Brittany Boychuk and Alister Augé live in Ottawa, but their happy place is in and amongst nature. Foraging for food is one of their favourite activities to do in the wild. They gather their own ingredients, cook food over a campfire, then take pleasure in sharing their harvest with others. On the menu today: roasted cattail, pine needle tea, hickory nuts and dried berries.
Producer: Esther Karin Mngodo
Camera: Jane Skrypnek
Editor: Jennifer Liu
Special thanks to Brittany Boychuk, Alister Augé, Lucas Watts
Brittany and Alister would like to acknowledge that while they engage in deep connection and relationship with this land, they are not Indigenous to unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin territory. Their tipi is used for education, never ceremony.
For Brittany Boychuk and Alister Augé, foraging for wild food helps them connect to nature.
They prepare and cook their food in a tipi, and also teach their ways to the larger community.
Brittany Boychuk’s weather-worn hands hold an acorn which she gathered from the wild.
Wild ingredients are kept in drawstring bags and handkerchiefs. They are collected when they
are ready for harvesting, then stored for later use.
Boychuk makes coniferous pine needle tea from scratch. The needles are collected from live
trees, cut into small pieces, then added to a boiling pot of water. After about 20 minutes, the tea
is ready to be served.
Click here for a recipe for Coniferous Pine Needle Tea, seen in this episode.