Skip to main content

Wild Food & Foraging Courses...

Hi. My first wild food and foraging courses of 2024 will be taking place on the weekend of 16th/17th March. I hope you can join me...

Saturday 16th: Birch: Food, Medicine, Magic & Myth. 10am - 2pm. Leeds 

Birch trees were highly respected and held in high-esteem all across the northern hemisphere for millennia, providing our ancestors with a myriad of useful and seasonal resources in both a practical and spiritual sense. This course will explore the multitude of potential resources Birch trees have to offer and hopefully, herald a return to the respectful and intimate relationships we once had with Birch (and wider nature). As a group we will get practical, theoretical and magical with; sap extraction & syrup making, pollen, catkins, edible & medicinal fungi, fire lighting, storage containers, birch tar, withies, habitat, ecology and of course the magic and spirit of Birch. Samples and tasters and a wild spring-time soup are included in the price. 

Adults £50. Children £10 

To book email: edible.leeds@gmail.com 

Sunday 17th: Symbiosis of Spring: Exploring Wild Foods & Medicines. 10am - 3pm. Leeds 

The sap is rising, shoots, herbs and medicines are emerging and the birds are nesting and singing... This course will explore a range of in-season, wild foods and medicines to nourish, heal and cleanse our minds, bodies and souls. Participants will learn: safe identification, cooking and preservation techniques, mindful and sustainable harvesting, seasonality, ecology and the social and natural benefits of rewilding (both the land and the human). A simple and tasty spring-time feast will feature at the end of the course.

Adults £60. Children £10. Family: £100 (2x Adult & 2x Children).

To book email: edible.leeds@gmail.com 

To access details of planned courses for the year (more dates are yet to be added) just click the following link: https://edible-leeds.blogspot.com/p/wild-food-foraging-courses-2024.html


Seasonal Newsletter

I'll soon be introducing my seasonal newsletter (4x newsletters) due to becoming extremely disenfranchised with the overbearing, bot-filled, algorithmic b*llshit and increasing censorship of the 'here today, gone tomorrow' social media apps. Each newsletters will feature unique recipes, articles and offers and will only be accessible to those who subscribe (I'm sick and tired of the). If you would like to receive this newsletter, just send me an email expressing your interest and I'll add you to the mailing list.

Best wishes and safe and happy foraging

Craig (Edible Leeds & 4 Wild Seasons)

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 theme of this post, the figs. Pascal has a recipe for preserving unripe figs in syrup, I'm aware of a

Winter Fungi: Velvet Shank

Winter Fungi: Velvet Shank (Flammulina velutipes). Velvet Shank are the wild alternative to the cultivated form, 'Enokitake' that you find in shops (long tall slender stems with tiny white caps, usually sold in tall plastic sheaths) .  This readily recognisable fungi is like a ray of golden sunshine amid the generally muted and darker hues of winter - camouflage is not it's strong point. This gregarious and social fungi can be found growing on dead/dying logs & stumps, on a variety of tree species including Beech, Sycamore & Horse Chestnut .  Regarding edibility, in my opinion they are top notch & more appealingly so due to the time of year they are found, winter, the hardest season in the foraging calendar. They have  a great mushroom flavour with a slight sweetness reminiscent of caramel.   So, what can you do with them? Fresh, young ones are delightful raw , they can be gently fried in butter, added to broths, pickled & make a great mushroom pate, t

Fermented Japanese Quince Pickle

I love lime pickle but I love my Japanese Quince pickle even more! Lime pickle is great, it smacks your taste buds all over the place and I like that, it's salty, sour, tart, citrusy and then those spices come in to play with that amazing heat toward to the end. So after last years Japanese Quince harvest (end October, early November) an idea struck me, why not make a pickle akin to lime pickle, quince are tart and have that sour, citrus appeal but with a more delicious attit ude, so I set about making one. After chopping and removing the seeds, I salted the quince to start a short fermentation process, I later added a range of spices and have left it alone ever since (well, not quite true, I have had a few sneak previews to taste how it's been getting along, who wouldn't and besides, I'm making it  :)  ). The initially hard quince have softened nicely and they have become beautifully infused with the spices while retaining that distinctive quince flavour and aroma. Fe