HI all, its R’s turn to write, I know I don’t do it very often as I’m a busy guy. Don’t get me wrong, D’s a very busy girl too, in fact she’s probably busier than me as she’s the one doing most of the blogging. So D’s taking a break tonight and I’ll be the one to entertain you.
For those of you who’ve been following our blogs to date, you’ll know we’re into wild crafting and foraging and today was no exception. I was out today with FD1, thats the dog by the way, and we were out for a bit of a long walk, it was only long because I decided to take one of the deer trails through a local wood, and was so happy walking through the thick brush that time just elapsed. As we were walking around the trails, lunch time soon approached and I was getting fairly peckish to say the least, I’d already had a couple of apples from one of the feral apple trees on the common as we’d walked to the woods, but thankfully years of knowledge was put to practice as I started my meal with a good handful of plantain seeds. These are the broad leaf plants that grow in abundance along path ways and fields. Its easy to collect the seeds especially when they are green, simply take hold of the stem at the bottom and squeezing quite hard with thumb and forefinger you pull upwards, the seeds will pop of in to your clenched fist. The seeds are a little bitter raw but make for a pleasant starter to a wild food salad.
Next up was a few green hazel nuts, here in Surrey they often go by a colloquial name of Cob Nuts, although under ripe by most peoples taste, the white raw nuts are quite sweet with the texture of water chestnut. I only had about 10 of these due to not wanting to waste a valuable source of ripe nut later in the year. I had no nut crackers, and the easy way into these tasty little pods is by hitting them on the pointed end with a stone, you’ll need to rest the blunt end against another stone as an anvil to strike upon.
Having feasted on these 2 items, My palette wanted something sweeter and blackberry’s are just starting to become ripe now, no need to tell you how to collect these, 2 handfuls later and I was getting quite full. If only I’d brought a brew kit with me, as a cup of tea after that lot would have rounded of a nice free feast.
On the walk back, I couldn’t help but graze on a few tufted vetch pea pods, these are different to the common vetch in so much as you can eat then as Mangetout and not have to worry about letting them develop the pea in order to eat them. If you do want to eat them when they hit pea stage my advice is save them for steaming, as I find the pods start to get a bit tough by this stage. As it is I was selective and only picked the Mangetout ones, these are quite sweet with a slightly nutty taste.
Any way once home I finally got my cup of tea, after an afternoons running around in town and house work and the such like, D came home. Time for another walk! This walk was shorter and more direct, along the way D picked all of the above for a ’super green smoothie’ in the morning. So fresh Blackberries, a few Tufted Vetch pea pods, Plantain seeds and fresh young leaves, Dandelion leaves, a couple of young Mallow leaves as well. The only exception was the Hazel Nuts, we didn’t collect any for the smoothie, but we did eat a few whilst walking. The great thing is this was only a few of the many edible plants out there that have either been forgotten about or are not commercially viable.
I think its great that these plants aren’t known as food to most people as it leaves a huge amount of fresh wild and organic foods for me and D to enjoy at our leisure and are completly free. My only fear is that some day in the future, some government will ban the wildcrafting and foraging under some draconian legislation, due to them wanting every one to eat pesticide ridden produce in order to contol us. Until that day comes, free wild food will stay firmly on my menu. R.
