At breakfast time, most people open their cabinets or fridge to find something to eat. But Nina Interlandi Bell opens her door and goes outside. She dodges thistles as she walks barefoot across her sprawling backyard to feed her chickens and grab an egg.
"So usually as I'm coming through the yard, doing my morning chores, I'm sort of keeping an eye out to see what's popping up in my yard. What's growing, what I might want to eat for breakfast," she says.
As Bell turns back toward her house, she spots a patch where wide green leaves grow among the grass.
"Oh, let's go get some of this massive sheep sorrel out here."
It's a plant that's usually considered weed. But Bell sees it as a tasty alternative.
"It's got like a really sour lemonade citrusy flavor," she says. "I use this in place of lemon or lime a lot. Just chop it up or juice it."
She drops a few leaves into a wooden bowl, then circles her house to see what else has sprouted in her yard.
"Ooh! I've got some lambsquarters here."
That's a good substitute for spinach. A few steps away, she plucks a few leaves from something called sochan, a plant traditionally eaten by Native Americans. Dandelions are also a must.
"They're going to be my fav until the end of time," she says.
Bell adds a small rhubarb stem and a couple radishes she planted to her mix. She brings her bowl to a fire pit where she heats up a skillet for the egg, tosses on a piece of bread to toast and starts chopping the greens.
"You can train your mouth to like anything. You really can," says Bell. "You know, I didn't necessarily love a dandelion leaf the very first time I put it in my mouth, but after 20 or so times, you begin to love it in a way that you can't. I mean, I love boxed mac and cheese but this sort of like, I feel like it satisfies you on a soul level."
Bell says she started growing food when she moved to Maine a decade ago.
Soon enough, she realized there was a lot of stuff already growing that she could eat for free. Learning one plant at a time, she's now able to create gourmet meals like a wild plant sushi platter. Seared knotweed. Ravioli with wild carrot root puree.
She posts about her foraged-food creations on social media. And that's what got the attention of MasterChef, the reality TV show hosted by the notoriously fiery Gordon Ramsay. Bell was encouraged to apply. Her family, she says, was a bit skeptical.
"They're like, 'Why would you want to do this? Why? It just sounds awful. You know, you're gonna be trapped in a hotel, you're gonna have Gordon Ramsay yelling at you, you're going to be away from your family. It just, it sounds terrible. And you're going to be cooking under time pressures.' Like, all the exact opposite of everything I normally do."
Bell decided she may as well apply, not expecting she would make it on the show. But she did.
"I am from Woolwich, Maine," she says as she introduces herself on the first episode. "And I am very, very proud to represent that town because we know how to work with what we have around us. We don't have a Whole Foods in my area. We are very resourceful."
She and other contestants were asked to create dished inspired by their region. Bell made venison dumplings.
"My passion has been to get people excited about wild food," she says as she prepares the dumplings. "And I hope the judges taste the passion that I have for my foraged ingredients."
Bell wasn't allowed to use foraged ingredients on MasterChef, so she talked about them whenever she could. In a later episode, her spin on fair food — a fried fish sandwich with garlic lemon aioli and lemon tahini slaw — was one of the top four chosen among 20 contestants.
"The fish is cooked beautifully," Gordon Ramsay says after he takes a bite. "And even after sitting between those slice of bun, it's still crisp. It is absolutely up there. Great job."
Bell can't divulge how far she got on MasterChef. But she hopes that her appearance on the show and her passion for wild food will empower others to explore it.
Back in her yard, she bites into a piece of toast piled with a mound of backyard greens and topped off with a fried egg.
Eating wild food isn't hard, she says. You're a forager even if you munch a dandelion once a week.
Bell will compete on the next episode of MasterChef, which airs this Wednesday, July 12 at 8 pm.
