My essential question was really just a starting point in the world of sustainable food and cooking. I think this was an important element of my senior project but the locally souced element played a much bigger role than I had anticipated. If I had the opportunity to go back and change my essential question, I would say something more along the lines of: How can people use the products, materials, and resources proximate to them in order to live healthily and sustainably.

I learned that it is very hard to forage for food and to collect large enough portions of foraged food to add any nutritional or caloric benefits. I quickly was forced to adjust my expectations to dealing with how local farms and businesses have responded to the COVID-19 outbreak and how those resources are available to me and my family.

I met my goals for my senior project. I wanted to grow a closer connection to my food environment as well as improving my cooking skills. I feel that I did both of these things. This provided a very positive lense to face quarantine through because I had a productive way to help my family and businesses around me work through this time

I faced many challenged throughout my project. Most of these were mental challenges. I struggled with motivation and focus and being able to keep working on the same project with a similar schedule every day and every week. A more physical challenge I faced was burning my fingers. With was a big setback because it hurt a lot as well as making everything else I did more difficult. Luckily, they are starting to look a lot better. The blisters have gone down and most of the dead skin has peeled off by this point. I am thankful I had the ability to talk to a doctor and get the medication (cream) that I needed to avoid any serious scaring.

A risk I think is important to address is the inherent risk one takes when eating any foraged food. As much as I trust the internet, it is always hard to take the plunge and consume something that you are not quite sure of the properties of. Lucky no one in my family was ever poisoned throughout this process. I also took smaller risks on a daily basis when deciding what ingredients and spices to put in dishes. Sometimes I worried about specific ingredients overpowering dishes or taking away from the dish but in the end had to commit one way or another.

I am definitely more confident in my cooking abilities. I have greatly expanded my repertoire of dishes. I feel I am better at cooking from a recipe as well as better at creating my own recipes and deciding what flavors to add. Something that has been incredibly rewarding for me has been when I am walking through the forest with someone and I find myself noticing and procuring and an anecdote about a plant I see.