Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, September 21, 2019

7

JUST FOR YOU!

Mountain View News Saturday, September 21, 2019 

TABLE FOR TWO by Peter Dills

thechefknows@yahoo.com


Open for well over a year now I can’t say it’s the New Kid on the Block!! Recently I visited ARBOUR ON SOUTH LAKE STREET, 
before the Smitty’s, Del Frisco’s, Crocodile Café and Paul Martin’s, there was Burger Continental and The Chronicle, that was pretty 
much it for food faire on So Lake . 

Before I get into the menu the scene is typical of any modern built from ground up restaurant, beautiful bar area, open kitchen, a 
nouvel feel to it . Certainly this not say that the other restaurants on Lake don’t have their space looking sharp, but there is a feel to 
The Arbour that might make you think that you were dining in Napa if you didn’t know any better, so much similar butt so much 
different, ready sports fans… Spoiler alert, there is no television, no Big Screen anywhere to be found at The Arbour, and I get it!! 
This series place with a real focus on the food, imagine that! Chef Ian was the youngest pastry chef in the US with a Michelin Star 
while at Patina, now those are hard to come by. I know Ian and his wife aren’t going to like this, but do yourself a favor, call first and 
make sure he is there, it makes the night so special with the owner/chef comes by and says hello and his charm is the signature of the 
restaurant. And if you hold your breath and say M-I-S-S-IS_S-P_-I , you might get him to make his signature dessert the California 
right at your table, looking to score points with the one you love? This a deal closer, but wait Johnny there is more we haven’t even 
gone over the food yet.

My dad used to say pictures tell a thousand stories and I am glad this article includes the dishes that I tried. Start off with a couple of 
cold appetizers ( appetizer: Defined as a small portion to stimulate the desire to eat) first up is the Seafood Salad, yep that is the name 
crab, shrimp and shellfish with parsnips and meyer lemon vinaigrette, side note if you like lemonade . Meyer lemons are the best. 
Next up was the Bison steak tartare, Fresno chili stamp served with puffed bread, I mentioned that just before I was born that parents 
lived in Germany and tartare was very common, Chef Ian of course was familiar with European eating habits, next up from the 
hot appetizers was the Tagliatte, crumbled pork sausage , rapini light 
chili flakes and san Joaquin gold cheese, from the entrees menu the 
Butternut Squash agnolotti, then a taste of the Sea Bass. My assessment 
was two thumbs up, only problem is there are dishes that I didn’t get 
to, and so badly want to return for the Beef Chili and the Heritage Pork 
Chop. Amusing to me that the menu doesn’t offer descriptions but 
what I had was so good that I can’t wait for my return. 

527 South Lake Ave. Pasadena

Notable Notes: Valet Parking/street Parking. Full Bar , reservations 
suggested. Menu changes so go to website www.thearbour.com 


CHRISTOPHER Nyerges

FOLLOWING EUELL GIBBONS’ 
FOOTSTEPS IN GRIFFITH PARK


[Nyerges has been leading 
wild food classes 
since 1974, and he has 
authored 19 books on 
wild foods and self-reliance. 
He can be reached 
at www.SchoolofSelf-
Reliance.com]

I visited Griffith Park in the spring with an 
Italian TV crew to create a short spot about 
the possibility of foraging for one’s own 
food in the city of Los Angeles. I went to 
Grif-fith Park deliberately, to follow in the 
footsteps of the famous Euell Gibbons who 
like-wise took a film crew there some 50 
years ago. In Gibbons’ case, he was trying 
to an-swer the question of whether or not 
all of the residents of L.A. could subsist on 
the weeds that grew everywhere. The answer 
was “no.” He was also trying to simply 
demonstrate that food is abundant, and 
that though a lot of it could be used, it’s not 
used, but is rather mowed down, pulled up, 
or poisoned.

I followed in Gibbons’ footsteps in part out 
of curiosity. Since Gibbons wrote about all 
the plants he encountered in Griffith Park, I 
was able to tour the park and take a botan-
ical inventory of what might still grow there 
today.

Gibbons was not a native. He was raised in 
the desert Southwest, spent some time in 
Hawaii, and eventually moved with his wife 
to Pennsylvania, where most of his popu-lar 
foraging books were written. Everything he 
described in Griffith Park could be found 
pretty much anywhere in North America at 
the right season. Weeds! Those plants that 
gardeners find so undesirable, which in fact 
are some of the hardiest – and most nutritious 
– plants in the world.

In Gibbons’ day, one was often regarded as 
a bit backward, or “kooky” if you wanted to 
eat wild foods. Gibbons didn’t care, since 
he was doing what he did his whole life, and 
he laughed all the way to the bank when the 
sales of his books took off, fueled in part by 
his constant television appearances.

Fifty years later, I encountered something 
that Gibbons probably didn’t see in Griffith 
Park. Homelessness! Though Gibbons and 
his followers were trying to live life more 
self-reliantly, they were not, for the most 
part, starving, homeless, and penni-less. 
Gibbons himself, did experience some 
rough times in his life where the ability 
to collect a meal for free made all the 
difference.

In my exploration for Italian TV, we started 
at the northern part of the park and found 
mallow, lambs’ quarter, and chickweed 
along a little used trail. There was no indication 
that anyone was using or collecting any 
of these three edible plants, even though a 
homeless tent was steps away.

The mallow has a round leaf and can be 
eaten raw or cooked, or as it is done in 
Mexi-co, infused into a tea for coughs and 
sore throats. Mallow – think marsh mallow, 
you know, the mallow of the marshes, 
from where we once got a healthy medicine, 
and whose name is still used on the sugar 
foodless product that campers roast over a 
flame. 

The lamb’s quarter was growing healthily in 
the uncut grassy area, and Gibbons would 
have known this plant well, for 
this European native can now be found just 
about eve-rywhere in the world. Known as 
Chenopodium album, the lamb’s quarter 
leaves are rich in minerals, and can be used 
in salads or any cooked dishes, as you’d use 
ordi-nary spinach. As a cousin to the hip 
quinoa, the seeds of lambs’ quarter can be 
col-lected and added to soups or bread batters 
for extra protein.

Chickweed too is another cosmopolitan 
that weed that grows in Griffith Park, and 
pretty much every where in L.A. County, 
and everywhere in North America where 
it’s not freezing. It’s a low-growing plant 
which gets its names because it is fed to 
chickens in Japan, though it’s still a tasty 
salad plant for humans.

With the Italian film crew, we looked at 
some of the native Californians that were 
once the food source for the indigenous 
people who lived here, plants like toyon, 
oak trees (and their acorns), and prickly 
pear cactus.

There were some late season toyon berries 
still on the tree so I picked a few to boil later 
and eat. These would have been a great winter 
food for the Tongva. The acorns were 
not ripe in the spring, would have been collected 
in the past as one of the main staples 
and used in mixed-food stews. Cactus pads 
have long been cleaned of their spines and 
eaten in a variety of dishes, as they still are 
today in Mexican communities. They are 
delicious when properly prepared, and are 
now being regarded as a superfood, due to 
the presence of so many essential and non-
essential amino acids, and their usefulness 
in combatting 
adult onset diabetes.

I followed Euell Gibbons route that day, 
from the north part of the park, behind the 
zoo, the old zoo, around the golf course, 
and eventually over to the L.A. River. All 
the wild foods that he extolled 50 years are 
still growing abundantly, and generally, still 
unused by a growing population.

In my various encounters with homeless 
people, I have shown various individual 
such wild foods as carob pods, or lambs’ 
quarter, or fennel, and other common 
and easy-to-recognize and easy to digest 
plants that could be used. I have noticed 
only minimal interest in what I was sharing, 
but this is partly due to the fact that it 
takes time and study to accurately be able to 
identify a plant unknown to you, before you 
can safely eat it on your own. But the minimal 
interest is also a matter of poor diet, 
where a ham-burger and coke is considered 
a good meal, and where there is a real fear 
of nature. It is not an easy task to share wild 
foods with the very people who need it the 
very most.

Still, I’m not suggesting that knowledge of 
wild foods can solve the problem of home-
lessness, but it could solve the problem of 
hunger, day by day.

For me, Euell Gibbons was the prophet of 
self-reliance who showed that food and 
medicine are everywhere, and the price 
is simply the time that it takes to educate 
your-self. It is a path that I have followed 
to this day, whose benefits are complex and 
multi-faceted.


Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown

AT THE WOLF'S TABLE: A NOVEL 
by Rosella Postorino & Leah Janeczko 

The international bestseller based on a haunting true story 
that raises provocative 
questions about 
complicity, guilt, and 
survival. They called 
it the Wolfsschanze, 
the Wolf’s Lair. “Wolf” 
was his nickname. As 
hapless as Little Red 
Riding Hood, I had 
ended up in his belly. 
A legion of hunters 
was out looking for 
him, and to get him 
in their grips they 
would gladly slay me 
as well. Germany, 
1943: Twenty-six-
year-old Ro-sa Sauer’s 
parents are gone, and 
her husband Gregor 
is far away, fighting 
on the front lines of 
World War II. Impoverished 
and alone, she 
makes the fateful decision 
to leave war-torn 
Berlin to live with her 
in-laws in the countryside, thinking she’ll find refuge there. But 
one morning, the SS come to tell her she has been conscripted 
to be one of Hitler’s tasters: three times a day, she and nine other 
women go to his secret headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair, to eat his 
meals before he does. Forced to eat what might kill them, the 
tasters begin to divide into The Fanatics, those loyal to Hitler, 
and the women like Rosa who insist they aren’t Nazis, even as 
they risk their lives every day for Hitler’s. As secrets and resentments 
grow, this unlikely sisterhood reaches its own dramatic 
climax, as everyone begins to wonder if they are on the wrong 
side of history.


HALLOWEEN WINDOW PAINTING 

APPLICATIONS ARE AVAILABLE

Sierra Madre Civic Club is calling all Sierra Madre 9 to 17-year-olds to sign up for the 2019 
Halloween Window Painting contest. The Halloween Window Painting contest is free to 
participants. The contest is by age group with one member being a Sierra Madre resident on 
a team of up to 4 students painting one window per team. 

Painting begins on October 25th at 2:30 p.m. and will wrap up October 26th at 10 a.m. 
Judging will begin at 10 a.m. October 26th. Teams will be judged on Cleanliness, Color Use, 
Halloween Theme and Creativity. Once the judging is complete awards will be given around 
noon October 26th in Kersting Court. Winning is not the main objective, but having fun and showing off your talent is! 

Rules and Applications are now available at local schools, Sierra Madre City Hall, Sierra Madre Library as well as Facebook, 
sierramadrecivicclub.org (click on ‘Upcoming Events’), cityofsierramadre.org (click on ‘Residents, Special Events, 
Halloween Happenings, 2019 Halloween Window Painting Application’). The deadline to turn in your drawing and 
Application is October 7. 

For more information contact Sierra Madre Civic Club Halloween Window Painting Chair: Virginia Mullaney at virgirl2006@
yahoo.com or see our website: sierramadrecivicclub.org


Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com