Classes and Workshops
I left Los Angeles in 2020 in the beginning of the pandemic and I'm currently living a
semi-nomadic lifestyle following the weather (and wild food) in an RV, however I still spend a considerable amount of time in my Art Studio located in the mountains of Valyermo (90 minutes from Los Angeles). From time to time, I still do a couple of live classes in the Los Angeles area and, of course, I give public and private classes on the property where my studio is located. I also offer a considerable amount of zoom classes, mostly on the subject of traditional food preservation technique applied to regular and wild edibles.
Brewing Wild Beers, Extracting Wild Yeast +
Plants Walk, Snacks and Drinks
Let's get back to the basics of brewing and making tasty beers with plants that you can find in nature or the supermarket. You'll be amazed how easy it is to brew at home with little equipment and no prior experience. During this workshop, you learn about plants that have been used during history as brewing ingredients, how to extract wild yeast, creating sugar sources from fruits and berries and much more!
First we'll go on a plant walk and identify some of the plants and other ingredients (such as barks and roots) that have been used historically to create interesting brews (Horehound, mugwort, yarrow, etc...). We'll also talk about medicinal and edible plants during the walk. It's a very slow walk, probably 1hr.
After the walk, we'll go back to the workshop area and I'll show you the process of making a simple wild beer on location - together, we'll go through all the steps so you can easily redo it at home.
Some wild refreshments, beer tasting and snacks will be served.
Eco-Friendly Foraging - Plants Walk / Wild Food Tasting & Drinks
Want to learn about edible plants and help the environment in the process? Did you know what we are surrounded by wild edible plants and most of them are non-native to Los Angeles and often invasive?
Very often the same plants are crops in some other countries and yet, locally, the solution is to spray them with chemicals or waste this incredible food resource by uprooting and throwing it away. So sad when you realize that a recent study from the University of California Berkeley identified 52 edible weeds growing in abundance in the poorest neighborhoods of San Francisco. At least six of them were found to be more nutritious than kale, according to that study. Guess what, we'll find most of those nutritious plants during our walk. So let's look at an option that will help the environment, reduce the use of chemicals in nature and nourish us in the process.
In this class, you'll learn about the countless local plants that you can use for food, many of them can be found in your backyard and are considered weed. Wild food is gourmet food! After the class you will be served delicious snacks and drinks featuring the plants we saw during our walk. A true wild cuisine!
Foraging and making natural sodas
using wild yeasts and local plants!
This is truly a fun and unusual class where you’ll learn wild yeast fermentation as well as which plants and other ingredients (berries, fruits, pine needles, etc.) can be used for making wild sodas and similar delicious drinks.
In this class, I’ll also demonstrate how create your own wild yeast culture from scratch using foraged or store-bought ingredients.
During the first part, we will walk in the local forest (private property in the Angeles Forest), identify, and talk about various plants, flowers, berries and other ingredients we can use for making sodas. The walk is around 1 1/2 hours, very slow with lots of stops to talk about and collect the plants.
For the second part, we’ll sit down and, after the wild yeast demonstration, we’ll make our own soda using some of the ingredients we collected.
Of course, as it usual in my classes and workshops, we’ll have a couple of interesting wild food snacks and some of my homemade sodas.
Eco-Friendly Foraging - Plants Walk / Wild Food Tasting & Drinks
Want to learn about edible plants and help the environment in the process? Did you know what we are surrounded by wild edible plants and most of them are non-native to Los Angeles and often invasive?
Very often the same plants are crops in some other countries and yet, locally, the solution is to spray them with chemicals or waste this incredible food resource by uprooting and throwing it away. So sad when you realize that a recent study from the University of California Berkeley identified 52 edible weeds growing in abundance in the poorest neighborhoods of San Francisco. At least six of them were found to be more nutritious than kale, according to that study. Guess what, we'll find most of those nutritious plants during our walk. So let's look at an option that will help the environment, reduce the use of chemicals in nature and nourish us in the process.
In this class, you'll learn about the countless local plants that you can use for food, many of them can be found in your backyard and are considered weed. Wild food is gourmet food! After the class you will be served delicious snacks and drinks featuring the plants we saw during our walk. A true wild cuisine!
