Skip to main content

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


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Unripe Figs in Syrup

Preserved Unripe Figs. Batch #1  I recently acquired a copy of 'The New Wildcrafted Cuisine' by, Pascal Baudar (many thanks to Dominick Tekos for sending it me). Despite the fact that he resides in California, much of the books content is applicable with regards to techniques, philosophies, creativity and inspiration, and some of the wild plants, regardless of where in the world you reside. Understanding our native floras & faunas is the same the world over I guess. Climates, habitats, techniques, cultures etc do differ but I firmly believe we all have innate and transferable knowledge and practices, whether they be ancient or contemporary (some yet to be rekindled/discovered/attained even), and we can adapt them to our own wild plants, landscapes, seasons, resources and requirements.                                           Now, moving swiftly on to the main them...

Sea Kale

If you are lucky and live close to the sea, especially in striking distance of a shingle beach, then you may just find Sea Kale... As far as coastal edibles go, Sea Kale rocks: it's a true delight! Throughout the winter you will detect very little in the way of signs indicating if Sea Kale is present as it spends the winter tucked up, snugly, beneath the shingle awaiting the Spring. The first signs of life generally begin in early spring (in mild winters it may appear earlier), when the tiniest of shoots, wake from their wintry slumber and start to force their way up through the shingle and, as the season progresses, more and more shoots appear. The leaves, whether new or mature, come in an assortment of varied and magnificent colours (see image top right): greens, purples, reds, greys and lilacs. They are crinkly edged and become more open and rounded edged with age. Eventually, the flowering shoots appear on thick, tender, circular stalks and look remarkably similar to pu...

Chicken of the Woods

Wild mushrooms have a special place in my heart. My wild food and foraging journey stemmed from an interest in them before branching out into plants and seaweeds. The 'silent hunt', as Antonio Carluccio so beautifully and aptly put it, is one of my favourite things. To find yourself at ease, wandering and treading gently, on the fringes of or deep within and beneath, the multi-layered, multi-coloured patchwork of woodland canopies, or in ancient meadows, in anticipation of the sometimes elusive, yet always magical and mysterious organisms that comprise the 5th kingdom is a pure delight. Fungi are truly fascinating, yet the great majority of the uk population have yet to discover just how awesome, intriguing, fascinating and tasty they can be. Most people think the best time of year for finding wild mushrooms is in the 'autumn' and, although there is some truth in this, it's not the whole truth. Spring, summer and winter can prove very fruitful (fung-ful) when it ...