No Taste Like Home

26/09/2024

What are we foraging right now in Asheville, NC? Persimmons, honey mushrooms, and chestnuts in abundance! All of these pictures were just taken this week. We’re also finding shrimp of the woods, chicken of the woods, fairy potatoes, autumn olive berries, paw paws, black walnuts, and so much more.

🦦WARNING
You are doing something very dangerous. It’s a drug. It’s social media. Learn natural food the natural way: with others, in nature. The only safe and easy way to forage is with a field guide: one with two legs. Our programs are by donation. If you need a discount, just ask.

16/09/2024

Mushroom Hunting 101
with Alan Muskat

Friday, September 20th & Friday October 4th, 6:30-8pm
East Asheville Public Library

Come learn the basics of foraging fungi for food, including the top ten edibles in WNC, from one of the top experts in the region. Enjoy a cooking demo and tasting. Attend one session or both. Free admission. For more info, email [email protected].

25/07/2024

🌿We love the rain because it brings out mushrooms! Chanterelles are here, and we couldn’t be more excited to pick them with you! To book your foraging tour with us, follow the link in our bio!

🍄‍🟫WARNING
You are doing something very dangerous. It’s a drug. It’s social media. Learn natural food the natural way: with others, in nature. The only safe and easy way to forage is with a field guide: one with two legs. Our programs are by donation. If you need a discount, just ask.

09/07/2024

🍓To celebrate the summer and all of the budding foragers, we’re running a summer sale! Use code “wineberry24” at check-out for 10% off all tours. See the link in bio to book your tour today!

🍓Discount is not valid on gift certificates or wild food t-shirts.

03/07/2024

🌱This amorphous little *blob* on the ground is more than that, it’s a very young Black Staining Polypore. Becoming so familiar with wild mushrooms and plants that you can tell them apart at their very first emergence feels like such a gift.

🌱How do you do it? By strengthening your gaze to see both the smallest leaf to the tallest crown of a tree, paying close attention to each as the seasons change, and most of all by repetition and practice. Slowly but surely, by doing this daily, you’ll cultivate a familiarity with each plant or mushroom that is as strong as knowing your brother or sister even if they shaved their head or saw an unlabeled baby picture of them. You just know!

🌱Want to start today? Come on any of our foraging tours throughout the week and we’ll give you a head start! See the link in bio for availability.

🥸WARNING
You are doing something very dangerous. It’s a drug. It’s social media. Learn natural food the natural way: with others, in nature. The only safe and easy way to forage is with a field guide: one with two legs. Our programs are by donation. If you need a discount, just ask.

19/06/2024

05/06/2024

Our wild food immersion series is back & better than ever!

Join us in spring, summer, fall, or all three to explore the world of edible and medicinal plants and fungi, prepare food and medicine, and draw closer to the natural world. You will be led by No Taste Like Home's expert guides as well as guest teachers! For more information & registration, follow the link below 🌿

Wild Food Immersion Series

14/05/2024

🌲While taking a woodland walk yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice that pine catkins are ready to start gathering for their pollen! Pine pollen doesn’t taste like much, so why would we gather it?

🌲Well, in short, pine pollen is a nutritional powerhouse! It is a complete protein and a rich source of macronutrients that play an active and crucial role in our bodies. It is such a good example of how our natural world takes care of us, and because it isn’t very strong in flavor, it can be added to many different things: baked goods, smoothies, or mixed into honey to spread on toast or dissolve in tea.

🐿️WARNING
You are doing something very dangerous. It’s a drug. It’s social media. Learn natural food the natural way: with others, in nature. The only safe and easy way to forage is with a field guide: one with two legs. Our programs are by donation. If you need a discount, just ask.

11/05/2024

🍄‍🟫In Japanese folklore, it’s said that thunderstorms make the mushrooms grow! In the past decade, there have even been scientists who have studied this correlation between lightning and mushroom prolificacy.

🍄‍🟫In the past week WNC has certainly had a good amount of thunderstorms, and while spring is not high time for mushroom diversity, I had a hard time passing through the woods yesterday and *not* seeing big caps of Russulas, Reishi buttons, and these ones pictured above! This is the Wrinkled Crumble Cap Psathyrella. It doesn’t have much of a common name, so we made one for it. It’s a mouthful, but this mushroom can be too!

🐌WARNING
You are doing something very dangerous. It’s a drug. It’s social media. Learn natural food the natural way: with others, in nature. The only safe and easy way to forage is with a field guide: one with two legs. Our programs are by donation. If you need a discount, just ask.

09/05/2024

🌱Recently, someone on one of our foraging tours pulled a small button of a mushroom off a log. At first, it was indistinguishable, but we learned one lesson that day: to use all of our senses! I asked that budding forager to smell it, and the scent of melon rind made it unmistakable! It was a very young Dryad Saddle, also known as Pheasant Back mushroom.

🌱These mushrooms often get passed by, as they’re notably a little tough, and they begin to fruit at the very same time as the celebrated morel. Some foragers even use their arrival in spring as a sign to start looking for morels. We know, though, that they can’t be brushed aside as merely a flag denoting the time to search for something else. They have a very light and somewhat refreshing flavor, and have a number of culinary uses including but not limited to sautéing, pickling, and even fermenting into various sauces to illuminate a dish with the umami flavor we all know and love. The dryad saddle can be abundant, versatile, and reliable- three characteristics often unheard of (at least in combination) for a mushroom!

🦔WARNING
You are doing something very dangerous. It’s a drug. It’s social media. Learn natural food the natural way: with others, in nature. The only safe and easy way to forage is with a field guide: one with two legs. Our programs are by donation. If you need a discount, just ask.

08/05/2024

UPDATE: For the past year, we have backed away from social media due to Meta's destructive business model and its disastrous effect on society. However, we miss the connections we have made. We want to share what we do with everyone near and far. So we are back, with one caveat: the one you see below, which will appear on every post.

WARNING
You are doing something very dangerous. It’s a drug. It’s social media. Learn natural food the natural way: with others, in nature. The only safe and easy way to forage is with a field guide: one with two legs. Our programs are by donation. If you need a discount, just ask.

See NPR, "How Facebook Causes Harm" and chapters 6 & 7 in Johann Hari, Stolen Focus (2022).
https://studylib.net/doc/26211085/stolen-focus

https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2021/09/23/1040147550/fresh-air-for-sept-23-2021-how-facebook-causes-harm

02/05/2024

NOW OFFERING: REISHI TOURS 🌲

For over 2,500 years, reishi has been revered as an elixir of vitality and enlightenment. It’s tender growing edge can be seared like a steak — and can taste just as good!

Join us “off the eaten path” in search of reishi, the “mushroom of immortality”! Each participant will receive half a pound of local wild reishi found and dried by our CEO, Alan Muskat, in addition to what’s gathered on the tour. See link in bio for more information & to book! 🌲

01/05/2024

We opened one last morel & ramp tour this Saturday 5/4! Register below!

A more strenuous but rewarding hike on a 350-acre private preserve. Morel season runs for about four weeks sometime between March 15th and May 15th.

19/02/2024

19/11/2022

🎄 Looking for the perfect gift for the forager in your life? Now through 12/28, enjoy 20% off our gift cards and season passes with the code “givethanks22”! 🎁 If the gift cards won’t do, give them a field guide they can wear! Our wild food t-shirt displays a beautiful, hand drawn illustration of our top forty wild edibles with their names printed on the back. Made with 100% organic cotton, and in sizes for both children and adults!

🎄link in bio to shop!