Central Park provides a great window into the world of wild foods as mid-spring approaches. Making a meal with these plants is simple at this time.

For an appetizer, try simmering field garlic bulbs in diluted vinegar with Italian seasonings to make an outstanding pickle.

It's the peak of the season for wild greens, and we'll be finding great quantities of wild vegetables. Spicy mustard greens, such as garlic mustard, hedge mustard, and poor man's pepper, abound on lawns everywhere.

Offset their flavor in a salad with milder-tasting greens such as violet leaves, Asiatic dayflower, and chickweed, also abundant. With the inclusion of sweet redbud flowers, sour greenbriar and sheep sorrel leaves, plus tender, cucumber-flavored cattail shoots, you'll have the best salad you've ever eaten.

Wild mushrooms will provide a gourmet side dish. We might find dryad's saddle or oyster mushrooms on this tour.

If you're thirsty, wash down the meal with caffeine-free coffee made from the seeds of the Kentucky coffee-tree, the world's best coffee substitute.

Burdock root is one of the few wild root vegetables that remains in season throughout the warm weather. Add razor-thin slices to soups or rice, or prepare Japanese Kimpira Gobo with them.

Pokeweed, another seasonal potherb, is among the best-tasting vegetables in the world. Boil the shoots in 2 changes of water and flavor with tamari soy sauce, plus garlic lightly browned in olive oil, a recipe I call Basic Pokeweed. Don't use the roots or mature plant, or omit the boiling, lest you poison yourself!

And for an exotic dessert, why not stew apples or pears with cinnamon (or the sassafras we'll be finding), ginger (commercial or wild), and nuts, then add sweet, perfumed blossoms of the wisteria vine?