Raven van der Stouw

A good way to make dandelion honey in a field

How many people still know that you can eat a dandelion? From its roots to its flowers, one of the most iconic weeds is fully edible. Our environment is constantly offering us gifts, which are often overlooked. Most people consider these offerings as trash or nuisance, but seeing value in these is crucial. Food is one of our primal needs, yet we are getting more and more disconnected from it, its roots and it's origin.

For me, a good day is to be outside in the sun, preparing my favourite wild garlic pesto for my friends and me. A good day is when I run into some beautiful wood in a construction container or a full kitchen countertop when people are renovating their house. When I discover a new edible wild plant and a taste that I didn’t even know existed.

De Struikrover gets its name from “roven”, or “to loot”, which can also be understood as a practice that takes foraging outside the boundaries of food and opens it up towards any materials you might need to prepare your meal/food outside. De Struikrover is a project that discovers a way of connecting to our environment and the food we eat. It tells the story of a personal journey of becoming a forager and discovering the initially invisible world of wild edible plants. Learning how to identify the plants, which ones are edible and which are deadly toxic, and last but not least, learning how to cook with them. What makes this journey possible is a full outdoor cooking kit, including a mobile kitchen and a foraging suit, including tools for ‘’roving’’ either food or materials, all created with either second-hand or found materials.