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
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
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.
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
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.
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.