Tag: food

  • ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ – J. Keats

    After a busy weekend teaching a public forage on Saturday and a private Foraging Party Sunday, both with 3-4 tapas tasters, I thought I’d share with you all some other fruiting and fungal delights of the autumn season. Hops droop (like brewer’s droop haha) from the hedge down the way. Once golden and dry, the…

  • My Hedgewitch Journal: Seedy September 2025

    September is the golden, freckled season of seeds. There’s lots to forage now and much to store for winter. So here are 5 the seeds the boy and I been harvesting. Well, ok, seeds I have been harvesting whilst my son moans about it and slumps in the footway. PLANTAIN SEEDS I’ve been shucking the…

  • Cooking A Continental Find: ‘Pioppino’, The Poplar Field Mushroom

    A week or so after the first rains, I leapt aboard my trusty steed and cycled down to one of my favourite foraging haunts, Tiddenfoot Lake. Here I was blessed enough to find two black poplar tree stumps with fruiting Poplar Field Mushrooms. This mushroom, Cyclocybe aegerita/cylindracea, has been foraged, grown and cooked since Greek…

  • SUMMER SPICED FRUITS:H.A. Foraging Journal July pt 2

    Fruits are hanging ready all about me, urged on by the earlier, hotter than normal weather. Being aware of climate change and making whatever steps we can to lower our carbon footprint is one thing to do. Try to walk on local journeys whenever possible…not only are you saving carbon and getting fitter, you’ll spot…

  • Nettle Seed Potato Bites, Wild Spicy Kimchi Egg Sticks, Elderflower Jelly

    Last Sun 15th June forage was a quiet but fun one, showing off June’s full glory. We wandered through sunny vistas of fragrant water meadow, cool beech and chestnut woods, and balmy towpath. (The child is not dead, by the way, or even unconscious!) We sampled a new recipe for Nettle seed. I’ve been using…

  • My Bushcraft Journal : June

    I’m not even sure what to call this post as I’ve been up to so much, its difficult to narrow it down. So here’s some of the low impact nature and off grid things you might like to try in June, that freshest of Summer months. New bushcraft friends South African Marco and Vita showed…

  • Grub’s Up When You Grub Up Pignuts

    Thought I’d reblog this great article by Cumbria Foodie. I’ve just located an impressive carpet of Pignuts (Conopodium majus) on the front bank of my son’s Middle School. Pignuts are found all over the UK. They prefer dry, acidic soils. Look for them in open woods and meadows/grasslands. Pignuts are a traditional country food, grubbed…

  • Mayan & Aztec Xocolatl

    Though not strictly foraged, I need to share with you the joy of making our own hot chocolate (chocolatl) the way the Olmecs, Mayans and Aztecs prepared it for thousands of years. We got these cacao beans from a plantation in Madagascar last summer. The Aztecs regarded chocolatl as a sacred drink, fit only for…

  • StrANge fRuiT(ing bodies): Fungi-like Horsetails

    This week in April, myself and the child collected tender fertile stems of Common/Field Horsetail (Equisetum arvense). These are part of the diet in Japan, Korea and China. They are SO WEIRD…like ALIEN THINGS. They’re a fairly common invasive species in the UK, too, grabbing a chokehold on the damp banks of watercourses. Weird fact:…

  • A Gift Of Zander

    Today when i came out of Tesco, I saw the strangest craft on the canal. It was a small GRP skiff with what looked like a giant mouth brace on it, with tubes of different colours going into the water. The three men on it were working for CART, getting rid of invasive fish. They…