In the Spring time I head out of Portland, Oregon and drive a couple hours to the coast to gather seaweeds. Sometimes known as “sea vegetables”, they are actually a form of macro algae and are divided up into three main categories- brown, red and green algae. They are highly nutritious and have long been prized by coastal peoples throughout the world for their culinary and medicinal properties. While across the Pacific in Japan and China they are commonly consumed as part of a daily diet, seaweeds are far less consumed here in the States. We mainly eat seaweed at Japanese restaurants (think nori, miso and seaweed and seaweed salads) and are starting to turn onto seaweed snacks (nori in a salt/oil brine).