Supermarkets may spring up like weeds in major cities but a group of people in Amsterdam wants us to find our food in more natural surroundings. The Stedelijk Museum has teamed up with some local scavengers to organise tours aimed at teaching people how to dig for their dinner.

Listen to a report on scavenging in Amsterdam

Environment

The initiative is part of a five-month project that pairs artists with nature lovers in Amsterdam. Its goal is to get people thinking about their immediate environment and the possibilities it offers for hunting edible species.

Organiser Wietske Maas told Radio Netherlands: “I was asked to do a series of activities around urban food and based on my research practise called ‘urbanabalism’. It’s really about taking up the challenge of finding what’s available in your immediate, local, urban environment and seeing how far – whether the ingredients are plants or animals - it’s possible to turn them into something edible.”

Take a guide
Participants are taken on a walk around west Amsterdam where they’re shown berries and herbs that can be used in cooking. But botanist Claud Biemans, who is on hand to offer advice, recommends that amateur scavengers arm themselves with a guide before setting off. She points out a tree with tasty-looking berries that could actually make a person very ill.

“These berries taste very bitter, and really not nice…. Most berries that are really bitter have some poison in them, so birds and other animals won’t eat them.

“Really, it’s good to have some knowledge about what you eat, especially if you’re going for mushrooms – because you’ll be dead before you know it.”

Roots and herbs
During our outing we find several roots and herbs, which Wietske later takes back to the kitchen to cook with wild fish she caught in the IJ river.

“We take a lot for granted, the whole food supply chain coming into the city is so removed from us, whereas actually the city has this huge wealth of flora and faunic diversity.

“I think as people and city-dwellers we’re part of this chain. I’m interested in discovering the invisible food chains of the city we live in, not to exploit it but to ask questions about our relation to the nature here and how we can better engage with it.”