Spending time in the forest connecting nature to our kitchen with Red Seal Chef and forager, Raeanna Layfield

For those who don’t know you, can you explain what your company, Foraging with You, is all about?

Foraging with you is a wild food company driven to connect the consumer back to nature through foraging tours, dinning experiences and cooking classes. We offer spring, summer, fall tours and workshops for all ages and levels of foraging, and have just started offering online cooking classes! So anyone not located in, or nearby Chilliwack, or Vancouver Island, where we typically host our foraging tours, can learn in the kitchen through our online cooking classes.

How did this idea of, Foraging with You, begin?

As a Red Seal Chef working in the culinary industry, I longed to have real connection with the food I was serving my guests. I longed to work for myself and teach what I love, rather than cheffing in a high pace, and usually stressful industry. I just wanted to forage, and be in the forest, be in my home kitchen creating new things with new foraged ingredients. When Covid happened, I became jobless, and so I decided to bring my passion to light: Harvesting, processing, and eating, as well as teaching others to do the same. Firstly, I wanted to just harvest and sell my products at farmers markets, stores, and restaurants, but quickly that morphed more into foraging tours, and cooking/dining experiences.

I love first spring when the nettles, fiddle heads and morels start poking out of the ground, the maple blossoms are bursting, and the earth becomes alive!

What is your favourite time of year for foraging and why?

I love first spring when the nettles, fiddle heads and morels start poking out of the ground, the maple blossoms are bursting, and the earth becomes alive! But my all time favourite season to forage is in the fall when all the fungi comes out to play! From firm chicken of the woods, to puffballs, and chanterelles, fall foraging is the most abundant for fungi. I always make sure to preserve some till next year by either dehydrating or freezing, so I have plenty to cook and bake with in the kitchen all year round.

Learn to adapt to what the forest has to offer because it isn’t as predictable as a grocery store, but that makes it so much more rewarding.

Do you have any recommendations for any one interested in cooking/baking with foraged plants?

Get out into the forest! It will give you what you need, not always what you want. For example, you might go out foraging for morels, and not find anything but fiddle heads and that’s ok! Learn to adapt to what the forest has to offer because it isn’t as predictable as a grocery store, but that makes it so much more rewarding.
Don't forget to give back to ensure future harvests! Be aware of over-foraging by learning how to responsibly forage specific plants to encourage growth for the next season.
Bring lots of bags, baskets, and gloves for different specimens of plants to take home and examine/research.
Learn some preserving techniques. This will go a long way in getting your body that nutrition it needs all year round and your taste buds happy!

Fiddle Head, Elderflower, and Maple Blossom Harvest

Left to Right: Wild Onions, Fiddle Heads, Stinging Nettle, Elderflower, Morel Mushroom, Maple Blossoms, Japanese Knotweed

What are some good resources for learning to forage and make recipes with foraged foods?

The Deerholme Foraging Book: Wild Foods and Recipes from the Pacific Northwest by Bill Jones
The Herbal Jedi on Youtube

Foraged Nettle Pesto Bread Swirls Made with Anita’s Organic All Purpose and Whole Wheat Flour (see recipe below)

Red Seal Chef and Forager, Raeanna Layfield with a Hot Cup of Foraged Elderflower and Spruce Tip Tea

What are your favourite Anita’s flours?

I love the Sprouted Spelt as it makes my tummy feel best, especially in a sourdough. I also really like the Einkorn as it has a beautiful colour and nutty flavour for pies, breads, or crackers.

Foraged Nettle Pesto Bread Swirls

We foraged fresh stinging nettle along with wild onions to make these delicious bread swirls, however these ingredients can be substituted for basil, and chives. This bread is light and full of flavour. It is great on its own, or as a dinner side.

recipe

Final question! If you could plan any kind of dinner party without any limitations, where is the party, who are you inviting, and what are you eating?

Riverside campfire dinner with wild forage ingredients cooked over the fire with my foraging/life partner Patrik, and two sets of close friends. Dinner would be three courses—starting with wild nettles spanakopitas, then elk tenderloin with fiddle heads, local spot prawns, and mashed potatoes with wild blueberry pie for dessert. After dinner, we’ll have bees wax candles twinkling, and be sipping on warm Baileys as we watch the fire go out into the night.