The Wild Table - Part One
THE WILD TABLE - PART ONE
I’m excited to share the start of a new personal project called The Wild Table, which is focused on foragers, wild food enthusiasts, and the ingredients they gather from the landscapes around them. This project is rooted in a simple idea: that food doesn’t always come from farms or markets. Sometimes, it comes from the forest floor, the side of a trail, or the shaded edge of a wetland, places where seasonal ingredients grow wild and fleeting.
For the first story in the series, I spent a day with local chef Jeremy VanAntwerp, someone widely respected in the regional food community for his dedication to local sourcing and his use of seasonal flavors. We foraged ramps together on a private property owned by a mutual friend — acres of woodland where ramps grow densely every spring, carpeting the ground in thick, green clusters.
Ramps, if you’re unfamiliar, are a type of wild allium, closely related to leeks and garlic. Their flavor is sharp, savory, and a little sweet, and they’ve developed a cult following among chefs for good reason. Their season is short, usually just a few weeks in early spring, and they don’t store well fresh, which makes them a proper “right place, right time” ingredient. Foraging for them takes a gentle hand and a bit of know-how. On this land, where ramps are abundant and well-established, we were able to harvest responsibly without worrying about over-foraging — taking only what would be used, and leaving plenty behind to continue growing year after year. Thankfully, they grow rather abundantly in my area, and were one of the first things I ever foraged.
There’s much more to come. Future stories will feature mushroom foragers and others who are deeply connected to wild food traditions.
