Yes, that’s right - free food! If you know where to find it! This is the perfect time to go foraging in the hedgerows, woods and on the seashore. If you’re planning on going walking this weekend, why not pick up some delicious treats along the way.
You can find fruits, nuts, herbs, leafy vegetables, mushrooms and shellfish.
There’s an abundance of wild food out there but beware, there are certain rules / advice you need to follow.
- Make sure you can identify the fruit, leaves, mushrooms or shellfish you have found. Most of us can recognise a blackberry but mushroms are much more tiricky! Carry a guidebook for plant/mushroom/shellfish identification with you and if you’re not sure - don’t eat it!!
- Don’t eat berries or plants growing on old industrial estates or from road verges, or anywhere obviously contaminated by oil or ash.
- Always wash your harvest well, no matter where you have collected it.
- Don’t allow children to pick or eat wild food un-supervised.
- Don’t eat an unhealthy looking fruit or plant.
- Finally, keep a sliver of mushroom, leaf or fruit for later identification, just in case of any stomach upset.
- Always eat your harvest as fresh as possible
Some of the wild foods out there…Berries/Fruit
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- Blackberries
- Elderberries
- Sloes
- Wild cherries
- Rowanberries
- Nettles
- Sorrel
- Camomile
- Wild mint
- Watercress
- Chanterelles/Girolles
- Ceps
- Wood Blewits - Advice: some people are allergic to Blewits, so try a tiny piece first and never eat raw.
- Trompettes
- Mussels
- Limpets
- Winkles
- Razor Clams
Herbs/Vegetables
Mushrooms/Funghi
Shellfish
There are many, many more fruits, plants, mushrooms and seafood available for foraging. Tell us about your favourites and check back for our wild food recipes soon.
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9 Comments on "Free Food!"
when i was a teen, I was really into doing this - making bramble jelly, elderflower champagne, foraging for mushrooms…
one of my favourite books back then was Food for Free by Richard Mabey:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Food-Free-Richard-Mabey/dp/0002201593
I am surprised it is still in print - my copy is over 20 years old.
I’ve just cut back the brambles at the back of our garden after grabbing as many blackberries as possible off them first. Much easier when they’re on your doorstep! I can remember always blackberry picking with my Dad around the local fields. We’d have (and still have) an abundance of blackberry and apple crumbles, pies and of course Jam!
I can also remember getting Walnuts and Hazelnuts in my younger years.
SarahG, My mum’s always been an avid jam maker :) We went picking last weekend along the river Adur and got about 6lb’s worth. I’m going to post her jam recipe on Sunday because it makes really lovely jam :)
[...] So, did you go blackberry picking this weekend? I hope so! Like I said in my post about Free Food, now is the perfect time for blackberry picking. There are many recipes for using blackberries; crumbles, jams, smoothies, icecream and many more! [...]
[...] For anyone interested in the subject Sarah made a good post on Free Food. [...]
Hunting for wild food to supplement school meals was for me the start of a lifelong interest in wild food and the provenance of food more generally. Reading over this post and comments has heightened my anticipation of the forthcoming end of the hungry gap, with the arrival of St George’s mushrooms, wild hops, nettles etc.
Does anybody know where to find mushrooms? I wouldn’t have a clue where to start looking
just got back from picking about 3kg of blackberries, and regularly harvest nettles sea samphire, sea spinach, dulse and sea lettuce also all edible fungi, wild cherries, elderberries aswell as prawns mussels and cockles, all these things I collect just a short distance from home whilst walking the dog at Conwy in the hills and woods that surround the town, Richard Maybeys book was my initial motivation, but have since got more specialised books, especially for the fungi.
[...] did you go blackberry picking this weekend? I hope so! Like I said in my post about Free Food, now is the perfect time for blackberry picking. There are many recipes for using blackberries; [...]
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