No more berries - even the remaining rose hips have decided that its not worth the effort fighting the torrential rain and have turned into mushy brown pellets which are no good to anyone. Which means, that I have to start doing the hard stuff: working out what greenery is not going to poison me and Levi or leave us rushing to the toilet bowl every thirty seconds.
I've had a browse through my new book, The Thrifty Forager, (I got it for Christmas from my parents but have finally had an opportunity to read through it). I gather the author lives in sunny Los Angeles, but its proved a good escape on soggy winter evenings and quite useful for identifying common weeds. The book is full of beautiful pictures which make foraging look ever so glamorous (and to be honest, in her rockabilly style clothes and with her high cheekbones, Alys Fowler looks pretty glamorous too unlike me with windswept hair and mucky shins) and she provides a very useful table on pages 64-5 on what to pick and when. According to the author, then, I should be looking out right now for Ground Elder, Wild Leeks, Wild Garlic, Jack-by-the-Hedge, Bittercress and Broad-Leaved Willowherb. Problem is, that though she has a section with pictures, I wouldn't know what on earth I was looking for and so I have decided to make it a project of mine the next few weeks to photograph common weeds and plants I see on my walks and work out a) what they are and b) whether they will kill me or not.
This week on my walk from Exmouth to Lympstone I discovered (what I think are)...
1) English Plantain - apparently edible (but have a high tannin content - why does everything seem to have tannins in?) and used for burns and snake bites...
2) Spurge (?) or maybe Chickweed (?) - if its spurge that means diarrhea or if its chickweed its tasty salad... see why I don't feel too happy at the moment picking the darn leafy things... why aren't berries available all year round?
3) Possibly Herb Robert(?) - if it is then this would be a very useful thing to forage as the leaves can be eaten as salad or made into tea. The root is also edible and when rubbed into the skin repels mosquitoes or so the internet tells me.
4) Ninety nine percent sure this is some kind of Geranium... possibly the Carolina Wild Geranium but more likely the Dovefoot Geranium. The flowers are edible, not sure about the leaves...
5) Purple Deadnettle - the ONLY one of this whole bally lot I feel I can identify with any certainty (and knowing my luck, I will have got it wrong!). I learnt that its name comes from the fact it doesn't sting (hence it's 'dead') and is apparently very nutritious.
Any help with any of these plants would be very much appreciated, but for now I will stick to thing I know (such as nettles, hawthorn and dock leaves) and working my way through my berry stash in the freezer. Talking of which, this week I've decided to make another liqueur out of some of the rosehips in the freeze box. I've based it on the following recipe:
but have swapped cinammon sticks for ground cinammon and havn't added the lemon peel or brandy yet. Its already coming along nicely and smells delicious. I'm thinking, if its a success of entering it into the Fat Pig's Home Brew competition on Sunday 27th April 2014 (http://www.fatpig-exeter.co.uk/home.aspx) but we'll see how it goes.
Other than that, its been a fairly busy couple of weeks back but despite being very tired, Levi and I took the time to have a walk by the estuary from Exmouth to Lympstone, enjoying the birds and beautiful mudflats. It was interesting to see at Lympstone the number of sandbags still around, a testament to the recent inclement weather. Hopefully, with spring around the corner, the weather should pick up and Levi and I can start doing some more serious walking again. We're already planning to head to the Yeo estuary at Barnstaple next Saturday and I will keep my eye out for more greens. With a bit of luck, I will miraculously start recognizing some of the common ones... or maybe I'll just stick to looking at glossy pictures in my new foraging book. Might be safer for now.
Hard to tell if it's chickweed from the picture...was it taken recently? Looks like it's got flowers and if so I'd have thought not chickweed...definitely dead nettles though.
ReplyDeleteThe dead nettles are like the only thing I'm confident about from the photos! Thank you for your comment! I think you're my first! :)
ReplyDelete