Welcome to my Journal. Its a collection of thoughts, observations and tips on foraging and other subjects. You can use the filter at the top to sort through it all!
Burdock, burdock, burdock, what a wonderful plant you are, and yet I feel with all sincerity that I owe you a rather large apology.
So let me thank you for allowing me a second, third, fourth, fifth and many more chances to get to know you, to make such an impressive suit from your huge and attractive leaves, to become a burdock man, and after years of friendship, have the opportunity to sing your praises to all who care to listen.
Making sushi and nori sheets from scratch using wild seaweed varieties, wild fungi, lacto-fermented wild garlic leaf, fruit, and pickled rose blossoms.
"Life is too short to try and work out how to make nori sheets from scratch!"
- a fellow foraging friend
Carbohydrate is relatively easy to come by; obtaining sufficient protein on the other hand is more problematic. One answer to the challenge lies in the wild food adventure that is leaf curd production – the extraction of protein direct from multiple leaf varieties.
Bees love to forage for lime blossom with its fragrant pollen as do I but the general buzz from the tree was that from large bumble bees. It became louder and disconcertingly louder but was not the bumble bees........ A huge humming, buzzing, swarming amorphous cloud had descended upon the playing field. After about an hour the swarm headed, surprisingly, not for a lime tree but for a lone sycamore. There it settled into a heaving noisy mass of bees.
here in the United Kingdom, from as early as the final week of February (Southern England) until as late as the end of April (Scotland), and with a similar early to later coming of the spring across the different states of the US, that hardcore sweetness lies quite literally in untapped abundance, residing in diluted form within the trunks of some of our commonest trees
They are definitely not flowers or meteorites, nor -as far as I know- are they celebrities hiding in the undergrowth, but there are, I tell you, stars in the hedgerow!
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to make the transition to writing blogs in a different way? Most people tell me that it’s far better to write short and frequent blogs rather than the lengthy, irregular and infrequent ones that I tend to go in for
Morels, like some other fungi too, yet even more so, force you to be incredibly mindful, completely attentive to the present moment. Being in such a state of mind is the only way to successfully find them in large quantities. Morel foraging has no time for speed, no rushing about, no mental distraction; only the sound of your breath, your beating heart, wind, rain, and the sound of your foot steps compete for your attention without overwhelming the senses and throwing you out of focus and off course.
Perhaps, like me, when you hear the word “smoothie” you immediately think of a sweet fresh fruit drink thickened with banana? As tasty as such creations are, the drinks I’d like to encourage you to make are savoury and without a banana in sight.
Wherever there is smoke, so the popular saying goes, there is sure to be fire – the doomsayer’s fire of flaming and inevitable disaster. It’s with some trepidation then that I begin this article wanting, as I do, to harness the alchemical magic of smoke to transform, enrich and essentially marry a whole range of predominantly wild foods to the unique flavour that the art of smoking can impart.
It's been a really difficult few weeks, what with the mermaids AND the munchies. I feel hungry quite a lot of the time especially when I cycle - which is most days. Well, it's day 18 of this year-long attempt to eat just foraged food and so far I've only felt like packing it in 18 times.
Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness, - to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.
In July 2007 I carried out a trial run for this year living entirely on foraged wild food. That month was also vegan. Both vegan and, more to the point, a great success
Over the past few days I've made a couple of different soups - 15 portions of each.
And for dessert - this week must be, and has been, all about gorgeous ripe cherries and their daily harvest.
I think it really is true that foraging can drive you nuts. Nature is so generous throughout the year that her abundant gifts can be quite overwhelming. The autumn is no exception; indeed, it is the season of abundance par excellence. So, focusing on just one aspect of this bounteous plenty, let’s all give in and go nuts:
I have no money. Foraging takes a long time. I need somewhere to live: I can't afford the rent and am in debt, therefore I have had to put on extra foraging courses and write more magazine articles in order to pay the rent. Having put on more foraging courses to pay the rent I now have no time to forage. Not putting on more courses and writing more articles would, of course, free up plenty of time for foraging but, then, no money and, hence, nowhere to live. Catch 22. The project is over.
It's kind of obvious I know, but blogging for me is futile in the sense that nutritionally speaking its value is worse than zero - resting and typing metabolism must be taken into account as sources of food energy consumption. That statement in itself should give you a good insight into my state of mind.
Read Fergus Drennan's diary about his passion for foraging for food, get his recipes and find out what happened when GMTV descended...
It's been a strange week, or should I say weak? This strange week has a recipe, the ingredients are purely verbal and can be found in condensed form amongst the following quotes - beware though, it's a very potent and potentially dangerous recipe:
Speeding up to slow down; speeding up to mow down; the first reflects one of the terrible ironies of the modern world; the second, one of its tragedies: Roadkill.
Forget mud and straw, water and clay; for sheer density and structural integrity such rudimentary bricks will never compete with my own. What is more, for the greater good of humanity, I have decided to reveal the secrets of their production, including detailed information as to all the superior materials used and the alchemical skills and magic required to create them.
Respect your elders. Amid the kaleidoscopic plethora of often contradictory mottos to inspire and safely guide us purposefully through life, few have the capacity to ground us so deeply in a shared past that determines our collective future, while simultaneously threatening such deleterious consequences if ignored.