E A T I N G L O C A L

IMPORTANCE OF CULTIVATING EDIBLE INDIGENOUS PLANTS

“Once you start eating [local plants] and tasting them, what’s not to love? Fynbos is full of the most incredible plants, what a palette to draw from, ” says Loubie Rusch, the founder of the organisation Local WILD and the brand Making Kos which “promotes reviving knowledge, emphasises cultivation & encourages eating local Cape foods” . One of the things about a foraging landscape is that your knowledge is so deeply rooted in the land, not like a farmer where you can take your seed with you; if you are a forager you really need to know your place very, very well, ” Rusch explains.

Loubie Rusch #FoodforChange “There is just so much to learn, it’ s just incredible, learning from other people, knowledge holders, rural people who have such an intimate connection with the land.

She began her indigenous food journey and cooking by making bottled produce from local ingredients and selling it at the Oranjezicht City Farm Market in Cape Town. Her organisation is dedicated to all the food that surrounds us that we wouldn’t necessarily know to eat. “It really makes little sense to me that we live in one of the world’s most rich plant kingdoms and yet we eat virtually nothing of what is around us, ” she says on her website. “The thing that was most interesting to me was how much we don’t know about our natural environment and that food is a beautiful learning tool or a connector that we can all relate to, ” says Roushanna Gray, the founder of Veld and Sea, which organises edible indigenous plant and foraging workshops in Cape Town.

Wild Herbal Tea. Image: Roushanna Gray

Numnum berry biscuits. Image: Gabrielle Holmes

A basket of wild winter veg and herbs Image: Georgia East

Wild ingredient strandveld pickles. Image: Loubie Rusch