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Keswick Foray

A few questions that I'm often asked on my wild food walks are, How did you get into foraging, how long have you been foraging and why do you forage? Admittedly, the more I learn and discover the more i realise that I am in my 'infancy' in regards to my 'wild food journey' (that's not to say I don't know much, in reality I know a considerable amount, but there is, in my opinion, always scope to learn and discover more, to further enhance my skills set, thus enabling me to teach my learnings and experiences to others attending my walks to further enhance their learnings and experiences on their 'wild food journeys' and that they may do the same in return - a cycle of experince, learning, teaching and understanding and making connections). I hope that those of you who read this see it in the positive that it is :0)

With this in mind, I drove up to the Lake District on, Wednesday 16th April - Friday 18th April. I had arranged to meet up with fellow forager and wild food enthusiast/specialist, Mark, from Galloway Wild Foods (Mark has some 20+ years of foraging experience under his belt). We met near to the shores of Bassenthwaite Water, North-West of Keswick. Mark took us along a route that is brimming with edible treats. From the outset, Mark had my tastebuds dancing, tingling, fizzing and zinging at every avaiable moment, not only with fresh wild finds like, dock/nettle/raspberry shoot sushi but also with the fanatstic assortment of hand made products and wares he has beautifully and cunningly created such as, pickled wild ramson buds, bramble shoot tips dipped in bich sap syrup, jelly ear fungus re-hydrated in sloe gin and coated with milk chocolate, the list goes on...  The walk was topped off with Mark cooking up a fine wild food feast at the end - one of the finest, tastiest and delicious wild meals I have ever tasted!

The meal did contain the following: Pale smoked haddock, smoked eggs, barley (pre-cooked), ground elder, wild garlic leaves, pickled wild ramson buds, sea beet, sea kale, wild chervil, reed mace, dried pepper dulse and nori seaweeds, sweet elderberry vinegar, flowering currant/yellow archangel blossoms and other stuff that neither myself or Mark can fully remember...

Mark and his boxes of wild delights!                                  A fab feast of wild treats (second serving)! 














Cooking up.








To find out more about Mark and his walks/events visit: www.gallowaywildfoods.com


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