Edible Chicago

^{Nance Klehm dices up foraged treats for dinner. Photo: Madeleine Hill}

If you happened to find yourself on a deserted island, Nance Klehm would be a good person to have on hand. She manages to live almost entirely from the food her Chicago garden produces, foraged edible plants and what she’s able to preserve — and she does this in a cold-climate city where the growing season lasts only four months.

Klehm grew up on a Midwestern farm and moved to the big city at 18. But despite her new digs, Klehm couldn’t shake her connection to the soil. She’s now built an urban farm on what she calls a “scattered acre” made up of her yard and roof as well as the yards of friends and neighbors — a social network bound together by food.

When she runs through the items she stores and preserves, she paints a picture of a pantry full of mason jars swimming with luscious fruits and vegetables from A (apples) to Z (zucchini). She cans soups, chutneys and sauces, ferments sauerkraut, kimchi, wines and vinegars and makes sourdough bread from starter. Faced with a windfall of 300 pounds of apples, she presses cider. When raw milk is available from early summer through late winter, she makes cheeses and yogurt. It’s a whirlwind of a list, and she admits she often puts in 80-hour weeks, preparing food, designing gardens, managing a large greenhouse for a homeless shelter and teaching her Living Kitchen classes on breadmaking, cheesemaking and medicinals.

Klehm also forages in the wild spaces of Chicago, harvesting edible plants where others see only an overgrown lot. Dandelions are weeds to some, but the makings of a great wine to Klehm. “Foraging brings out our gathering instincts, our innate curiosity to discover,” she enthuses. On the monthly walks she leads, Klehm pulls people into areas of the city they’ve never been and teaches them to engage physically in our overly virtual world.

Sharing food knowledge is key for Klehm; she believes recipes should be communal and spread by word-of-mouth. “Ask your grandmother, your father, an older neighbor or a friend what foods they preserve and learn from them. Once you have a plan to put up something like marinara or peach jam, invite friends over and make a day of it.”

“I don’t use recipes,” Klehm admits. For her, good food is not about a set of directions written on a piece of paper, but about walking into the world and making magic out of what you find there.