FORAGING

Once a means of seasonal sustenance and survival, or an age old reminiscent tradition with your Granny. Foraging has become increasingly popular in its resurrection. With ingredients such as sea buckthorn, seaweed salt, wild garlic, ceps mushrooms etc gracing restaurant menus, an increase of local foraging events and courses as well as the appearance of super cool foragers creating beautiful recipes of salads with elf cups and nasturtiums, nettle and lemon drizzle cakes, while sipping elderflower champagne!! Foraging also has great health benefits too from improved mental well being to increased physical health benefits, medicinal benefits, even helping offset food costs; as well as the simple enjoyment of discovery and the deliciousness of the ever abundant-seasonalsuper-fresh plants that we call weeds. The Scottish landscape and it’s shores have a lot to offer.

HEALTH BENEFITS OF EATING “WEEDS”!

Eating local wild foods, such as weeds, berries, nuts and mushrooms, have a great benefit to our health. Often very nutritionally dense; full of antioxidants, and vitamins they can even be successful medicinal remedies to common ailments. I’ve listed here a very basic list of easy to find ‘weeds’ that you may not have considered eating, however please don’t use this list as a guide, it is only to show how abundant wild food is on our doorstep, please refer to a reliable identification guide or speak with a professional forager.

Dandelions: Gardeners hate them, the bees love them, but Dandelions are packed with vitamins A, B, C & D and are known to aid digestion, liver and kidney problems, as well as lowering blood pressure and help regulate blood sugar. The whole plant is edible, from the flower, leaf and root. You can add them to salads, decorate cakes, make jam, make tea with hawthorn or ginger, and even make an alternative to coffee from oven dried roots ground in a spice grinder!

Nettles: Super easy to find, they often find you first with their sting! Best to pick the tips and young leaves as they offer the most tender flavour similar to spinach. Makes a brilliant pesto and addition to potato soup!! You can also brew it as a tea with other herbs such as fennel, mint and lavender. High in vitamins A, C, K & several B vitamins, polyphenols, amino acids, and minerals such as calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium to name a few.

Wild Garlic: An easy one to recognise in wet woodlands, due to pungent smell of garlic! Have a similar texture to spring onions but leafy with the delicious herby taste of garlic, full of vitamin A & C as well as calcium and iron and are great for digestive issues. You can eat the leaves, flowers and bulbs. You can slice these into salads, make pesto, add to butter, or scones and even ferment/pickle for up to a year!

Pine Needles: Yep the needles of the pine tree are also edible! Super rich in antioxidants and vitamin A & C; 4-5 x more than orange juice!! You can infuse the needles to make a herbal tea, it’s delicious in black tea. Pine needle tea can help to relieve asthma symptoms, chesty coughs and sore throats as well as help fight fatigue, aid skin cell regeneration and help acne, as well as reducing high blood pressure. You can also, steam fish over a pile of pine needles, as well as add them to shortbread and even infuse them into gin!!

Elderflower and Elderberry: The flowers and berries (when cooked) are edible, but leaves branches and stems aren’t. Full of antioxidants and vitamins A & C, Elderflower and berry is a classic remedy for cold, flu and other respiratory issues. The flowers are best picked at the start of flowering season when they smell sweet and floral, if they smell like urine then they are past their best. You can make a classic cordial, tea or even champagne! (Galloway Wild Foods) Elderberries come later in the year, and are best cooked into jams, jellies and pastels. If eaten unripe, green, or raw they are toxic.

Wild Violets: Almost too pretty to eat, but have become hugely popular in salad bowls and dessert/cake decoration. Just eat the flowers, the seeds and roots are toxic. Full of vitamin C, violets have a delicate sugary flavour. You can make a magic syrup with them, that turns pink when you add lemon.

Daisy: Are high in vitamin C, you can eat the flower, leaves and roots. Add young flowers to salads, decorate cakes or brew into a tea. They have a slightly bitter aftertaste with a slight nutty edge. You can also make daisies into an ointment for burns and other skin inflammations.

Seaweed: Yep the slimy stuff that tangles in your toes and freaks you out while swimming is also edible and delicious!! From Pepper Dulse, to Sea Lettuce, Forest Kelp, Sugar Kelp to Gut Weed and Sea Spaghetti, Seaweed has a salty umami taste, full of antioxidants, vitamins A & C, iodine and high in protein, and was once a very popular ingredient in British home cooking - hello Welsh Laver Bread. Seaweed is known to help with thyroid function, help regulate oestrogen levels, and digestive issues. Galloway Wild Foods has a brilliant guide to help https://gallowaywildfoods.com/an-introduction-to-seaweed-foraging/

A QUICK GUIDE TO FORAGING & THE LAW:

We are allowed to collect for our own consumption the four F’s; fruit, foliage, flowers and fungi. We are not allowed to dig up roots without the landowners’ permission though. The difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK is that we have the right to roam, which means there is no law of trespass. That said, there are some restrictions to that, namely we are NOT allowed to roam across agricultural land, on school property or in private gardens. To read more about Scotland’s outdoor access code: https://www. outdooraccess-scotland.scot/

QUICK TIPS TO GET STARTED:

• Avoid picking from busy roadsides or where there is a lot of dogs.

• If you’re unsure of it’s identification, don’t eat it.

• Use a good plant identification guide to help you properly identify plant species, and it’s always best to cross reference from another source.

• Don’t uproot plants just take clean sharp scissors and take cuttings of the edible parts, this ensures the plant will return the following year.

• Foraging isn’t about picking it all, always ensure you leave plenty behind and only pick what you need.

FORAGERS WORTH FOLLOWING:

And finally my short list of foragers worth following particularly on social media where they make simple and easy guides to plant identification, guide links on their blogs, and plenty of delicious recipes and storage hacks: Eat Weeds, Foraged by Fern, Galloway Wild Foods are my top favourites.

LINKS:

Wild Food UK: https://www.wildfooduk.com/edible-wild-plants

Woodland Trust link: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visitingwoods/things-to-do/foraging/

Totally Wild: https://totallywilduk.co.uk/2022/06/10/foragingin-scotland/

Eat The Planet offer some amazing foraging tours round Scotland: https://eattheplanet.org/foraging-tours-and-classesin-scotland/

Last Month's Sudoko Answers

Fill the grid so that every row, column and every 3 x 3 box contains the numbers 1 through to 9 with no repetition.

That’s all there is to it! Use reasoning and logic to solve the puzzle - there’s no maths or adding up.

Look carefully for what numbers can go where and with a little practice it will get easier!