Today I can’t pick between these two trippies, so you get both. First is Elizabeth Fraser’s first single in 13 years (appearing here as Sun’s Signature, a duo with her partner Damon Reece). “Golden Air” is a dulcimer-heavy meditation on the natural world, complete with a visualizer that leans heavily into vibey mist and sun rays as the hippie rock ambiance explodes inside you.
Reefer Tym’s “Feeling For You” achieves a similar spiritual effect through very different musical means. His soft, fizzly Afrobeats sort of cradle you into the sun, which is more or less the vibe of this fine April day to begin with. Friday: enhanced.
In the lofty words of the two pastoral white yentlemen who founded “Foraged,” their new marketplace is “transforming food by enabling food to go from Forest-to-Table.” In language the rest of us might use, say you’ve collected a few pounds of mushrooms or elderberries or whatever and you’d like to sell them. This place is your Etsy.
We appreciate a business outlet for nature types, and this one appears to be growing nicely, but is anyone worried about, I don’t know, food safety? Any knowledgeable mushroom person will tell you how absolutely certain you want to be that your finds aren’t poisonous. (I’m pretty sure you also want your garlic mustards to come without dog pee on them, etc., etc.) You’d think maybe this would be a part of the conversation, but we hear nothing about vetting in the Foraged press coverage or on their website. Even if we weren’t dealing in extra-hazardous organisms, the FDA is generally super strict with cottage foods (RIP Homemade, which shut down for this reason, and welcome Wood Spoon, which probably will be, too). Please tell us how this is going to work out for the small foragers being saved by this offering.
“Let’s face it, the world would be a far better place if more people experienced psychedelic medicines,” said David Bronner, “Cosmic Engagement Officer” at everyone’s favorite evangelical soap company. Known for their ‘60s-style “All-One-God-Faith” preaching, Dr. Bronner’s has gone all in on the shrooms and shroom-adjecents: they’ve donated millions to psychedelics research and lobbying, and they’re also one of the only companies whose healthcare program includes ketamine therapy.
This probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the family company has always been about dogma over product. All that text on the bottles is there, evidently, because no one wanted to hear it when OG Emil Bronner was proselytizing at Woodstock, but everyone wants the soap, so they still just print it there in hopes that someone will read. And it’s that kind of foolhardy tenacity that’s keeping the family biz going strong: the same proclivity that sent David sewing hemp seeds on the front lawn of the DEA is what sets the company limit on how far apart their top and bottom salaries can be.
Does any of this get us legal shrooms? Maybe! In the meantime, just use that peppermint soap to clean off whatever you’ve foraged.
For our last little shroom moment of the day, how about a little chill time? De Soi is a non-alcoholic aperitif that’s like wine, only better, since it’s made with adaptogens like reishi and ashwagandha, not alcohol. Their Champignon Dreams (that’s French for “mushroom”) is funky like an orange wine; the zesty and herbaceous Golden Hour feels like a crisp, sparkling white; and the rich and delicate Purple Lune steps in for your light, chilled red. These babies are for nights you’re not drinking but still want to loosen up — assuming those times are imminent, you can take 15% off at drinkdesoi.com with the code LOREMIPSUM.
