I am an adventure guide from Iceland that got the great oportunity to learn about foraging wild plants. My name is Einar Sveinn Westlund and I am 29-year-old Icelander with a passion for the outdoors and food. I am on a mission to combine these two passions and becoming and expert in outdoor food.
My HE, Michael Fitzner is the forager for the world-renowned restaurant Noma in Copenhagen as well as providing few other Michelin star and high-end restaurants in Copenhagen with wild edible plants, herbs, flowers, mushrooms, berries, etc.
My plan is to do different things within the outdoor food niche. I already have a web page and Instagram page where I share short cooking videos intended for people when they are on adventure. I try to make these videos both entertaining and informative. You can find it at www.feastinthewild.com and @feast.in.the.wild on instagram. I want to start to host workshops for people about cooking in the wilderness and how to forage wild edible plants. My plan is to devide this into two sections: personal and people in the outdoor industry such as adventure guides. As I am an adventure guide, I am planning to host my own adventure tours in Iceland where a big emphasis is on cooking and eating incredible food. Furthermore, I plan on starting my own company with dehydrated mountain food that uses wild ingredients, good quality local ingredients and chef’s techniques. Again, my goal is to become an expert in
outdoor cooking and wild food.
Despite these times being strange due to the Corona virus pandemic I decited to stay. It has been fantastic and I am learning new things every day. Michael has been teaching me how he started his business. Things that made him stick out especially as a small business owner.
How to get noticed and how to consistantly have great ingredients. How important it is to have good people around him.
We start our day usually at 09:30 and we drive usually about an hour out of Copenhagen to forage different things. We have already foraged flowers such as Goldstar flower and Onion Cress Flower, we have foraged lots of Ramson (Wild garlic), we packaged that in different sized containers to be sold for cooks to test cook it. But we also prepared a big portion of that to make it into ramson oil. I found this to be clever way of thinking ahead. Because people might not be buying it now but when restaurants are finally open again, they will be able to introduce ramson flavor into their food.
Michael has gone out of his way to show me edible plants and how to distinquish them from inedible look-alikes and especially the toxic ones. I recorded few mini videos of him so that he can post them on social media. I will be editing it together soon.
Things are looking great for us and we have been able to work almost every day despite the strange situation. I am learning lots about foraging, how to forage properly and how to forage for restaurants.
We have started to talk about which plants I will be able to forage in Iceland and perhaps sell Michael to sell to his customers. I look forward to every new day for the things to be learned.
Einar Sveinn Westlund
