MAY 2018 • NEBRASKAland 39
of the good life you thought you already knew.
We begin this series with Abigael Birrell, a Midwest
native hailing from Kansas, who acquired a taste for wild
food at an early age. After graduating from the University
of Kansas, she attended culinary school in New York where
she became the head chef at NYC's acclaimed Candle
Café. Birrell then took her culinary skills to New Zealand,
Australia and Washington where she gained an appreciation
of farming and community-based food culture before taking
over as executive chef at Lincoln's Hub Café.
After moving to Lincoln, Birrell acclimated to Nebraska's
edible landscape, learning the native wild foods in the area.
"To me, eating local means not just eating food that
was grown here but also learning about and sourcing the
ingredients that belong here," she wrote in one of her frequent
contributions to Edible Omaha. Birrell is passionate about
experiencing Nebraska through foraging. From our interview,
I was excited to learn what wild edibles Nebraska has to offer.
Tell me about yourself. How did you first get
interested in wild foods and foraging?
I was fortunate to grow up with 180 acres of native
Kansas prairie as my backyard. My mother has always
worked in environmental education and is currently the
director of Prairie Park Nature Center in Lawrence, so we
spent a lot of time taking long walks in the woods and
prairie. We'd look for mulberries, puffballs, spring onions
and tiny wild strawberries while she'd quiz me on the names
of the plants and trees we passed.
I have an early memory of her quoting the Ursula K.
Le Guin novel A Wizard of Earthsea while we were out
walking. There is a passage where the elder wizard is
explaining to the young hero that he will never really know
a plant until he knows it in all its seasons – root, leaf and
flower by sight, scent and seed. That idea really stuck with
me.
