transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:03] I'm Marcus Smith, and this is Constant Wonder. Join us as we quest for the awe and wonder of knowing we are part of something infinitely larger than ourselves. Nearly 20 years ago, a chef at a fancy French restaurant asked Tama Wong to do something she thought was a bit bonkers. He wanted her to bring a large supply of weeds from her rural New Jersey farm into his establishment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and not just any weeds, stinging nettle, which as all of us very well know is an item to be handled with a fair amount of caution.

Speaker 2:
[00:45] I was like, what's the thing I'm gonna bring the stuff on, like the subway or something? And I don't know, I found myself doing that because it was like tasting really good.

Speaker 1:
[00:54] Tama Matsuoka Wong is a forager, someone who harvests edible plants that grow wild, like stinging nettle, which I've never tasted, but apparently it's quite delicious and safe to eat. Never raw, though, you have to cook it. Stinging nettle is just one of hundreds of plants that she routinely works with. Tama stumbled into a career cultivating edible species, some call this wild farming. Not every so-called weed is a nuisance to get rid of. She's a vivacious woman with a 28-acre farm in western New Jersey and has published a couple of books on foraging, the first of them written together with chef Eddie LaRue. It's titled Foraged Flavor. Eddie LaRue is the fellow in Manhattan who requisitioned stinging nettle from her. He's executive chef at Danielle, a Michelin-starred restaurant known for its fine French fare. Tama Wong supplies Danielle and many other outlets with herbs and produce that have been foraged or cultivated on her property. Her second book is titled Into the Weeds, How to Garden Like a Forager, in which she encourages people like you and me to foster wild and native plants in our own yards, no matter how small. I found in her, yes, a kindred spirit, but one with a whole lot of expertise beyond my own. About 10 years ago, I took out a big chunk of lawn from my front yard here in Utah. And I said to myself, this is gonna be completely reinvented. A lot of people want to do this these days. Not enough people, but a lot of people do. And I had some neighbors looking at me, wondering what's he up to? Property values might go down if he doesn't do this right, that kind of thing. And there was one gentleman who came, and he had said to me earlier on, what are you doing? Because you're sure growing some interesting weeds. And I took that as a pejorative, and I smiled and I said, oh, I like these types of weeds, is what I told him. And 10 years later, he knocked on my door and he said, I've decided I want to do what you are doing. It was a long lag time, but I feel like I sort of silently evangelized for a good change in the neighborhood, and he picked up on it. And he seemed the least likely of people to pick up on it. And so I took heart there. There is a revolution going on, or maybe I should say there are multiple revolutions going on in the way people consider the land around them and the way they think they might treat it, the way they might nurture it, the way they might regard what's alive there. And you're just the right person to talk to about this. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[03:54] Well, I'm really pleased to hear that because I feel like I've been kind of walking in the wilderness as it is.

Speaker 1:
[04:02] Now, you, kind listener, may have a lovely lawn and we don't want to throw too much shade on that. But in this episode, we do want to inspire you to take a fresh look at the wild plants growing all around and consider what they have to offer. Maybe you'll venture into something exciting and new on some soil near you. For many, it's going to be a yard of their own, but Tama will tell you it doesn't have to be, because edible wild treasures await most anyone, often growing in plain sight. Tama's job description might seem a little cryptic at first. On her website, Meadows and More, she describes herself as a forager, weed eater, wild farmer, and meadow doctor. She sees an abundance on the earth that we pay scant attention to, and she's keen on finding that abundance in time for dinner. Breakfast lunch probably snacks too. Before turning her attention full time to the fields, Tama Wong had been following a very different course in life. She grew up in New Jersey, after which, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, she spent 25 years in the fast lane of international finance, working in New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. In her legal career, she was trying to help people establish themselves in newer financial markets. The job was to guide businesses in a change of perspective, reorienting them from a narrow focus on their local market to embrace more global economic opportunities. Essentially, these businesses redefined themselves. They had to jettison some previous assumptions and adopt some new rules. Tama says that what she now does while wearing a forager's hat actually mirrors that earlier process of redefining aims and resources.

Speaker 2:
[05:59] There's a lot of things I learned from that that may be better able to do what I do now, which is also unusual, ground breaking. What are the rules that should govern the way we do things? What is food? What is a weed? What is a farm? There's similar questions. And then how do you build something out of that? If I hadn't had that other life, I don't think I would have been able to forge ahead as much as I do now.

Speaker 1:
[06:25] Is this a story of somebody who left home, got the degree, had a career in the fast lane of international finance understanding and all of the science of that, and then you got homesick for the old ways of being with the family in the garden? Or is it a different story?

Speaker 2:
[06:44] No, it's a different story. I was living in Hong Kong and we kept extending my stay there for three more years. Three more years and I had three kids and a husband. I asked to get transferred back because my youngest daughter had really bad allergies. And so as it was developing, the air was very polluted and my daughter actually was hospitalized. So I kind of said, I feel like I wanted to come back. And the first thing I thought about was what I consider the true luxuries are today, which is fresh air and water. So I looked for a place that I could be sure of that. And I ended up in rural New Jersey. So that was one of the primary reasons I came back.

Speaker 1:
[07:24] Before you moved back to New Jersey, when you were still in Hong Kong, how alienated were you from the natural world? Did you get out and about? And how did you do that? What did that look like?

Speaker 2:
[07:34] I was not alienated from the natural world. So on the weekends, and if anyone goes to Hong Kong, I urge you to do this. So in Hong Kong, you know, it's one of the most densely populated urban high-rise places, but 15 minutes, 15 minutes from the center, you can walk on these amazing trails. And it's absolutely beautiful, like stunningly magical. And I would particularly recommend people take the Dragonback Trail, which is like a dragon's back, is so called, where on both sides, you see the ocean. And think of those kinds of hills that you see in the mountains that you see, Chinese paintings, you know, really steep, it's absolutely stunning. They have flowering plants, they have crepe myrtle lining the sides, they have some sorrels and things like that, that people would probably recognize from here. And then you come down onto the deep wave bay and the ocean is just this beautiful aqua color, and it's just magical.

Speaker 1:
[08:34] Were you equipped from childhood to see these plants and feel like they weren't total strangers to you?

Speaker 2:
[08:41] My mother was a plants woman. My mother is born in Hawaii and she just loved plants. And the problem was that because she knew all these plants, I could get really lazy and I could be like, what's that? She would just know what things are. And so it wasn't till I went away and I didn't have my mother to just ask that I had to start figuring things out myself. And then my father is Japanese. And there is this whole sense of like, you know, Japanese have, I think, 72 seasons. The whole sense of ephemeralness, you know, it's cherry blossom season. The ephemeralness of nature. He's also a scientist. So in a really very different way than my mother, he looked at plants both scientifically, but also from a kind of very poetic, this is the meaning of life type thing that's kind of ingrained in Japanese culture, I would say.

Speaker 1:
[09:30] Did you gravitate to that worldview?

Speaker 2:
[09:32] Yes. Yes. I grew up with that view. Both of those cultures use a lot of plants and food, but my mother was foraging, and we were her labor, right? She would be, go out and get this. You know, we had to pick mulberries and all this stuff. I did like the mulberries, because my mom made it into a really good pie and stuff like that. She loved cooking. So I was foraging before people used the word forage, and we just didn't know to call it that.

Speaker 1:
[10:09] Having gone away and spent years in large cities, including the metropolis of Hong Kong, well, that helped Tama see her native New Jersey with fresh eyes.

Speaker 2:
[10:19] I just looked at it differently. I mean, I appreciated what we have in the United States a lot more now that I had seen and lived outside. And you realize how much land and space and resources and wealth people have that I'm not sure they really appreciate unless they see how other people are living. And I'm talking about people that are living pretty well. And even New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the country, can be a little eaten. And so then that's when I started looking at it differently and trying to observe more how plants were growing and what was coming here and what was going on rather than just kind of walking by in a kind of, you know, I know the name of that plant type way.

Speaker 1:
[11:04] I love the way that you describe it as being like a little eaten because there's such an irony in a place like New Jersey where they have this huge tract of land called the Pine Barrens, of all words, barren. You don't think of eaten and barren in the same context at all. Tell us a little bit about that place.

Speaker 2:
[11:20] Okay, so I think it was called the Barrens because when Europeans first saw it, it's very sandy. And so it was very difficult to make a normal crop or they didn't see the things they were used to. So they called it the Barrens, right? It's barren of the kinds of things that they wanted for agriculture. It doesn't have the kind of soil they were hoping to find. But indeed, it's not barren at all. And it's one of an amazing ecologically unusual system. I do have a little plot of land, which is magical, is surrounded by some preserved lands. And of course, there's blueberries, wild blueberries, wild huckleberries, pines, which are useful for a lot of things, and cranberries, which are indigenous to New Jersey, the pine barrens, and a whole host of other things. So it's just how you see it, right? So some people saw it, it didn't have what they were looking for, so they considered it barren and useless. One of my big things is to see what other people... I'm a sort of contrarian. So what other people cast aside, and then I say, no, no, no, that's great. You don't really realize how good it is, and it's not barren at all.

Speaker 1:
[12:28] Just a moment ago, you said, it just depends on how you see it. It just depends on how you see it. I think that that sentence says so much about your worldview, because here you are with this approach to spaces out under the open sky where things are growing, spaces that may or may not be technically wild. So few places are completely wild anymore. And you're asking people to kind of go back to square one with their definitions and no longer say, well, that doesn't meet my expectations.

Speaker 2:
[13:04] Yes, you put it so well. And this is part of the, probably the lawyer part of me, where we're hampered by these definitions. Because if you think about it, it's like, you know, the categories we make for things, like I mentioned before, what is a weed? What is waste? What is garbage? You know, what is ugly? I think we make these definitions. And in a way, we've lost faith in our own observations, which we have as people, as humans. You don't have to, you know, test whether the poison is. You can just look it up and see how humans have used the species. And then you could be like, hmm, you know, it's actually not so barren and wasteful and useless. And in fact, it might be better than some of the things that I have to pay money for.

Speaker 1:
[13:48] I think this is such an exciting time for somebody to be alive who loves plants. And I just have a little statistic from your book that I want to share here, because you're quoting the Kew Garden report from, oh, five, six years ago. There are 7,039 edible species. Now a fraction of that, 417, are conventionally considered to be food crops. That is a small subset of edible species. And I'm wondering about your personal story. Was there not a time where sort of a light went on, an aha moment, and you said, oh my goodness, we've overlooked so much.

Speaker 2:
[14:30] Yes, yes. And so when I moved back to New Jersey, I just didn't want to wreck things. I thought it was beautiful, as I said before. And there's a lot of naturalists and people around me in this part of New Jersey and Pennsylvania that are interested in plants, interested in conservation, ecology, et cetera. And so one of them came over and she explained that, some plants are very aggressive and are defined legally as invasive plants where they can disturb the rest of the landscape. They're not invading the country. They're disturbing that part of the landscape and they can actually crowd out a lot of other plants. And so one of the most aggressive of these is called Japanese Knotweed. And so I had a small part of it growing out next to the road, which is something, you know, it's going to grow next to the road because it's probably somehow came in off the road or something. And she was like, you need to, you know, get control over that. It can end up going onto your house and destroying the foundation, et cetera. So I was kind of battling this thing, which it is a battle. And my father had some professor friends of his come over from Tokyo University and they were kind of tromping around. And again, from Japan, they're like, oh my gosh, you know, there's so much land here in New Jersey, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, what are you doing? You know, Tama-chan, you know, how do you manage this? And I said, oh, I'm just trying to get rid of these invasive plants like Japanese knotweed. And, you know, I didn't think they're Japanese, right? And they were like, oh, we're so sorry. You know, like, we're bowing, like, we're sorry, this thing is bothering you. And then the one professor turned to the other and they kind of conferred, you know, and then they said, but you know, in Japan, we eat this in the spring. Our word for this is a tiger stick because it makes you strong. It's really good for you. We eat it in the spring because there's a whole tradition of eating spring wild foods called sansai in Japan every year. Today, they still are doing this. So that is when a light bulb went off like, okay, I don't have to feel like this failed gardener, blah, blah, blah. I can actually enjoy this and use this at the same time that I'm controlling it. So that's kind of a light bulb. And then you start to go around, you know, like Helen Keller, like, what about this plant? What about that plant? Right?

Speaker 1:
[16:50] So you are actually exerting yourself in a big way to try to eradicate this thing.

Speaker 2:
[16:55] Yeah, it's very pernicious. It spreads underground through rhizomes, and I don't think you're ever really eradicated, but you can control it.

Speaker 1:
[17:03] It seems quite obvious to me that by this time in your life, you've eaten a fair amount of it?

Speaker 2:
[17:08] Yes, I have, yes. You know, the best time to eat is only a certain time in the spring, so it's not like, you know, you can overeat things and eat too much, but if you're only eating at a certain time of the year, then you welcome it back the next time in the year when it's ready.

Speaker 1:
[17:24] What does it look like on my plate? What does it taste like?

Speaker 2:
[17:27] Tastes like rhubarb.

Speaker 1:
[17:28] Ooh, that makes me want to pucker right here. What does it look like?

Speaker 2:
[17:33] It looks a little bit like a bamboo, like an asparagus, but thick and like a bamboo.

Speaker 1:
[17:38] And what does it look like once it makes it to my plate? Is it chopped up? Is it sauteed? Is it stewed?

Speaker 2:
[17:44] Yeah, you can do it a different way, so I do have a recipe.

Speaker 1:
[17:48] And when, like Tama, you go out and forage some for yourself, you'll thank us for posting that recipe on our sub stack. Look for a link in the episode notes. The recipe also appears in her first book, Foraged Flavor, which I mentioned earlier. Tama wrote that guidebook with Chef Eddie Leroux. How she met Eddie is an important part of her journey, and that story is coming up right here, next on Constant Wonder. I'm Marcus Smith. Have you grown weary of news coverage that feeds off anger and division, and yet you still want to engage with important issues? Well, let me introduce you to Top of Mind. It's another podcast from the BYUradio family. Each week, the Top of Mind team, with award-winning host Julie Rose, undertakes a careful analysis of one tough topic. The goal is learning how to stay open and curious when confronted with perspectives that challenge us. Best of all, every episode will leave you feeling hopeful and better able to become an effective advocate for what matters to you. Top of Mind, listen wherever you get your podcasts. We now return to Constant Wonder. Our guest in this episode is Tama Matsuoka Wong, author of Into the Weeds, How to Garden Like a Forager. A few years after Tama and her family returned from Hong Kong, some friends took her to the restaurant where Eddie LaRue works. At the time, she was still working in international finance, based out of a New York City office. Anyway, her friends wanted her to go with them to this restaurant in Manhattan called Danielle, and they challenged her to bring along some wild plants from her meadow. Weeds for potential use in the kitchen of this celebrated French restaurant.

Speaker 2:
[19:39] They are dear friends, and actually their daughter is foraging now. Well, not full time, but she is an artist, and she is foraging stuff for me and farming. So they kind of got it back to themselves in spades now. We were in Hong Kong, so we moved back here. We didn't really follow chefs or pay attention, but they were really into food and good food. And so I think it was the husband's birthday. And so they had been there several times, and they said, bring the stuff in, we want to have this for dinner. I thought like, okay, like they're probably think I'm kind of pushy. So I just brought in some anise hyssop, which at the time was not as widely known as it is now. Tastes kind of that anise licorice taste, a really nice flavor, a really nice herb. So it's like little rings because it's hollow, hollow stemmed. And you can pickle it. Like if you use a recipe for pickled rhubarb, it goes really well with something like spicy or saucy like Asian food or curries and things like that. And the pastry chef and the chef de cuisine made it into part of our dinner that evening, which was, I don't know if people would do that again, but at the time it was in the middle of the summer. And so it wasn't like right around the holidays or anything. And so then afterwards we went down to the kitchen and said thanks for that amazing meal. And the chef de cuisine, Eddie LaRouz, now the executive chef said, what else do you have, you know, Mrs. Wong in your meadow? Cause I had shown them a picture so they would know where it came from, you know, that it was in a place that was good. And I said, oh, I have like 215 plants or something. Cause I was, by that time I was a plant, plant geek. And he said, bring me everything. Bring me everything. I pay you. And I said, oh no, I don't want you to pay me. I just want recipes. I think he thought I was like really strange cause people are always trying to get in there and you know, get paid for stuff. And I was like, this guy's going to give me free recipes, like make stuff from my backyard for my kids, right? For my family. So, and then it turned out that we're both like very kind of intense, like driven people. Cause I said to him, I just want you to know, if you say you want me to do this, I'm going to do it. Like, you know how people like all the time say, oh yeah, let's get to, and nothing ever happens. It's kind of irritating. I just wish they wouldn't even say it. So I was like, I'm really going to do this. And he's like, of course, I said so. So then it was like kind of this challenge, right? And we'd meet once a week. I was doing this consulting project nearby and I'd bring stuff in and he'd come in an hour early after some 14 hour day. And he had this huge tome of booklet. He had notes on like all the things he's ever tasted or ingredients. Turns out he's kind of their flavor savant for like that, you know, group. So then his wife is Afghan and he lived in Bangkok. So he's used to a lot of different kinds of flavors. And so that's how it kind of started. And then at the end of this, he goes, okay, I want all these, you know, these 20 things, blah, blah, blah, at the end of like a year. And so I was like, why do you think I gotta be carrying? And at the time stinging nettle was not like, you know, you couldn't, it wasn't available. It is now like very available. I was like, what do you think I gotta bring this stuff on like the subway or something? And I don't know, I found myself doing that because it was like tasted really good. So then what happened is that it became a thing because this restaurant in Denmark, Noma, started this whole thing at foraging is really good and you should be able to use all this great stuff. And then Random House was looking for a North American foraging book that's not, you know, based on, has reindeer meat and stuff in there. So then they found us and they were like, do you want to do this book? And we're like, okay. That's kind of how it started. It was very organic and not some kind of plan.

Speaker 1:
[23:36] Did the book come along before you actually started a business of supplying foraged foods?

Speaker 2:
[23:42] Yes, because after the book came in, all these people started asking me for stuff.

Speaker 1:
[23:46] Okay, that makes perfect sense. Yeah. It was an organic process.

Speaker 2:
[23:50] The whole way I ended up doing this was kind of a series of organic steps. People think, oh, you wake up one day and you decide something. Oh, it's really, I am Buddhist, right? So you kind of take the path that comes. And then to some extent, I was afraid because it seemed very impractical, but it kept drawing me more and more. Basically, it wasn't a decision. It was just a slow, a slow changing over. In my off season in the winter, I would go and do like consulting work. And then it just kept taking over more and more. And then eventually doing this full time, which I love for what I'm doing now. I love it, but I think that people have different times in their life. I took the approach where I made and saved money for many three decades, had a family, and I'm a different phase in my life. I can live a different life. But still me though. Does that sound strange to you?

Speaker 1:
[24:51] No, this does not sound strange at all. Your story about being instructed by these visiting Japanese professors about this edible plant, it reminds me of something that happened to me a few years ago. After I took out my lawn that I told you about earlier, the very first year I put in rows of corn, just sweet corn, a hybrid. And as that was growing, underneath the corn, complete surprise to me, purslane came up in spades. One day, I was out there working in my yard and this elderly couple came walking by, and I had met them before and just tried to speak with them, but they didn't speak English very well. And they saw the purslane and their eyes lit up and they just exulted. They were so joyful.

Speaker 2:
[25:34] What ethnicity.

Speaker 1:
[25:35] They were from Armenia. And we were able to communicate long enough for me to tell them, number one, come and have as much of it as you want, anytime, but how do you cook it? And they told me some garlic, some butter, sauté it with, and then a little yogurt with it and maybe some salt and pepper. And I tried it out. Stems and all. And I'm a fan. I'm a convert, you know. People from exotic places away from the United States have experience, vast experience with species we just don't know about.

Speaker 2:
[26:10] You know, we're a very young country compared to a lot of old traditions. And so I feel like we haven't had that kind of, you know, our grandmothers are great grandmothers. We haven't had that continuous, you know, a lot of people who came here are now separated from the place they came from. So they have not carried that knowledge back with them. And also plants are traveling around a lot more now. So, I mean, personally is naturalized, I think, in a large part of the world. And it is, by the way, extremely healthy. I think Michael Pollan had recognized as one of the two healthiest plants. He's a plant eater advocate. And he said, lambsquarters and purslane are two of the most healthy plants. I love that because those are wild weeds that he's mentioned. But yes, I love purslane. I'll take your purslane. You can keep your corn.

Speaker 1:
[27:01] Tama and I really geeked out about weeds. And then only recently I had learned that redbud trees have edible blossoms. It's a real revelation to learn about the many types of flowers that can be eaten. I'm a little fixated these days on the possibilities of floral foraging. So I was interested with the redbud flowers in the fact that their flavor had been described as a little bit like snap peas. And the more I thought about that, I thought about the redbud seed pods that kind of looked like peas. And then I looked it up and I found out that taxonomically it's a relative. It's in the pea family.

Speaker 2:
[27:41] Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1:
[27:43] And I learned so much. And then I went from there, you start surfing the web and you find out that a honey locust tree is a pea. It's in the pea family. Do you have these experiences of kind of putting the world together in a new way and all because of the foraging?

Speaker 2:
[27:58] All the time. I'm warning you, you get sucked in and then you'll never get out. So, I mean, I'm doing a thing on nettle. I don't know if you have nettle in Utah. It's supposed to be in every state in the country now.

Speaker 1:
[28:12] Oh yeah, we do.

Speaker 2:
[28:13] Yeah. And I always thought that stinging nettle, I always thought it was like, when I came up with my first book, it was an introduced plant from Europe. And, you know, it can be really aggressive. And so, you know, we're cutting it away. It's used for all kinds of things, including cordage, medicineally, you know, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm doing a workshop on nettle. We're going to go out and pick some in Pennsylvania. And after my book, it's now been discovered that actually there's a native subspecies. I just found that out. I was like, wow. And then anyway, the long story short of that is there's always something to learn and nature keeps you humble because you'll never know. And anyone who has observed something, they have just as much right to tell you what they observed as what you have to tell them. It's just a great way to kind of communicate with people. I'm not educating you about nettle. Your nettle might do something different. You can tell me, you know? So that's what's great about it. Nobody is the big arbiter.

Speaker 1:
[29:14] Tama cultivates and encourages weeds on her own property. And in her book, Into the Weeds, you can find instructions for creating a pocket meadow in a space as small as nine by nine feet. Now, what if you don't have a lawn, even that size? What if you're living in an apartment? Well, I'll tell you a little secret that you're actually already quite conscious of. It's this. If things can grow in cracks, they will. And just yesterday, I saw some beautiful mint growing out of the side of a stone wall. The conventional connotations of the word weed always hint at just how opportunistic plants can be. They can take hold in the most unlikely of places. Look in tiny spaces, as well as large. You'll be surprised. Just consider this. Tama forages wherever she goes. It's just a mindset that she's developed, and you can too once you know what to look for. Apart from supplying you with nutritious food, this practice of foraging can have a huge social payoff.

Speaker 2:
[30:19] The exciting thing about foraging is that even if you have been to a place many times and you come back to it, you may find something new, because nature is always changing, and you may find something that you never discovered before. The other thing I would say is that you really get to know your community. I think people are so used to just being in their own little, but when you're foraging, it's like, oh my gosh, the guy around the street has these amazing magnolia trees, and he doesn't care because now he runs this auto repair shop on the side, right? So he doesn't really care, but he loves it. I love his magnolia trees. And since I'm so short, I only take in this lowest buds. And so every year around this time, I go hang out with him for a while. It really joins people together. That's what I love. And I know I may see you only during September, but every year in September, we get together and hang out. And we talk about some kind of plant one way or another. And I think it's a really good way of kind of rejoining people together because people don't hang out that much anymore with people, unless it's like, you know, you're my official friend. I think that's one of the things we're missing. And I think that's one of the best things about foraging is that people who are really different can like bond and talk about the plants. Sometimes when I give talks, like there's really different people, different ethnicities, different races, different ages. And they're all talking about the same plant like, well, how did you do that? And like, oh, well, I use this, do you want my recipe? So it's, you know, I don't have all the answers, but it's just great. It can be a catalyst for getting people together. Think about, right, how we're so separated now.

Speaker 1:
[32:03] So I keep thinking about you, Tama, being somebody, and I described, maybe it wasn't fair of me, but I described you as having had a career in the fast lane, you know, in big cities and doing the finance stuff. And this foraging activity is not fast. On the contrary, it seems to me that it slows us down. And that's good. I'm all for the slowing down.

Speaker 2:
[32:25] I have to disagree with you a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[32:27] Yeah?

Speaker 2:
[32:28] Right now, because I'm in season, I feel very fast lane, very fast lane. Because the season is driving us crazy, because it's like going from, it was like 80 degrees two days ago. And so we have to run around. So I supply to chefs, right, in New York City. So right now it's very fast lane, because there's no agricultural crops up. And we have all these other things going on. I'm pricing it. The weather is driving us crazy. So we feel we're very fast lane right now. It's like seven days a week, 24, as long as we get up, run around, do stuff. And then we have to put it all together and make people happy so they can make it into good food.

Speaker 1:
[33:05] Well, you picked that. That's your own fault.

Speaker 2:
[33:07] I don't know. The only time that I feel like it's not fast lane is when I'm in the field. That's my happy space. If I'm in the field, I am not fast lane. But everything else, like bringing it all back and the logistics and getting it there and having the best quality possible, blah, blah, blah. That's like very fast lane.

Speaker 1:
[33:24] So if I'm in the field in my life, what that means is in my yard because I don't have a lot of land. And I do this right around my home. But if I'm out there and I'm picking, say, prickly lettuce, if I'm picking the purslane, if I'm picking the redbud flowers, whatever it is that I might be interested in, dandelions, if I'm doing this, I'm slowing down. And it's not a fast lane.

Speaker 2:
[33:49] Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1:
[33:50] Am I okay?

Speaker 2:
[33:51] You're okay? When you're in the field, you're in the field. When you're in the field, you're in the field. And that's great. It's just like great.

Speaker 1:
[33:58] Kind of conjoin this, this being in the field, slowing down, sampling food, observing plants, and your Buddhist heritage. This is kind of a holistic, maybe I'm being too simple about this, but it seems that these all kind of cohere in a way that is a unified worldview of reverence, of being grateful, of being attentive, all of the things that I have found that wonder and awe pull us toward.

Speaker 2:
[34:31] Yes, yes. I agree. I think it's, I mean, it's kind of the essence of everything. To me, it's the essence. That's where kind of it all starts. That's where you're kind of feeling as a human starts. And it's very centering and it's a place to go back to, that you can always turn to when there's troubles or things are going on. But it's not boring, you know, it's not boring. It's like a lot of hand eye. And there's something, I feel like we don't value enough, that kind of physicalness of work or whatever we do. And we just, oh, that's, you know, labor or manual. But that's where you really start to get the understanding. If you have that physical touch of it, the smell of it, I'm in a nettle patch. When I first get there, you know, usually, like you mentioned, like rushing out, rushing off to the nettle patch, right? And then I get there, I'm kind of a bit like, oh, oh. And then I get there and I'm kind of, you know, slowly start to ease in, right, to the patch. You start to notice, oh, there's actually birds singing. And, you know, you start to notice, like, what the breeze is like, the things around you, you just start to settle in. And then as you're working with the plant, I'd say, and I've, we've talked to other people, it's about 40 minutes in, you're sitting there or you're doing it, that you really start to get in this kind of groove, you know? I think, I'm not a sports athlete at all, but how they say you find, there's something where you find your groove, you find your flow and then you're really, it's really pretty amazing and that's how you, you really get to know this plant in that place, in that time. It's just, it's pretty amazing. I mean, it's kind of like life in a way, right? It's really, what is our life blood pumping through us? It's flow. The way that we wake up or we do different things, we can talk about it and write things down, it's actually, the essence of how we live is really flow.

Speaker 1:
[36:33] Tama Matsuoka Wong, author of Into the Weeds, How to Garden Like a Forager. I'm smitten on so many levels by what she has to offer, especially the way she gives words and concepts, some powerful redefinitions. Not only can a weed become food, suddenly a forgotten roadside is a wild farm, and a contemptible invasive is a coveted ingredient. By the way, Tama has a totally fresh take, not just on the noun weed, but the verb to weed. As you'll hear, she doesn't engage in that activity. I'm Marcus Smith, and this is Constant Wonder. I'd like to introduce you to another show from the BYUradio family of podcasts, The Lisa Show, hosted by comedian, believer, and single mother, Lisa Valentine Clark. The Lisa Show delves into most any challenge that meets us in the course of our lives, especially challenges in the realm of human relationships. Whether it's parenting, mental health questions, or social issues, Lisa and her council of moms are willing to tackle it. Figuring life out is vexing enough without losing an ability to laugh or cry together or just plain talk things through. The Lisa Show. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. We now return to Constant Wonder. You have called weeding editing. Help me understand what's the distinction there? What are you doing when you're editing out in the field someplace or in the yard?

Speaker 2:
[38:15] Okay. And I do think that this is something that when I've heard about how people, including indigenous Native Americans here, but definitely in other places, when you have a patch that's wild, that things grew that you didn't plant, there's things that you prefer, like you use, you use more of, and then there's other things which are taking the same space, but maybe it's not as useful. Nature isn't just something you just leave go away, and then you just leave it on its own. Humans are part of this. So you are part of this in terms of enhancing certain plants that have a relationship with humans and what you're using them for. So if I have, think of my garden, I know which plants are like the seeds of the plants that were there before that I'm using, whether it's chickweed or something, and I know some of the plants that I don't really want in there, like knotweed or mungwort or something, because they'll take over. So if I see those seeds coming up, I will specifically take out those seeds. I'm editing out the ones I don't want. Instead of, I think most people think of weeding, it's just ripping out everything. They have these weeders, right? Or those big spayers you see that they have, like in, I don't know, Home Depot or something, like spray everything, like it's just rip it out, you know? And so when I say editing, I just mean like, you know, I'm working with this plant community to encourage certain species and discourage other species. That's what I call by editing.

Speaker 1:
[39:46] I mean, I've done some of this in my yard too, where I've had the option, for example, I love a plant that is a salvia that is called Salvia turkistanica. It's a clary sage. Some people will call it that. And it's a big, has big floppy leaves and it shades everything out. Somebody could call it a thug because people throw that term around too in gardening. And I used to go and rip them out because I'm the one who planted them in the first place. They're not native around here, but they've just taken over. And in recent years, I've said, Marcus, don't go and eradicate, which means to pull out by the root. Don't eradicate that. Just cut it off at the base. And it'll grow back from the crown. But I can let those leaves return to the earth and compost and decompose. I can let insects live under that leaf litter even before the fall. I can expect more greenery to come up from the crown. That plant has its own story and its own life. And maybe I've said it back, but they are remarkably resilient. And there's a beauty in watching every step of the process. Because maybe it wasn't me who knocked a plant down. Maybe it was a deer walking through the yard. Maybe it was a raccoon whacking it with its tail when it went by. These seem to be natural processes. And I kind of think I'm a natural creature too.

Speaker 2:
[41:15] I speak with garden groups in different places around the country. And everyone who actually gardens themself, right? They all seem to agree, you know, you try to plant this one plant here, and then it never takes there, it just dies. And then, what do you know? The same plant or another one, it's gonna be where it wants to be, right? And you can keep trying to move it, but it's gonna be where it's gonna be. So then, at some point, just kind of let it do that. You know, because maybe that's the best conditions. We don't know every molecule of the soil and conditions as to why that's good. So why are we trying to prop up something where that's not where it's gonna thrive? You know, and I mean, this is kind of a crazy example, but we pick a lot of pawpaws. Pawpaws is an Eastern native tree, and then it's become kind of trendy recently. But we've been foraging it for a long time, and whenever there are ones that were like not really that edible or they're all mushed out or something, or too small, or ones that we ate, we would throw the seeds in our compost pile, which is kind of just the side of my shed, and we would just throw the seeds there randomly with other, like you said, maybe big leaves or things like that. And it wasn't paying attention, but I think about three years later, I was like walking around in like kind of the late fall, and I was like, why are there trees in the compost pile? And there was a leaf there, and I smelt the leaf, and I realized there's pawpaw tree. And in fact, there's a pawpaw grove growing out of where the compost pile is. And people said, oh my gosh, are you gonna dig them out and transplant it? And I said, no one's gonna move the compost pile because that's where they wanna be. And I know a lot of farmers who have tried to plant pawpaw trees, and they just don't do anything. They just sit there like a little bug in a rug, and they don't grow, they don't fruit, and it's probably not where they wanna be. And so, I think to your point, to some extent, instead of trying to fight what's going on with the plants in your small patch, try and move with the way things are going.

Speaker 1:
[43:26] There are foes among plants, right, where we have to be careful.

Speaker 2:
[43:30] Most people hopefully know that you have to be very careful with mushrooms. Every year, somebody dies because they eat a mushroom, and it looked like something, and sometimes they came from another country, it looked exactly like the thing, and they knew what it was in the other country, but it's not the same mushroom here, but it looks like it. So, there are common mushrooms that are very poisonous, not just toxic, where you throw up, but poisonous, you will die unless you get a liver transplant, that's the death cap mushroom. And this year, on the West Coast, because there was so much rain, there were a lot of death cap mushrooms that were poking up, especially around the San Francisco Bay area. Some people had to get liver transplants, some people died. So, that's an example. You have to be very careful with mushrooms if you don't know what you're doing.

Speaker 1:
[44:17] The most surprising reaction you get from people when they say, there's no way that you forage that thing. What's a surprising edible that you forage that is just, we've talked stinging nettle, that kind of raises eyebrows.

Speaker 2:
[44:32] I mean, I think that people know nettle now. I do think they do. I would say one of the things that people were surprised about is bark, B-A-R-K.

Speaker 1:
[44:45] What type of bark?

Speaker 2:
[44:46] Well, I'm doing ecological foraging. So I'm not stripping the bark off the tree because obviously that hurts the tree. But there's a type of hickory here called shag bark hickory, which the bark shags off. So you can take the parts that are falling off and you're not hurting the tree. And if you toast the bark for, I think it's about eight minutes at a 230 degree oven, this bark, I pass it to people and I'm like, what does this like tell you? And then, you know, people are sometimes a little bit like, they don't want to like insult me by being like, yeah, it looks like a house shingle to me. But then I say, it's just like a house shingle, right? And they're like, yeah, but we just didn't want to tell you that. And so then I'm like, yeah, but if you put it in the oven, then, oh my gosh, it transforms the bark. You start to smell this amazing hickory smoke thing in the oven. And then, if you happen to have a couple of hickory nuts, you don't have to pick them out, because you smash them, you put them in milk with the toasted hickory bark and you infuse it. And then you strain it out. You wait it up to a little bit and you strain it out, makes amazing hickory ice cream. I first found out that the Native Americans used to make like a syrup out of it and save it in the winter time, because it's very healthy, like a tonic.

Speaker 1:
[46:01] I'm so glad you finished the story, because I was afraid I was going to have to chew the stuff like beef jerky.

Speaker 2:
[46:06] Yeah, so people think, oh, okay. I mean, people think I'm going to go around, I'm going to bite branches off. And if it doesn't taste good, then, you know, that's bad.

Speaker 1:
[46:14] Is it conceivable that somebody who is an adventurous diner in a place in New York going over the menu and then eating foraged foods, that that would entice them to think more about foraging generally and maybe even get involved or at least get out some more? Do you think from the restaurant to the field is a short step?

Speaker 2:
[46:36] I do. I would say it's not just fine dining because I supply the cafes to bars, you know, a whole host of things. And some of the stuff like Nettle is kind of like 101 now. I think that's, I mean, they have Nettle pizza, you know, so I don't think it's like necessarily fine dining.

Speaker 1:
[46:52] Once it's on pizza, it's pretty standard.

Speaker 2:
[46:54] Yeah, right. I mean, or Nettle mashed potato. Nettle mashed potatoes is amazing. It's pretty basic. I think the thing that helps also is that if you've eaten it and it tastes good at whatever, whether it's a pizza, then sometimes people are nervous to like, oh, if I eat Nettle, is it really not stinging after you cook it? People don't really, I myself like, I say like, maybe it stings a little bit, but no, it doesn't stick. But if you eat it and it tastes good, I think it encourages you, yourself to, okay, I want to go out and get this myself now and make it my way. Or I do supply to an online grocery or a farmer's market. Because if people see it where I've already cut it, they know what it is. Now it's like, okay, I know what that looks like. And I know how she's cut it. And so it just gives you more confidence, I think, in yourself to go do this.

Speaker 1:
[47:46] We need good mentors. And that's what you're doing. Not forcing nature is mirrored in the way Tama cares for the people around her. I knew that her dad, who'd been a scientist, and as you may remember, was a lover of poetry, had had dementia in his final years and lived with Tama in her home.

Speaker 2:
[48:07] It's still kind of fresh and raw for me with my dad. He couldn't speak. He had the, I think it's the frontal lobe. That's what he lost, his ability to speak. But he was still him and he still knew us. And he still stayed so true to the things that he believed in his whole life and that his passions. And my job as his daughter and caretaker was to make sure that everyone around him kept to those things that he was passionate about. And one of the big things was nature, as I mentioned. Birds, nature, he was in a wheelchair every day out in the garden. And if possible, eating alfresco out of the garden. And we went away for a couple of days and I had people, and I was a little worried so I came back. And he was just hanging out in the garden like, oh, just having a great time hanging out, enjoying the flowers, looking at the birds. And then one time he was sitting there and I came out, I sat next to him and he's like looking into the sky. And he doesn't talk but he can kind of understand. So I'm like, what are you, dad, what are you doing? And he like points, he's watching the clouds. He's watching the clouds. And so I looked up there and sat with him and watched the clouds. It was absolutely amazing. It was beautiful watching the clouds. And I thought, how often do I stop running around during the day, even when I'm in the field, okay? And stop and watch the clouds go by. And I was like, dad, I am so privileged because you are teaching me about life.

Speaker 1:
[49:57] Lessons can be given by the living. Lessons also come our way from the deceased. At the time of her passing, Tama's mother was living with her daughter, who kept watch during the final hours. Then after her mother had breathed her last, Tama dutifully awaited the departure of her spirit in what for her family was the traditional manner.

Speaker 2:
[50:22] Some Buddhists feel like it's left the body, but it's still, it's a time of transition. I guess it's the best way to explain it. And so you're really not supposed to just, you know, rush in and move people off for about five hours at least. It's supposed to be what you're supposed to do. So I had kind of requested that. And, you know, that we're in a rural area. It's not like there's a lot of other people waiting or something. So and then you can kind of spend that time also, you know, that it's a very special time with the body that is still warm. You know, how not a lot of people experience that.

Speaker 1:
[51:01] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[51:01] I mean, it's a little bit like, think about the other great milestones. Think about birth, right? So when you have a birth, it's very common for the caretakers or whoever's there to whisk the baby off, right? And then, oh, they have to get cleaned and weighed. Sometimes they put these silver drops in their eyes for some reason. I don't know if they still do that. But I gave birth in Hong Kong and I had midwife. I gave birth in a hospital, but it was like a birthing hospital. And so after the baby's born, the baby stays with the mother for about an hour, and they don't take the baby away and do all these things. I don't know how to explain it really, but.

Speaker 1:
[51:39] Well, it's just not in the fast lane. I'm going to stick to that.

Speaker 2:
[51:42] Okay, okay. I agree. I agree. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[51:47] Now, at the passing of your mother, the plants that you selected, which plants did you select to send with her to the crematorium?

Speaker 2:
[51:58] I'm trying to think. I think I did have an anise because it was blooming still, and she liked purple. So I had that and I had some ironweed, which is also blooming at that time, and it's purple. She liked that color. And then I definitely had some aromatics. I think I had juniper. Juniper has been used for a lot of spiritual reasons, and also for fire, and she was going to be cremated. There were things which I think had meaning for her and for her passage.

Speaker 1:
[52:27] Why was it important for you to talk about that when you wrote this book?

Speaker 2:
[52:32] Because I felt that plants are really there for all milestones in our life. But now you look at like, okay, when people have a wedding or something, just go buy all those like, ornamental flowers that you get. So I don't know. To me, it's not, you know, what I would think. So I kind of feel like it's a way of, of kind of sending them off for things that are meaningful for them. And so it was part of a ceremonial marking of an occasion to have plants there, to smell through their significance and to sort of usher them off. I mean, you see, you see old graves, right? And they find that the old graves have certain plants with them. They put them in.

Speaker 1:
[53:19] So we've invited you to this podcast called Constant Wonder. Just any thoughts, reflections on the importance, the place of awe and wonder in our daily lives? Not just waiting for the time when you get to take that family trip to go look at the Grand Tetons, or you get to go see something spectacular.

Speaker 2:
[53:42] Yes, I look at awe and wonder in two aspects. Being curious, right? Because you're curious about something. You're wondrous about it, but also humbleness. And I think in nature, both of those are present. And again, it's not having to look at some huge view. It's even the tiniest little things that you notice. It's amazing how did that personally grow under your core? Think about that for a minute. You could have awe and wonder about just that little thing, and then why is it growing there? And I think if we see ourselves as humans in that framework in nature, it just gives us a little bit more perspective. You know, to be a little more gracious to people, to be a little more forgiving, to be a little bit more easy on ourselves too, because we realize that it's not all on us, you know, and that we are just one small part of something much larger. I think that's a very healthy and reassuring and optimistic way to look at the world right now.

Speaker 1:
[54:48] Tama Matsuoka Wong is the author of Into the Weeds, How to Garden Like a Forager. Go to our episode notes to find a link to our sub stack, and there you'll find a recipe for the Japanese Knotweed Crumble, which I reckon would go quite nicely with some homemade hickory bark ice cream. This episode was produced by Tenry Taylor with help from Hailey Harris. Gabriel Haro did our sound design. I'm Marcus Smith. Constant Wonder is a production of BYUradio.