Wilderness Kitchen: Seasonal Foraging and Meal Prep at Camp Earnest

21553 Cedar Springs Road,Twain Harte CA 95383

15 June, 2023

Description

Good People,Welcome to our first immersive weekend devoted to teaching you how to see, identify and make use of common wild foods. Not only will we discover our region's seasonal bounty, but we'll prepare improvised meals together and have plenty of time to learn from chef, author and naturalist Maria Finn. We will hear from a number of visiting local experts on how to forage, cultivate, and prepare wild, feral and local foods in the beautiful setting of Camp Earnest. Cooking isn't all recipes. In fact much of the joy in cooking is gaining the confidence to improvise, to fully embrace the creative process – you start with what’s available from the land, garden and local farms, then look for the meal suggesting itself through these ingredients. This is working with food from the perspective of culinary impressario (and east bay resident) Samin Nosrat, with her philosophy around balancing salt, fat, acid and heat. The emphasis is on pleasure and flavor more than a step by step process. We’ll forage for wild morel mushrooms (should be great this year), pine tips and nuts, watercress, stinging nettle and other greens. Then we’ll guide you through making tasty, beautiful dishes through creative adaptation of what we’ve found. The weekend will also include a talk by our local biodynamic farmer and mushroom grower Jordan Lowery of Dambacher Farms, who will explain how, and why to cultivate mushrooms and the best uses for them. We’ll wildcraft with culinary mushrooms and make porcini and pine tip salt and butter. We will also learn how to break down whole local trout or California halibut and make fish stock from its bones. We'll learn to prepare indigenous regenerative meats (not pig or cow) like bison and elk through sous-vide, koji curing, and braising. We'll make use of stone fruit, flour and butter as our canvas with a hands-on seasonal fruit galette class. We’ll have a wildcrafting cocktails and mocktails workshop and make bitters, shrubs, and adaptogen extracts. Maria will share some of her botanical shrubs and shrub recipes, offering alternatives for those of us who don't care to drink alcohol. This weekend concludes with a GRANDE FINALE, a performance by The Neighborhood Sound, free time for hot tub under the stars, sauna, silent disco and lots of laughter and merriment. WHAT CAN YOU BRING? Glad you asked. We are grateful when you pitch in wherever possible with bussing, dishes, trash and recycling duty and generally keeping camp tidy. So please bring a spirit of community and caring for one another. Bring your own water bottle and metal cup and reuse these all weekend. Reusing cups really helps cut down on dirty dishes. Bring layers of clothes, sunscreen, mosquito repellent, camping gear (if necessary) and snacks or drinks you might like to share. We may travel uphill or downhill and weather can vary a lot. We are at 3,500 feet of elevation, but there's good foraging at lower elevations and all the way up to about 7,000 feet. We ask that you please carpool in as few vehicles as possible. Parking is limited. The drive is just 140 miles or about 2.5 hours from SF. Please remember to be super fire safe. OUR CHEF AND INSTRUCTOR:Our friend Maria Finn is a chef, author, and multi-sensory storyteller who lives on a houseboat in Sausalito, California with her two cats, her truffle dog, and a native oyster garden. She founded Flora & Fungi Adventures to connect people to the natural world through food and wildcrafting and offers camps in California, the San Juan Islands and Hesketh Island off Homer, Alaska. Her cookbook on wild foods, “Forage, Gather, Feast” is forthcoming in spring 2024 on Sasquatch Books. She plans and executes private dining events and food pop-ups with a focus on regenerative foods and menus that tell the stories of the natural world. Her clients include Center for Humane Technology, Esalen, Gallery 836M, the Above/Below Kelp Collective, Good People Dinners, Odd Salon, and the Ocean Genome Atlas Project.   Maria was chef-in-residence for Stochastic Labs, a residency and incubator for artists, scientists, and tech innovators in Berkeley. She was a fellow in the first creative cohort of the Design Science Studio and Living Systems Collaboratory  with the Buckminister Fuller Society.  She’s been an Artist-in-Residence at Autodesk, Pier 9 maker space where she created a Wildcrafting map of the San Francisco Bay that’s on display at the SF Exploratorium map room. Other residencies include writing Between the Vines, The Marin Headlands Center for the Arts and Mesa Refuge. She’s authored numerous articles, essays and books and has told stories for The Moth Mainstage at the Museo del Barrio in New York City and the Castro Theater in San Francisco among many other places. To listen to her stories or read articles visit www.mariafinn.com.  OUR BAND:The rock band built in the Central Sierra of California, The Neighborhood Sound (formerly Three To Get) is built around four core members. Tim McCaffrey (vocals, drums), Alec LaRoche (bass) and Adam Dragland (guitar, vocals) and Joey Garcia (guitar). Drawing from classic psychedelic and late 70s Cleveland rock, punk, funk, jazz, and American roots music, The Neighborhood Sound developed a hard hitting, smooth sound that twists and turns through a myriad of flavors that not only entertains but surprises even seasoned listeners. Veterans of multiple genres, The Neighborhood Sound came together with the idea of creating something new with something familiar. Capitalizing on their experiences, each member brought their unique approach and flavor to the mix creating a sound that is somehow crossing over as well as through styles effortlessly. Listeners have compared The Neighborhood Sound to a variety of genres, but have yet been able to put their sound into a small box. All members of The Neighborhood Sound take pride with this critique and revel in “coloring outside the lines”.