Free wild food ideas?

Zend

Near my home we have blackberries and damsons. We did have wild raspberries until the council cut them down:mad: . I've just found what I think is a sloe tree and my best friend has told me that she loves sloe gin. As we have a bottle of gin in the garage I can feel a homemade Christmas present coming on;) .

maltesers_2

I have put up some information about dandelion coffee on the 'coffee substitute' thread. You can also make fritters from the flowers and use young leaves in salads.

twink

another site i just heard of the other day
http://www.wildmanwildfood.com/index.html he is called Fergus the forager

tiff

Something you could try thats in season at the moment is wild garlic. All parts of the plant are edible, but you must make sure you have identified the plant correctly first. The give away is the garlic smell, it is milder in cooking than a clove of garlic, the flowers taste stronger than the leaves. My DH really liked that it gave a mild flavour, so I will be picking a lot more of that. Apparently it freezes ok too.

Bungarm2001

Wow! This thread has brought back memories! As kids living by the sea, we used to collect all manner of shellfish, mum would cook them and we'd have a totally free lunch! We always collected zillions of winkles for our Sunday tea. Went down really well with loads of vinegar and mum's HM brown bread. Yummy.

We were warned even then about outfalls from the sewers and avoided anything that lay in the path of the wash from it. Even so, I reckon we ate one or two and are still here to tell the tale!

I think you can eat practically anything from the sea...we used to catch small crabs and eat them too along with the tiny shrimps we found in the rockpools. Sadly, we live nowhere near a beach now or I would be out there right now on this beautiful day with me bucket and spade happily foraging away!

We do collect sloes every year, also bullace which are smaller and more bitter. Like everyone else, we make sloe gin and sometimes, sloe vodka. The berries can be baked in a pie after their alcoholic soaking, but the pips are a bit of a nuisance. Add plenty of sugar too...

From the garden or hedgerow, try all sorts of leaves for a salad. Chickweed is particularly nice, as are dandelion leaves, sorrel and borage (when you can find it) We ate all these and more as kids. Sadly, a lot of these so called 'weeds' are getting very difficult to find.

Theres a lot of dandelions in my garden as I type, so I'm off right now to supplement tonights supper with a nice freebie salad!

OddjobKIA

ray mears does a book about wild food in the uk......very very good...some surprising finds aswell

HariboJunkie

Don't know if I've bumped the right thread but anyone who is foraging for fungi be warned.

You really need to know what you're doing!!! :eek:

ceridwen

...and the guy running the wild food foraging course I went on recently refused to even attempt looking for fungi - as he's heard too many tales of wrong identification - most notably another wild food instructor who apparently was responsible for a group of his "students" getting ill from the wrong fungi!

Jammygal

Think I will stick with blackberries atm ty

oliveoyl

I went out foraging today... well I really just went to pick brambles, but encountered so many other things I brought samples home to identify/confirm identity... so far I've got Samphire, Sea-Buckthorn Berries, Rosehips (not quite ripe yet I don't think), Elder Berries, Hawthorn Berries, poisonous Woody Nightshade Berries :eek: and some other thing that I can't seem to find anywhere... I went on an online plant identifier engine but don't know enough answers to their questions about the plant (I didn't bring a full one home lol), does anyone know of an online resource that I could find out what it is using pictures... or does anyone have any ideas so I can look it up... it's got small black berries, is a low growing scrubby creeper, has leaves similar to blackberry bushes, and I found it in sandy soil near the beach.

Edit: And Sloes as well I think... but I didn't bring any of those home... not a gin fan.