Bill Schindler ran his hand over a patch of violets, ignoring the nearby rat trap and the brown paper bag crumpled around an empty can of beer. He was searching for flowers to eat.
In the alley next to him, a group of people were crouched in the dust, harvesting curly-leaf dock. They had all paid to eat weeds. After signing up for Schindler's "urban foraging" class at the Hill Center, a community center in Washington's Capitol Hill neighborhood, they spent the morning rooting out scraggly greens from cracks in sidewalks, then cooking them into an elaborate, tasty lunch.
With growing concern about over-processing, pesticides, preservatives, steroids and antibiotics in food, some people are searching out wild food and sources so local that they step on them on the way to catch a train to work.