Foraging: Winter Warmers

Look more closely at the weeds and common plants that grow all around you and find out how to put them to great use during the colder months, with Johanna Knox, author of "A Forager’s Treasury" and "Guardians of Aotearoa".

Discover the myriad uses of the weeds and common plants that thrive in Wellington during winter. We’ll talk about identifying the safe, useful ones, as well as observing your environment and harvesting sustainably.

With an experienced forager, you’ll find out how to take basic pantry ingredients and add wild-harvested plants to make cheap, nutritious, warming meals – as well as preserved foods and simple healthcare preparations for the colder months.

You’ll come away with a repertoire of ‘blueprint’ recipes that you will be able to use and adapt to your own situation.

By the end of the course, you’ll be able to:
- Recognise at least eight common weeds, trees or other plants that grow around you
- Make a range of simple healthy tisanes from foraged plants
- Cook three to four cheap, nutritious meals that use basic pantry ingredients along with foraged plants and adapt these meals to your own circumstances
- Apply the principles of preserving in sugar, oil and vinegar to plants you forage
- Make three to four basic healthcare/bodycare preparations from plants you forage
- Discuss the relationship of native plants to weeds and practise ethical harvesting

Note: This is a classroom-based course, where all the plants used will be foraged in advance by the tutor and brought in. All recipes will be vegan and gluten free, however, we will discuss how to adapt them to other ingredients.

You're welcome to bring something foraged from your garden or neighbourhood to talk about at the start of the workshop. Feel free to bring notebook and pen as well as a phone or camera to photograph plants for future reference.