The Frugal Life: Wild food

A Wild Food Foray with Kris Miners

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:37:51 GMT

I went on a three hour foraging foray this week at Hanningfield Reservoir, a beautiful nature reserve in Essex, in the company of bushcraft expert and conservationist Kris Miners, who runs Green Man Bushcraft Ltd, and I’m feeling pretty shattered. It must be all that fresh air. I used to joke when I worked in London that it was only the pollutants keeping me awake, but it must have been true!

I explained to Kris that I’d been having difficulties identifying some plants and was afraid of poisoning myself, so I wanted a crash course on easy ones to identify. In fact, I got so much information from him that it’s impossible to distil everything here, so part two will follow tomorrow with a guide to 15 wild edible plants and how to identify them.

According to Kris, I’m not alone. “Unless you’re doing it all the time it’s difficult,” he explains. “I’ve heard so many stories from people who’ve been on my courses. One guy told me that he’d eat any mushroom that was white. He was very lucky he didn’t get ill. Another asked me to identify a root he’d eaten once and found bitter. It’s surprising how many people eat things [without identifying them]. We do point out on our courses which plants are poisonous, as well as the edible ones. The umbelleferae family of plants, which includes cow parsley, Alexanders and hemlock, for example are difficult to distinguish.”

And grasses are another problematic species. “In basic wild food courses I leave out the grasses too,” he tells me. “You can get a fungus growing on them and there are some bad stories about people making bread flour from infected grasses – a woman lost her leg after doing so. If people forget to check grasses for the fungus then it’s easy to come a cropper. Stick with what you know.”

However, Kris also claims that after years of identifying plants you can taste when something is amiss. “I also believe we’ve all got something built-in to us to tell us if something is poisonous [once you’ve been identifying plants for a while],” he says. “I can taste that something’s not right. It’s that extra sense you’ve got.”

I told him I’d eaten nettles which were a bit past their best and he warned me they weren’t as safe as I’d thought. “Old nettles can irritate your kidneys,” he warns. “But it’s a useful plant. You can also use the stalks to make string and rope. There’s a theory that nettle rope was used to move the stones into place at Stonehenge.”

Kris emphasises the importance of touching, smelling and tasting a plant to identify it. “Books get you looking at what the plant looks like all the time, but it’s about more than that,” he says.

However, as a conservationist he is concerned that the growing interest in wild food thanks to programmes on TV may prove detrimental to the environment. “It’s really nice that people are getting back to nature, but they can do harm,” he points out. “People strip bark from birch trees and don’t know what they’re doing so they harm the trees. The TV channels don’t always show you what to do properly. I’m trying to educate people. You have to be careful [harvesting wild food] because we don’t have much woodland. It can do a lot of harm to the environment. We haven’t got a lot of greenery to support it. People have almost made certain plants extinct by taking them.”

But, if carried out responsibly, will foraging help you save on your shopping bill? “It depends how much time you’ve got and if you’re willing to hunt,” says Kris. “You can easily get your salad for free. But many people are used to what things taste like in the supermarket. However, if you’ve got a year to build up to it and preserve things by making jellies, jams and soups and a good location, then it’s possible to save money by eating wild food.”

Tomorrow – fifteen wild plants and their uses, courtesy of Kris Miners

Do you think eating wild food would help you save on your grocery bill? Or is it too difficult and time consuming? Leave a comment and let me know.

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The Wild Bunch

Fri, 30 May 2008 10:17:45 GMT

Thanks for all your comments on the Frugal Top 20 Tips blog entry. There are some really useful extra tips and suggestions among them, which is brilliant, so thanks again and keep them coming!

And thanks too for your comments on the disastrous wild food course we went on. I think you're quite right and I am definitely going to complain. The more I think about it, the more it worries me that this individual is running these courses.

Meanwhile, DJ and I haven’t been put off learning more about wild food and instead have been trying to find out more from other more useful sources. In our search we came across some great websites and blogs that I thought you might be interested to hear about if you haven't come across them before. Especially given all the recent publicity about the rising cost of many food stuffs, and with world leaders meeting in Rome to discuss the global food price crisis.

Fergus Drennan is a professional forager based in the UK. He trained as a chef, but decided that he enjoyed being outside in the open air more than he did in the kitchen. And now he runs courses on finding and cooking your own wild food.

But even more extreme, he is currently engaged in an experiment in trying to live on foraged food alone, which is no easy task, even for a professional. It requires an awful lot of planning and organisation, because obviously foraging for food takes a lot of time and cooking the results much preparation. Especially when Fergus is also trying to hold down a full time job and write a book! He recently had to travel abroad and survive on food he packed with him, supplemented by items foraged from the local parks and green spaces he came across!

Fergus says he finds the most difficult thing is time management, because foraging for your food solely from the wild and preparing it for the pot is much more time consuming than simply buying things from the supermarket. And not to make things easy on himself, he is also semi-vegetarian! So he can’t simply go out and take a pot shot at a pigeon if he’s feeling peckish. Although oddly enough, his rules allow the eating of road kill – the idea is that he can eat the meat as long as he wasn’t responsible for killing it. I’m hoping to speak to Fergus soon – he’s a hard man to get hold of as he’s often out in the field looking for wild grub – so let me know if you have any questions you’d like me to ask him.

And another real character we stumbled across was Wildman Steve Brill, a charismatic forager based in the US. Once arrested and cuffed for eating a dandelion leaf in Central Park, he now runs foraging and wild plant tours for kids and adults in parks around the US. There are some useful recipes on his website (link above) for cooking wild plants.

And check out American Green Deane’s videos on YouTube. These are particularly instructive for helping distinguish between particular wild plants that are edible and ones that can easily be mistaken for them. Do bear in mind though, that some of the plants are obviously only found in the US, although the UK does share some plant species such as chickweed.

Remember - if you go foraging for wild food – DON’T EAT ANYTHING UNLESS YOU’RE SURE EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE EATING. Just because it’s ‘natural’ it doesn’t mean it’s safe to eat! There are many toxic plants out there.

Got any good wild food recipes you’d like to share? Let me know and I’ll try them out.

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Tales of the flightless partridge

Tue, 06 May 2008 12:17:55 GMT

How was your bank holiday? Mine was rather…interesting. Apologies in advance to vegetarians, animal lovers...and those who have a delicate stomach...

I went out for the afternoon yesterday while DJ took the car and went fishing. By 8pm I returned home late and grumpy after problems with the local trains on the bank holiday, a particularly annoying replacement bus journey spent in the company of a group of American musicians, and footsore after foolishly wearing uncomfortable shoes in the heat. As I approached home I spied a black object hidden carefully behind a plant pot on the doorstep. My heart leapt…Could it be what I suspected? I approached with trepidation. How long had it been sitting out in the sun?

The handwritten note stuck to it caught my eye. “Shot at 5pm. Nice and fresh, hope you enjoy it! John.” I picked it up and it felt surprisingly light but warm. DJ was not back so I had no choice but to take it indoors myself. Steeling myself, I laid it on the work surface and gingerly peered inside. Sure enough, there were two grey squirrels, perfectly intact, if a little bloody. I was surprised at how little revulsion I felt, considering my fondness for small furry animals.

The gift from John the Poacher wasn’t entirely out of the blue. He popped round last week asking how we’d got on with Mr Bunny and cautiously sounded out our attitude to something more exotic. Grey squirrels are a notorious pest and game keepers are only too happy to be rid of them. However, eating them isn’t as socially acceptable as eating rabbits. In his book Cook on the Wild Side Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says was once reviled by his local press for shooting and cooking a ‘flightless partridge’ as they are known. One woman complained it set a bad example to children and that anyone who killed a squirrel should be forced to eat it. Er…wasn’t that the point?!

DJ had asked whether the grounds where John shoots might lay out poison for them, but fortunately they don’t so the squirrels should be safe to eat.

I waited for DJ to get home before tackling them – never having gutted or skinned anything in my life - and praying we wouldn’t also have to gut some trout. But fortunately for me – rather than him – he hadn’t caught a thing. After a late meal we set to work. This time I wasn’t about to get away with not participating in the skinning and ‘paunching’ (gutting) process, and I suddenly regretted eating so much at dinner as I greenly surveyed DJ laying out the squirrels on the draining board.

The little fellas were surprisingly difficult to skin, perhaps because it was now a few hours after they’d been shot, much harder than the rabbit had been, DJ said. And for less meat as you can only eat the meat on the haunches. I was game initially, but after watching DJ skin his I began to lose heart. “I’m not sure I can do this,” I said faintly. However, I pulled myself together and managed to skin most of my one, although I turned green at the paunching bit and DJ took over.

Now we have to decide what on earth to do with them. For now I think we’re going to do a casserole – probably similar to rabbit recipe as we already have the ingredients – because there isn’t much meat so we need to bulk it out. Especially as John rang asking if we could save a little bit for him!

I’ll let you know how we get on…

Would you eat squirrel or does it go against the grain?

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Game on!

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:31:39 GMT

We attended the East Anglian Game and Country Fair in Norwich over the weekend, which was something different. It was partly due to our interest in finding out more about wild food and other country pursuits, and DJ’s desire to witness the…er… ferret racing advertised in the flyer…

And I have to say that it was excellent fun. The show was enormous, with everything from duck herding to falconry displays, and luckily the weather was fantastic, which made an awful difference. It’s never much fun trudging around these things in torrential rain. People took their dogs along – which took the opportunity to cool down by jumping in a nearby pond – while others even brought their ferrets with them in little harnesses. And I thought City people were weird!

Some of the demonstrations were fascinating, if a little out there. Carroll Rawlings specialises in making pigeon decoys – basically plastic pigeons on sticks - which are used to entice pigeons, the bane of farmers, out into the open so they can be ‘controlled’ and then taken home for the pot. He talked us through how he makes them – often using real pigeon feathers for the wings - while setting them out on little sticks around the field.

Simon Whitehead’s ferreting display was also an eye opener. I suppose I’d been under the impression, being a complete townie, that using ferrets to chase rabbits from their warrens was cruel, so I was a bit dubious about it all. Thankfully the demonstrator wasn’t able to use real rabbits due to Health and Safety regulations, and so substituted toy ones! But I had no idea that the conventional way to deal with rabbits now as an agricultural pest is to gas them – something which is not only cruel as it takes time to work, but is also indiscriminate and potentially dangerous to livestock too. So I guess ferreting - done properly - is much more humane and better for the environment.

In ferreting the ferrets chase the rabbit from their warrens so that the ferreter can catch them in a net and humanely dispatch them. The only problem is that occasionally the ferret decides to kill the rabbit itself, tucks in and then falls asleep underground. In which case the unhappy ferreter has to get out his spade and dig the ferret up – which thanks to modern technology can be found electronically by the ‘ferret locator’...!

Meanwhile I’m beginning to wonder if DJ isn’t missing out on his vocation as a poacher. He took advantage of one of the ‘have a go’ stalls to try out clay pigeon shooting for the first time. We had to queue up for ages in the hot sun as this was a very popular stall. But the tutor was knocked out with DJ’s skills – he didn’t miss a single one of the ten clays – and left the guy speechless. Apparently he was only the second pupil that day who had managed to hit them all. Smart Alec!

We finished up the weekend watching Winston the Singing Farmer and Bernese mountain dogs dragging carts, having lost our small change on a racing ferret by the name of Pepsi, and feeling at home from home surrounded by these delightful eccentrics. Bliss!

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A new meaning to the phrase bunny boiler...

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:02:23 GMT

Well, I have to report that the rabbit stew was delicious, if a little long in the making. DJ insisted on doing the honours – I think it must be a hunter gatherer thing – and chose a very tasty Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe from his Meat book, which I bought him for Christmas a couple of years ago. It features a mustard and cream sauce (apologies to Weightwatchers) with celery and carrots and is delicious.

The only problem was how long it took to cook. Apparently it’s all down to how old the rabbit is – which is a bit difficult to tell if you’re new to all this wild food stuff and not, er…exactly on speaking terms with Mr Bunny. DJ started dinner at about 6.30 last night and by 9.00 he still wasn’t happy with the texture of the meat and the potatoes hadn’t finished cooking because he’d only just put them on. By 9.15 I declared that I would start eating my own trousers if we didn’t eat our dinner that instant, so he served up anyway.

This was only the second time I’ve eaten rabbit but it was good, if a bit chewy. DJ was typically self-critical about his cooking and, in a disappointed tone, declared that the dish “needed work”. I think next time we’ll have to stew the heck out of it over several hours to soften it up. But it’s no bad thing. I always tend to find stews taste even better the next day as leftovers anyway, and there was certainly no meat left on the plate by the time we’d finished. As for the gory bits, they’re currently languishing in the freezer until bin day as DJ thought the smell might offend the neighbours…but enough of that!

Thanks for the comments you left on yesterday’s blog, by the way. They made for insightful reading and have given me a number of ideas. I’m not sure about going shooting myself though, as unlike the great Hugh Fearnley I am an incorrigible coward when it comes to killing small furry animals (well, apart from putting out of their misery small birds or mice my cat has mauled) although being a hypocrite I am quite happy to eat them when somebody else has. And I have been shooting in the past – although only at metal targets – and I am an appalling shot. So I think I’ll stick to Sharon’s suggestion of picking hedgerow fruits. I think DJ may be up for going shooting though, so maybe John the Poacher as I’m thinking of christening him (although of course I must stress he’s not actually a poacher!) might take him along some time.

It’s interesting that comment leaver They Call Me Todge mentioned dining on road kill, as I have another friend who lives in a rural area and also goes shooting, but isn’t averse to picking up dead pheasants etc. that he finds along the roadside. I believe the rule is that if you hit it yourself you can’t take it, but if you find one along the road that’s already a gonner then it’s ok. Of course, you need to be sure what it has died of. It’s not a good idea to eat something if the cause of death isn’t obvious, because it may be diseased. He also suggests turning up at the butchers on February 1 – the end of the pheasant shooting season – when it’s likely that pheasants will be highly discounted as the butcher panics to sell them. And you don’t have to do all the messy gutting and plucking yourself.

Would you dine on road kill? Or does the thought of it make you feel sick? (Apologies in advance to vegetarians).

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