Foragers' Diary - Part One

Foragers' Diary – Part One

It’s much easier for me to say what I am not than to describe what I am.  I am not some sort of eco-warrior; I am not a professional cook or writer; and I am not an activist.  I am not even very interested in joining things, preferring to plough my own furrow much of the time.  Certainly I am not a hardcore forager.  Foraging has become extremely trendy lately with several books written on the subject, and foraged ingredients now featuring in many high-end restaurants.  More humbly I see articles on the web from people who make salads out of roadside plants or eat snails caught in the garden.  Well, that is definitely not me!

However I am very interested in garnering nature’s bounty where I can.  I do view the countryside as a potential source of food.  It ticks all the right boxes for me being fresh, local, seasonal, traditional and FREE.  Who doesn't like getting something for nothing?  So from time to time I plan to update you on my success in getting a free feed all courtesy of the Suffolk landscape.

When I first settled here back in April it was right in the middle of the "hungry gap".  The hedgerows were a riot of colour and the evidence that summer was just around the corner was everywhere, from hares boxing in the bare fields to busy nesting birds.  But there was hardly anything to eat.

Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum)

OK, there were nettles which are quite versatile, and a plant I had never seen before called Alexanders, which seems to grow abundantly in these parts.  I guess the description in Wikipedia which says it has a flavour between celery and parsley might have put me off. Neither of these are high on my list of favourites. Although I suspect if I am still here next year I won’t be quite so fussy.

In fact I had to wait until July to plunder my first treasure.  I picked two beautiful bowls of wild cherries in Tunstall Forest.  They were smaller than bought cherries but very sweet and delicious and I would have picked more except I couldn’t reach.

Today the hedges and trees are full of promise, and I look forward to gathering blackberries, sloes, elder berries, chestnuts and crab apples in late summer and early autumn.

For right now however the big story is plums.  Wild plums of every hue seem to be growing all over the place.  There are bright green or yellow plums, rosy pink plums and rich purple plums evident down almost every lane or path I take.  I see on the web a fair bit of discussion about whether these are true plums or damsons or bullaces.  I am not qualified to say but it seems likely there has been a great deal of hybridisation over the years so maybe names don't actually mean very much.

Anyway I picked some as an experiment. Again they are smaller than commercial varieties and disappointingly tasteless to my palette.  Additionally many of them seemed to contain a single small grub or maggot, so as I stoned them there was quite a lot of wastage.  But I added plenty of sugar and stewed them up to make a crumble which will serve as tonight’s pudding.