- [Madeline] I'm Madeline Hooper.

I've been gardening for decades and living with aches and pains, so I finally decided that maybe I should find a fitness trainer to see if I could fix my problems.

And after learning better ways to use my body in the garden, it dawned on me.

What would be more exciting than to travel all over America, visiting a wide variety of gardeners and helping their gardeners get Garden Fit?

In season one, for all our guest gardeners, gardening was their life.

For season two, we're going to visit artists who are also passionate gardeners.

And for this lucky group, I'm so thrilled and excited to welcome this season Garden Fitness professional, Adam Schersten.

Taking care of your body while taking care of your garden, that's our mission.

- [Narrator] Garden Fit is made possible in part by Monrovia.

[gentle lilting music] [gentle folk music] - Adam, this time we are visiting James Gop.

He is an inventor, an explorer, a scientist, and a chef.

- Wow.

- Yeah, a real combination of talents.

So he's worked at restaurants, basically farm-to-table restaurants, and really got into really local, natural, healthy food.

And then he had this vision of a special type of focus, and he actually loves to forage for food.

- Cool.

- Which is really cool.

So he goes to forests and fields, and he finds things that he uses as ingredients.

He makes his own blend of spices, and vinegars, and ferments things, and literally creates a pantry full of ingredients that he uses for his cooking.

- Wow, I love this.

It sounds like a mad scientist or something.

- I think he is a little bit like that.

I actually had this experience once where a dear friend invited us to a dinner, and when you got to this place, which just looked like the woods, we walked through it, and there were stations set up.

And at each station, there was a different drink and different hors d'oeuvres, and the ingredients for those were found right where that station was in the woods.

- Whoa.

- The big wow came a little bit later where he was actually cooking on an open fire, the meal we were about to have, so that was an experience I've never forgotten.

So now he's invited us to come and forage with him, so I'm very excited.

We're gonna actually get to pick ingredients in the forest.

- Oh, cool.

- Fun, but we'll help him and I think he's gonna take some of the ingredients we find and put them together and actually come here.

So he'll cook it here, he'll set a fantastic table, and we'll have dinner right here.

- [Adam] Awesome, it's gonna be impressive.

[peaceful music] - I can't wait for you to meet James.

- Nice.

- He's such a super guy.

- Oh, I'm very excited.

- There he is.

- Hey, how you guys doing?

- Oh James, oh I'm great.

I'm so happy to be here.

- I'm so happy to have you here, it's so nice.

- Wonderful to see you.

- Great to see you.

- And who's this big handsome fella?

- This is Adam.

- Adam, how are you?

Good to meet you.

- I'm great.

Nice to meet you.

- So excited to have you.

We're gonna do a lot of fun things today.

- So maybe just before we get started, maybe tell us a bit about your business, your catering business, and your special approach.

- Yeah, I really struggle with calling myself a caterer because our approach is just so different from a more conventional style.

Really, we're going out in the woods, all throughout the season, and trying to extend this East Coast growing season, and working with the flavors and the fauna that is growing at that area.

Going out, harvesting things, either putting them in salt, making a sauce out of them, what have you, and then we're gonna be looking at those pantry items as we would salt or pepper or turmeric and incorporating those into a full meal, so really, yeah.

- Exciting.

- Each dinner is reflective of that time in the area that we were working in.

- That is so exciting, so you're really working with nature.

- 100%.

I consider myself to be more of a guest.

Mother Nature is ultimately the queen and she's just allowing me to borrow from her.

- Okay, so let's go do this.

- Very cool.

- Let's do it.

So I have you guys some foraging baskets, size appropriate for each of you.

Here's one for you.

- Thank you.

So there are tools in here.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Do you mind holding these while I try to?

- I would love to.

- Fantastic, and one for you sir.

- Awesome.

- Put on a foraging basket.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- This will be a first for me.

Okay, I'm ready for my tools.

- All right, here we go.

So for you, we're gonna have, give you these little trimmers here.

We're gonna.

- Wow.

- For you, sir.

- Ooh.

- We got some knives.

We're gonna be getting a bunch of wild greens.

- Let's go.

- Let's go.

- [Madeline] If people come out and want to clip things and eat them, how do they make sure that it's safe to do that?

- [James] Yeah, that's a great question, and something to really take seriously.

I mean, I can't stress it enough.

First and foremost, never ever eat anything you don't know.

There's many field guides for your specific region around, so I highly recommend looking at that.

And also see if there's a local forager in the area too that can take you out on a foraging walk and show you what's growing in your area, and even better yet, what's in your backyard, so you can- - Which is so great.

- Yeah.

- Step right out there.

- So cool.

- [Madeline] I love that idea.

- Let's take a minute here in the woods and start to look at some of the components that we can forage from the forest floor.

So right here we have goldenrod, and you'll see these on the side of the road, these beautiful golden fields.

Yeah, give it a bite, 'cause it's really nice.

There is a bitter quality to it.

- Thank you.

- You're welcome.

But I love it with maybe like a nice sweet roasted carrot dish.

And then down here too, which I really love, is something called woods sorrel.

It's very lemony.

It almost looks like a clover.

What do you think?

You want harvest some of this goldenrod to start us?

- Yes, that was delicious.

- Yeah, yes.

- [James] So you wanna grab with your knives and your clippers, some of the goldenrod there.

Madeline, you've got some wood sorrel too.

Yeah, there you go.

Very nice.

- Oh yeah, the wood sorrel.

- That too.

Okay, so this goes in my pack?

- Yes ma'am, I'll help you out with that right now.

Look at that, huh.

- [Adam] Here, we'll load you up first.

- [Madeline] Load me up.

- Very nice.

All right.

- I love that.

- Shall we continue on?

- Yes.

- Fantastic.

- Let's find more good things to eat.

Oh, this is a great field.

- Yeah, a lot of stuff here to eat.

- [Adam] Wow, yeah, so busy.

- Yeah, so the great thing about this whole area is literally underneath our feet, we have wild strawberries, we have bed straw, we have wild thyme.

As you see here, we have a wild dewberry, and there's wild strawberries in here.

- Oh yeah, here's one.

- So there you go, right?

What do you think?

- Smells better than any strawberry you're finding in the grocery store.

- Oh my goodness, that has so much aroma.

- Oh yeah.

- Wow.

- Crazy.

- Yeah, like jam.

So with that, we'll harvest some of those, Adam, some of those leaves you actually pulled it from, yeah.

See those beautiful three-leafed ones.

- [Adam] Five.

- Yeah, five here for the dewberries.

Your strawberry is the one right there.

- [Adam] Okay, this is dewberry.

- Yeah, grab the leaf, and then only hold onto to there.

It's sort of like stinging nettles in that way where we'll actually blanch them, 'cause they're, primarily the prickers are made up from silica, so when you blanch them, it'll actually dissolve away the silica, and it'll be totally fine, you could eat the whole stem.

- Right.

- Some of that there.

- [Adam] There's so much of it, it's wild.

- Yeah.

Literally, right?

[group laughing] So down next to you, Adam, also, one of the things I want you to grab, see that pink purple flower there that's love?

Now just take off the tip to that.

- Let me get this nice one.

Just the tip?

- Yeah, the tip there.

- [Adam] I'll take the whole thing, see.

- Yeah, there you go, and then both of you kind of pass it around and just pull those little flowers off and taste them, kind of minty, but also maybe a little bit of sweet pea in there, so it's in that clover family, very much like the sorrel that we just saw in the woods.

And get it really on the back side of your tongue almost towards, on the sides and the back.

That's where we receive sweetness on our palate.

Use those like chive flowers maybe as a garnish in a dish.

- How pretty.

- Yeah.

- I love that idea.

- Should we grab some more of that?

- Absolutely yeah.

- We use the stem?

- No, this is wonderful.

- [James] We can use a stem, yeah, exactly, use everything.

- [Madeline] Would you put this just in a salad like that?

- You could do that, yeah, or you can pull the leaves maybe as a garnish maybe in like a pea soup.

- That's fantastic.

- Yeah.

- Who knew?

- Who knew?

And there's two more gems I wanna show you guys right over here before we head back.

- [Madeline] Wonderful, here we go.

[gentle acoustic guitar music] So we have our last two here.

So taking a look at this, before we discuss what it is, try it.

- Yeah.

- That's delusions.

- Yeah, you can taste it.

- It tastes just like carrot.

- So this is wild carrot, also known as Queen Ann's lace, so you'll start to see these in the field, those big white heads.

- This is Queen Ann?

- That's a carrot?

- Oh my goodness.

- Yes, exactly.

- That's a lot of that.

- That's a carrot.

- That's a carrot, it's a wild carrot.

- That's amazing.

- It is.

- It's not gonna be your carrot that you go to the grocery store and pick up.

It's gonna be much smaller and a little more spindly.

So I think with this almost has like a little bit, I get kind of like a fruit loop sort of flavor from it, so I think we're gonna kind of do, you know, maybe something with dessert with this.

- Oh, fun.

- So let's pick some of these.

And then another thing we're gonna try too is this here.

This is called wild plantain.

- This is a weed.

- Well, so we classify things as weeds sometimes unfairly, right?

A weed by definition is something that grows in an area that you don't want it to.

And as you saw, we've been stepping over all of this wild food, so a lot of them have medicinal purposes, some of them are brought in as ornamentals.

But give us one a shot here.

- Taste it.

- Yeah, give it a shot.

Give it a little nibble.

Chewed up and think white button mushroom, maybe cremini mushrooms.

- Wow.

Yeah, no, it starts bitter and then it like- - Get that mushroom.

- Emulsifies into, yeah, mushrooms.

- And a lot of people will have this particular plant growing all over.

- [Madeline] I have this growing all over.

- So I think maybe we will forage some of these and cook them into a broth, almost looks like a mushroom-enhanced broth.

We'll finish up our bounty here and then we'll get onto our dinner.

Okay.

Shall we?

Let's cook.

- Great.

- All right.

- Let's do it.

- After you.

- Thank you.

- [Adam] Thanks.

[gentle acoustic guitar music continues] - Oh my goodness.

Where are we?

- Yeah, so welcome to my home.

This is my lab.

This is where all the magic happens.

- Oh my goodness.

- Look at all this stuff.

- It's fantastic.

- A lot of toys.

- Let me give you a tour, is that all right?

Can you put those down here for down here please?

Anywhere's comfortable for you guys.

- [Adam] Did you learn about all these beakers in culinary school?

- Not at all.

No, no, this is all self-taught.

And it kind of goes back to this idea of working with the wild food, right.

Studying things, really honing in on them.

So with here we have the last of the seasoned lilac from this year, we went and collected them literally right down the road from here and made them into a wine.

And it's so interesting going back to like the red clover that we had out in the field.

We're tasting it and it reminded us of peas, right?

So when as this goes to its fermentation stage, you'll start to get banana essence out of it.

So you put two and two together, it's like, well this tastes like bananas, so why don't you maybe put it together with a banana dish to accentuate those flavors.

- That's fantastic.

- Oh, cool.

- I mean, I know you have so many interesting things is this what, kitchen laboratory, but what is this doing here?

- So this is a horn, a drinking horn that I literally would put on my belt.

If I take a sip of water, I set my cup down, I'll never see it again, so everything I need has to be on my body.

- So that's, yeah, cool.

- Yeah, you can't exactly put that down.

- No, no, exactly, so that kind of wraps it up here, but I'd love to taste you guys on some things upstairs.

- That would be wonderful.

- Cool.

- Perfect, right this way.

- What a fabulous room.

- Yeah, cool.

- So we're going to, you know, taste some things that were downstairs, maybe not downstairs, and see how they play.

So a few things I'd like for us to try is we have, you know, earlier when we picked our goldenrod, remember that sort of bitterness?

So we'll play with that, so check this out.

Fermented honey, so we got some spoons here.

As the bees are actually making the honey inside of the hive, it could last forever because at the same time, with them moving their wings, they keep it to a stage where there's less water content.

So it basically, there's not enough water activity in the honey.

To make fermented honey, we add some water to it, leave the top open so the natural yeast gets in there so you're gonna get like a sour kind of funky- - Delicious.

- It is absolutely delicious.

- Yeah, really fantastic.

I figure maybe we make some kind of dressing or sauce and finish it with that to brighten up the goldenrod and also take away some of that bitterness.

And here in this green jar is ramp oil.

You guys familiar with ramps?

- I am.

- Yeah, they're magic.

They kind of grow all up and down the East Coast for those who don't know.

Yeah, wild leeks.

This almost mystical kind of flavor to them.

- Wow.

- Is that amazing?

- So light, but- - Yeah.

- Full of flavor.

- We can pair with that maybe along with some of our pickled vegetables that we make here as a sauce for a protein or something.

The last one here is a smoked mushroom garum, kind of similar to like a soy sauce.

This is made with the koji fungus that will actually work and break down the mushrooms.

We smoke them and then we roast them.

This is gonna be more of the salty seasoning.

So I figure when we tried those plantains out in the field, we had those mushroom qualities.

We were kind of, you know, chewing it up.

Figured this would be a really nice seasoning to finish that broth with.

- How wonderful.

- Wow.

- Oh, that's so exciting.

Can't wait for dinner.

- Yeah.

It's gonna be fun.

- Yeah, it is.

- Seriously.

So I'm sure you got a lot to do to get ready for tonight so how about we talk about body tune up?

- Absolutely.

Thank you for being here, I mean, like I've been suffering with, I have two herniated discs in my back, so, you know, I've been suffering that for a while.

Even being out in the field today, kind of playing a little havoc on me, so I'd love to learn some things that could- - Yeah, totally, and I'm gonna show you some things today that you could do on the fly, at the job site, while you're standing, just to kind of mobilize the hips and then we'll talk about another biomechanical fix.

So actually, if you don't mind taking off the vest.

- Oh, sure, yes.

- The first thing I want you to try is you're standing with your feet about hip width apart, a little narrower.

I want you to just to shift left and right and I want you to feel, what does it feel like to go each way?

- Yeah, good, at the beginning it felt a little tight, but moving it now, see, now it's better.

I can get more range of movement.

- Yep, so this kind of stuff is really, it's just immobilization and so we're really trying to open up the hips, the outside of the hips, get the spine to also respond and tip through that.

- So do you tip when you're doing that?

- Yeah, let your body really, 'cause I want you to try and do is really get, go ahead and keep going.

Push out as far as you can, as far as far as you can.

- That feels good though.

It's like a stretch of one stretch.

- Yeah.

- I'm stretching.

Yeah, 'cause I'm just taking a look at how far you can get out on your right side and then, yeah, let's really push this way too.

- That does feel great, though.

- That's really, yeah, and it's just, you know, it's just taking care of your body and I don't do that.

- Totally.

All right, now coming back to neutral, I want you just to try now, just kind of coming down into a ready position and rolling through your pelvis a little bit, so just tipping forward and backward.

Okay?

- Okay.

And so now what I want you to do is find a nice comfortable position and then imagine your thighs are going to stay parallel and you're just going to reach forward with one thigh with that.

See how you spin your whole body to reach that?

I don't want you to, yep, better.

Don't spin your body, yes, good.

- Okay.

- Now come the other way.

Good, and back and forth, good.

Try, think, yeah, look at your own thighs and imagine them staying parallel.

Good, and then we just shift back and forth.

Great, okay, so let's take a little break.

This is real simple hip motion.

That should be a part of your daily life.

And if it's not, stiffness, tightness, pain, all of that is gonna follow.

The last thing I really wanna show you is the mechanics of a good forward bend.

We all know the adage, you don't lift with your back, but lifting with the back would imply taking weight with a rounded spine and using the spine muscles to lift.

But we all know that power lifters lift ungodly amounts of weight in what looks like a very similar motion, but it's not using the backs at all because the back will, the low back will stay nice and straight as they lift up through the hips, not the spine.

Madeline and I have worked on this a bunch, so she's gonna show you how you were doing it, which is the wrong way.

- Oh great.

- I've been a long time the wrong way.

Adam fixed me.

- Yeah, and then she'll show you the right way.

So Madeline, if you wanna take it away.

- Yes.

- Go ahead and bend, soften your knees and bend the wrong way.

So if you watch, see how her back starts to really round out and then when she comes up, she has to come up through her back.

- Looks familiar.

- Yeah, exactly.

So now we're gonna watch her doing it the right way.

She's still got the soft knees, but see how the back maintains that arch exactly, and then she starts to move through the spine here to get all the way to the ground, but then as she comes up, she locks into that position and then uses the pelvis to really stand back up.

Okay?

- Okay.

- So now I'm gonna walk you through this a little bit.

So just like her, you gotta soften those knees, push your pelvis backwards.

- Like so.

- Great, and keeping that lower back nice and flat and the goal is to get that chest down.

Good, and now we stand straight back up through the tipping of the pelvis.

Great, back into- - That is great.

- That feels fantastic.

- That was really good.

That was a great job.

So let's do that maybe one more time.

Try what she did.

Come all the way down and then finish your foraging with the back.

- And what do I do, just collapse?

- Just allow the back to round out.

Yeah, exactly.

Reach the ground like you need to, now return to that position and then finish with the pelvic tilt.

Great, and then what that will do is really reduce the amount of stress that you feel in the back when you bend over.

I mean, this is a classic example.

Without hiring a personal trainer, people are never really getting any movement instruction at all, so this is a great opportunity for you to change how you move and really reduce the amount of stress on that back.

- Yeah, thanks, man.

- That would be fun.

- That's awesome.

- Yeah, it's very exciting.

- Appreciate that.

- Well, now that you're all tuned up, I know you have to get dinner ready, so we'll let you get to that and we'll see you in a little bit.

- [James] Yeah, see you soon.

- James, we had such a fun time with you today and we are so excited to actually become your sous chefs.

- Yeah, that's right.

- [Madeline] Okay, so what are you cooking?

- Yeah, so we have a lot of things.

So we have some chickens here that we're gonna be cooking for a nice little party tonight.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- It looks delicious already.

- Can I smell it?

- 100%.

Yeah, get right in there.

Really, I need your guys' help with today is, you know, trussing these chickens up- - With wire?

- With wire.

- Yeah, with wire, and then butchers twine.

This is based off of really old technique that as we truss the chickens, we're also gonna connect them with the butchers twine and we sort of wind them up.

The chickens will rotate really creating tension on this butcher twine and then they'll get to the point where they can't rotate anymore and then they'll rotate the other side.

So it's like a rotisserie but no electric or anything.

- Oh, that's beyond cool.

- It's gonna be spinning back and forth.

- 100%, yeah.

- Oh my God.

- Oh, man.

- Look at the size of this thing.

- Okay, you got the fish.

- So what we have here, look at this thing.

- Oh my goodness.

- Got 15 pound steelhead trout.

Now earlier, right, we ended up harvesting a bunch of wild carrots, some Queen Anne's lace, so one other thing I wanna enhance with this particular dish is stuffing the fish with that.

Oh, that's- - How do you feel about that?

- No, I love that idea.

- Sounds fun.

- Good for you?

- Sounds delicious.

- Perfect.

- I thought we were cutting Queen Anne's lace to make an arrangement.

Now we're making a fish.

- No, now we're doing this, yeah.

Now, we're gonna open this cavity here in the center, put it in here.

Take our fish lining up here and- - Fish you have to be strong for.

- Unbelievable.

- So now we got our spikes, dink dink dink, place it right underneath the head, gently place it here.

You gotta be careful 'cause you don't want to injure your hand, so you push one, two, three.

Now, we got our nice fire basket going.

Adam, if you can put that right up there, that'd be great.

- You bet.

- That'll do it, brother.

Look at that.

- [Madeline] Okay, well now that you've taught us how to do this, James, we're gonna go greet our guests.

See you in a little.

- See you in a little.

[people chattering in background] [gentle acoustic guitar music] [people chattering continues] - Come on.

Please Find your places.

Think you're here.

- Awesome, thank you so much.

Thank you, Madeline.

- You're welcome.

[gentle acoustic guitar music continues] [people chattering continues] [onion crunching] Did you take some for yourself?

- Not yet.

I mean, that's good.

- So, excuse me.

We are so excited you're all here to join us in having this amazing dinner that has been prepared for us by James Gop.

- So we forage lots of the fresh herbs and the strawberries, leaves that went into the drink we had earlier, the Queen Ann's lace.

- Which we stuffed into a really delicious fish dish, but it's best that we actually have James describe everything that he has prepared tonight, so welcome everybody.

- Thank you so much.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- [Adam] Cheers.

- I think we have to go help James.

- Should we?

- Yes.

Will you excuse us for a moment?

[gentle acoustic guitar music continues] [fire roaring, crackling] Well now we have our first course and please welcome James.

- Hello, everyone.

- Hi, James.

- All right.

[guests applauding] - [Madeline] We will pass the food around and then James will explain what we're about to eat.

- So what we have here for our first course is a slow poached chicken egg from my chickens over here in the Berkshires with a nice mushroom broth where Adam and Madeline helped me forage some plantains, which is a wild herb that grows in fields.

So that's nicely infused into the broth.

And then we have some wild dandelion greens in here as well, and some mushrooms that we actually grow at our shop in our basement, so enjoy.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

- I insist.

[guests chattering] [knife chopping] [guests applauding] - A little juice for Adam, he likes that.

Yeah, very good.

- Au jus.

- So, James.

- Yes.

- [Madeline] What is here?

- So, furthest away in these cast iron cauldrons, we have a celery and a fennel salad.

The celery actually grew at my house, dressed in a lemon vinegarette with some parsley and some baby microgreens, some micro radishes.

Closest to us is we have chickens here.

So we have two different styles of chickens, and yes, those are the feet on there because I believe, as striking as that is like, you know, we all go to the grocery store and it's like, oh, we'll get the chicken, the blue styrofoam container or whatever.

The reason why I leave the feed on there is that you gotta know where the food's coming from, you know?

And you have to appreciate it while you're consuming it as well.

And we have our steelhead trout here that was rubbed in a really nice crust of wild juniper berries.

It was cooked for maybe three hours or so over the fire, the sauce for the chicken back, you know, a couple hours ago we harvested all these wild strawberry leaves, so we made a tea out of that, that has been reduced down so that sauce is gonna go along with the chicken.

And then finally, we have our potatoes here, which we cooked twice.

So we cooked them in a really, really salty water, as I mentioned earlier, and then you guys helped crush them, thank you very much.

And then we cooked them in a good amount of butter.

Yeah, good, just to kinda get out that- - Good question.

- We touched all of your potatoes with our own hands.

[Madeline laughing] - Yes, so this, I mean, we try to incorporate wild edibles in every single course here.

So for our potatoes in here, we have ramps, which are a wild leek that are literally in season for about three weeks in the spring.

So we made aioli out of the ramp leaves, we made a, you know, basically, essentially a mayonnaise, but it's just consisting of yolks and a black garlic vinegarette that goes along with that, and some raw onion and parsley and fennel on top of that.

So there you go, gang.

Well, enjoy guys.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you, come on.

[guests applauding] - [Madeline] This looks so fantastic, James.

- Well, I have the best team in the world.

- [Madeline] Thank you so much.

- He's getting a little cocky, isn't he?

- You see, you give him a few seasons.

[guests laughing] - Fire.

- Yeah, yeah.

- This is fantastic.

- Look at the crisp on there, look at the crust.

- Oh, wow.

Well, I think we should all raise our glasses to James.

He has created a feast for us that really is so delectable and I really can't imagine having this combination of tastes that you literally find outside your door, James.

It's pretty impressive.

- It's unbelievable.

- Yes, thank you so much.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- [Guest] James Gop.

- [James] Cheers, everybody, cheers to all of you.

- [Madeline] Cheers.

- [Announcer] Get Garden Fit with us.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [gentle music] "Garden Fit" is made possible in part by Monrovia.

[gentle lilting music] [gentle music]