. The author of the book Belgian Cookbook for the Post-Oil Era (How to Make the Bellota Kitchen, to Prepare Post-Oil Life) has just been in the Basque Country presenting his latest work. The members of the Goiabe Kitchen have organized the “Ezkurra Basotik - Now” initiative in collaboration with the association Amigos de San Prudencio de Getaria and Basare. The whole day programme was held on 8 December.
The taste of wild plants (re)learning
“If our ancestors ate acorns for thousands of years, how is it possible that we cannot eat today?” Ezkurra is a wild food, as Lemoa explains, and we are becoming more and more familiar with the world. That can be one of the main reasons. However, the biologist has no doubt that behind the exclusion of the acorn for years there are also political interests.
Asier Bastarrika of Goiabe Gorostiza and Leire Albisu Iriarte started some time ago experimenting with wild plants: “We see that we work to create some plants, but nature is offering us others.” One of the objectives of the initiative has been to highlight wild plants, often called “weeds”, and the acorn, but also to show that another forestry model is possible and interesting.
Jump from theory to practice
During the day organized around Ezkurra the attendees had something to see, learn and taste. In the morning they took a tour of a forest near San Prudencio accompanied by Lemoa's explanations. Then they had a biologist lecture on the acorn, where he explained the historical situation of the fruit, its nutritional explanations and its practical aspect: how to remove the acorns and how to treat them to be edible.
Finally, the participants had a special lunch: “witch soup” made with acorns and wild plants, acorns’ coffee, acorns’ bread, salt cookies with acorns… More than a hundred people participated. The Anarkronikus group enlivened the party with medieval music.
What else? The members of the Goiabe Kitchen will follow the march so far: “We’re going slowly, but we’re going to continue experimenting on this in a humble way and see what comes out.”
