Naturalist teaches Central Park foraging

Armed with knives and plastic and paper grocery bags, 50 men, women and children were hunched over, cutting leaves and pulling roots, foraging into the wild brush of Central Park's natural food bounty.

At 103rd Street and Central Park West, "Wild Man" Steve Brill, a self-educated naturalist who grew up in Queens, led a tour Sunday of eager visitors who jotted down what Brill told them about which plants, berries and mushrooms to eat and which not to eat.

"Look over there -- poor man's pepper. Go ahead pick the seeds and eat them -- it's spicy," he said.

"This is wild," said Brill, laughing as everyone nibbled on the seeds, all pleased at the taste of the wild pepper edible.

"There is lamb's quarters -- it's related to the spinach family," said Brill, as his tour participants moved in closer to get a better look.

"It's a lot tastier then regular spinach -- raw or cooked. There is more vitamin A, potassium and calcium than the spinach in the store," proclaimed Brill, who then offered a quick lesson that skunk spinach is better left for the skunks.

"There is more food in the city than in the country," Brill said. "Why do you think that happens?" Everyone looked around and no one could answer.

"Deer -- there is no deer in the city," Brill said with a chuckle.

For more than 20 years, Brill, 62, who has served as a naturalist and tour leader for various museums, schools and ecological groups, has been practicing today's food trend that eating natural and local is a lot healthier.

In 1986, he was arrested by park rangers while conducting one of his tours. Brill made headlines, claiming he was arrested for eating dandelions in Central Park. Charges were later dropped and the park commissioner at the time gave him a job giving tours and identifying plant life. He was laid off after several years, but now he runs his own tours, charging $20 for adults, $10 for kids.

It all started in Queens, at Cunningham Park, when Brill was riding his bicycle and saw a group of Greek women dressed in black hunched over, picking plants.

"I asked them what they were doing -- but I couldn't understand them," he said. Brill later found out that the women were picking grape leaves.

Today, Brill picks wild grape leaves and stuffs them with tofu, brown rice and garlic. This is a far cry from Brill's early culinary days when he grew up eating junk food.

Today, he is a vegan and his Westchester County kitchen is a laboratory of cooking experiments with the different plants, berries, sassafras roots and mushrooms he forages in the city, Connecticut, Westchester and upstate. He has published recipes in several of his books, such as "The Wild Vegan Cookbook" and "Shoots and Greens of Early Spring in Northeastern North America."

For Aimee Bowe, 29, of Brooklyn, who raised in the rural countryside of Pennsylvania, Brill's nature tour was a revisit to her childhood, when picking plants and eating them was as natural as riding a bike.

"We used to do this all the time," said Bowe, an actress. "I grew up eating sheep's sorrell [plant]," she said as she ate some that she just picked in Central Park.

"It tastes like lemon and it's soft enough to chew. It is loaded with vitamin C," she said. "Eating edible wild plants is not high on people's lists in the city, but this is really cool to have someone who knows what they are doing."

During a lunch break with his tour, Brill shared some of his wild blueberry ice cream.

"I'm healthier and more fit then ever," he said. "I was never comfortable in the corporate world."