Edible Leeds - Wild Food Foraging Courses and 4 Wild Seasons Pop Up Dining Events

Leeds-List article as detailed:   Article by: Joseph Sheerin Embark on a forage for natural foods, get some fresh air and enjoy the freshest flavours around with the Spring Wild Food Walk and Gourmet Meal. No strangers to getting mucky, The Conservation Volunteers have reclaimed green spaces in Leeds since 1959. Once such space is Skelton Grange, located just outside Leeds city centre. There, they’ve helped provide jobs, train conservation workers, and provide courses and events, all based around the natural environment. This April, they’re inviting you to get involved too, with their Spring Wild Food Walk and Gourmet Meal. Leading this fascinating event is Craig Worrall of Edible Leeds, who was bitten by the foraging bug back when he met Dan Malster, a former countryside ranger for Leeds City Council. Since then, he’s been showing people all over the city how they can find and identify natural foods and create delicious treats from them like Japanese Knotwe...

Last year, I unfortunately missed out on an opportunity to contribute a recipe for the Forage London site, hosted and run by the very passionate wild food enthusiast and all round lovely guy, John Renston. John kindly emailed me earlier this year asking would I like to contribute a recipe this time round - absolutely I would! John has put together a super blog this month featuring 5 stunning recipes, by John, fellow foragers, Mark Williams, Peter Studzinski and myself. To view the recipes just click on the link: http://www.foragelondon.co.uk/5-wonderful-wild-spring-recipes/ . While there check out the rest of Johns site, some great stuff to peruse.

Spring is the time of re-birth, fresh beginnings, longer days, wildlife migrations & when nutrient rich plants begin to stir from their winter slumber. Wild Garlic is one of Springs earliest, wild, green visitors and is one of my all time favourites. I love picking the fresh young leaves and nibbling on them as I walk, savouring their sweet, fiery, pungent flavours, reveling and delighting as the warm oils coat my tongue and gums, making them tingle: a truly joyful and utterly sensorial delight! Ramsons, a common name given to this herb, appear prior to the emerging foliage of deciduous trees, enabling this clever and adaptive plant to take full advantage of the early, spring sunshine: and who doesn't like to do that? Gentle ambling, combined with keen, careful observation, will enable you to really focus and zone in on your surrounding habitat. Remember to look in warm, sunny and sheltered locations for signs of early season growth - I recently discovered a woodland wher...