I bought a couple books from Steve Brill, the tour guide, learned some, and
brought back some fruit. The best was the pint of blackberries. There could
have been more, but there were three dozen people and all were getting
some. I have a half pint of Cornelian cherries, which are native to Turkey,
but are a popular ornamental tree in parks here. I have a good amount of
crab apples which will make a nice applesauce. Some elderberries, which I
don't know what I will do with.

And there were other things I didn't bother getting. Like Kentucky coffee
beans, which being a legume need processing to make edible. So not paleo.
The purslane had been mowed by the lawn mower, and didn't look the most
exciting. I befriended one of the women on the outing who was taking notes
and she says she will e-mail me the list. All are in the book of Steve's
that I bought.

I did learn from him where the blackberries and Cornelian cherries are in
the park that is a block from me. And I can go over to the nearby botanical
gardens and see if I can get some mayapples. They have a section with lots
of them there. We only found one mayapple on the tour and someone else got it.

And he showed us a peach tree full of peaches that weren't ripe enough to
pick. Too bad Central Park is far from me. But he has a tour of my nearby
park in a few weeks and I'll learn where these things are there.

Two television crews came along. One was Japan's NTV. The other was for the
show Extreme Cuisine for the cable FoodTV channel. I think the paleo diet,
with Ray and his hawk hunting, should be on one of their programs. E-mails
needed to suggest this. Here's their page. An e-mail link is on it.

  http://www.foodtv.com/fn/programs/extremecuisine/

The other people on the tour tended to be vegetarian, into organic food,
and a few were raw foodists. One woman stood out. Before the tour started I
learned that she was militantly for organic food. She claimed non-organic
food will kill you. She claimed that if the greenmarket farmer says he
isn't spaying he's lying. It must be certified organic. She would never buy
products from a company like Procter & Gamble, but only from
environmentally conscious companies. She said she had a fruitarian friend
that was in absolute perfect health. When I pointed out this wasn't
possible unless they cheated and ate nuts, she argued that nuts were
fruits. I tried explaining how they were different and she said well you
eat fruits and you eat nuts, so nuts were fruits. Then the TV crews came.
She got very upset. She refused to join the tour because of this, claimed
coming to the tour start and not going on it ruined her day, said she would
never be back for another tour, and stomped off. No loss.

Don.