Tag Archives: plants

Worth taking a trip out for in January…

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The middle of winter can seem like the very bleakest of times! Much of the bounty of the autumn months has passed and in early January the weather does much to deter even the most ardent foragers. However, for those who still dare to venture out and seek the sheltered spots a pleasant surprise awaits. The youngest and tenderest of the spring vegetables are already with us, together with a number of tasty and nutritious plants and fungi that can be found by the determined all winter long.

Let’s see if I can tempt you outside to track down and gather some nutritious winter wild food…

CHICKWEED, Stellaria media, can be found all through the winter and in fact is probably at its level best in winter and early spring. The tender tops of the plant make the best vegetable while the lower portion of the stems can be a bit tough and stringy. I eat the whole upper portion of the plant and the leaves from lower down. Chickweed (see photo) has one very distinct identification feature which will soon turn you into a chickweed expert when it comes to finding this plant. The stems possess a SINGLE row of hairs along one side only. Every time the row of hairs reaches a nodal point (where the leaves and shoots emerge) it moves around the stem by one-quarter turn before continuing on. This subtle feature is actually very easy to see if you hold the plant up so that it is silhouetted by the sky behind.

chickweed

close up showing the distinctive single row of hairs

…chickweed is not only one of our commonest wild vegetables, it is also one of the most delicious! It can be enjoyed as a tender and flavoursome salad plant, or made into a somewhat iconic winter soup. I like to add a smaller proportion of another good wild winter vegetable – the red dead-nettle, Lamium purpureum, when I make my chickweed soup.

Here is the recipe.

 

 

 

WINTER CHICKWEED SOUP RECIPE (Serves 2 to 3)

Half a dozen small potatoes – washed but not peeled; chopped into small chunks
3 shallots
2 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper to taste
3 large handfuls of washed chickweed herb
2 large handful of red dead-nettle tops

winter soup ingredients

As soups go this is about as simple and easy as it gets. It is truly delicious though and full of winter vegetable cheer!

Chop the shallots and garlic, and gently saute them in a little extra virgin olive oil until they begin to lightly brown then remove them from the heat.

Add the shallots, garlic and chopped potatoes along with a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper to a small saucepan with just enough water to cover them. Bring them to the boil for a minute or so then and turn down the heat to a low simmer. Add the chickweed herb and red dead-nettle tops and stir frequently. Keep checking to see if the potatoes are cooked. When the potatoes are soft you can either blend in the pan or transfer the whole mixture to a blender. The soup, once blended together, has a wonderful body and is thick and creamy. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve at once with crusty bread!

chickweed soup

Perennial Wall Rocket

Perennial wall rocket, Diplotaxis tenuifolia

 

PERENNIAL WALL ROCKET, Diplotaxis tenuifolia,  is another good winter plant to look out for. This plant with small four-petalled yellow flowers survives quite well through the winter though it may not look its level best in the coldest of weather. The leaves look a lot like the kind of rocket that you can buy in salad bags from the supermarket and the flavour is about the same too though a little bit more spicy! This picture was taken in late December… in the middle of winter you will need to pick through the plants a bit to find the best leaves, but they are truly delicious!

 

COMMON or GREY OYSTER MUSHROOM, Pleurotus ostreatus, frequently fruits during the middle of winter. The chillier weather of December brings good pickings of one of the tastiest of all mushrooms, the FIELD BLEWIT, Lepista personata, although these are rarely found much after the beginning of January. January however is the peak time for a tasty bright orange-yellow mushroom that grows on dead and decaying trees and stumps…

Velvet shanks

VELVET SHANK, Flammulina velutipes, grows in dense clusters and the stems are covered in a brown velvet down over the lower portion. The gills are pale cream in colour and are not attached to the stem. There is also no evidence of a ring of any kind on the stem. These mushrooms are widely cultivated throughout Asia and you may have even come across them for sale in supermarkets in the UK under the name of ‘enoki’ or ‘enokitake’. The cultivated enoki has a much smaller cap and is wholly whitish, which means that it does not actually look as if it is the same mushroom as the wild one, but it is!

velvet shanks plate of

Velvet shanks are really worth going out to find. Old hedgerows, the edges of ancient trackways and green lanes make the perfect foraging spot for this prize and you may have to poke about in the hedge bottoms a fair bit on order to spot the half-buried orangey clusters of mushroom caps growing from the deadwood at the base of hedging shrubs such as field maple, hawthorn and wych elm. They are not too fussy however and I once even found a cluster growing from the base of a leylandii conifer hedge at the bottom of someone’s garden! Just be sure not to eat any that you find growing from yew as it is possible that they could have taken on some of the toxicity found in that majestic tree. They are probably fine but just to be on the safe side…

A walk around the field margins and woodland edges at the moment will turn up quite a number of food plants to experiment with. The youngest of CLEAVERS are up and if they grow in your area then young ALEXANDERS are available too. Both are delicious steamed and served with a knob of butter however It is best not to attempt to eat cleavers raw as the tiny hooked hairs that cover the plant can be somewhat scratchy to the throat. JACK BY THE HEDGE, also known as GARLIC MUSTARD, has actually been up for some time and its early tender basal leaves tasting of both mustard and garlic are just right for an al-fresco sandwich or to garnish a dish of cooked potatoes.

So… walking boots on, hand baskets at the ready! There really is no need to stop foraging just because it is the middle of winter and it can be very rewarding indeed for those who take the effort to go out and look. I hope you have enjoyed the few pointers that I have given to get you on your way but there is no substitute for direct experience. Have a happy and nutritious winter foraging adventure!

Chilterns Society Seasonal Gin

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Foraged by Fred the Forager, distilled by Wayfinder Distillery…

Take a Sip on The Wild Side!

Much of early summer was spent on development work with the fabulous folks at Wayfinder Distillery in Beaconsfield, owned by Laurie Othen, in creating a new foraged Summer Gin to promote the conservation work of the Chiltern Society – an organisation whose primary focus is to conserve the wildlife habitats of the Chilterns Hills and their surrounding areas of natural beauty. You can find out more about their work here… www.chilternsociety.org.uk

Seasonal Gin

Around 18 different botanicals were foraged on hot sunny days to bring out their maximum potential and transformed into the (obviously secret) formula to develop an uplifting new flavour for our limited edition Chilterns Seasonal Gin – the Summer Gin marking the first of a unique hand-crafted series (See media release below).

Although I cannot disclose the exact ingredients (for fear of torture or worse still), many pleasant days of foraging and ultra fresh (literally just-gathered) deliveries of delights such as gorse blossom, 2 kinds of cherry and sloe blossom, cuckoo flower, elderflower and sweet woodruff saw to it that a full and diverse flavour palette was developed from which to blend our gin. All in all 18 different botanicals were tinctured and tried together in the blending process until a well rounded flavour with a signature of summer flowers was settled upon. The result – fresh and flowery with a citrus afternote that lingers on the palette – both refreshing and delightful, just like the Chilterns hills themselves!

The profits from Chiltern Society Seasonal Gin go directly to support the Chiltern Society and their work in conserving vital wildlife habitats for our future. For this reason, as if the delightful flavour on its own was not enough,  I highly recommend that you try some for yourself! To get in on the action you can purchase a rather lovely re-useable ceramic bottle (ideal for your own sloe gin experiments too or you should even be able to get it refilled if you visit the distillery)… here’s the link to purchase.

Check out the press release below from the gin launch for more info on this wondrous nectar and to see the product launch event!

Chiltern Society Seasonal Gin Launch

Published on August 21, 2017

We are delighted to announce the launch of our first limited edition Seasonal Gin, flavoured with cherry blossom, elderflower and orange.

This delicious gin has been specially created for us by the Wayfinders Distillery in Beaconsfield. Laurie Othen, the enterprising owner of Wayfinders, is excited to be part of this project and has generously offered to donate profits from the sale of the gin to the Chiltern Society in order to support our conservation work in the Chilterns.

The botanicals which give the gin its unique flavour were foraged in the Chilterns countryside by Fred The Forager from The Wild Side of Life.  It was then down to Wayfinders to combine the ingredients to come up with the final product which really offers a true taste of the Chilterns.

At the launch event held at Northolt Barn at the Chiltern Open Air Museum, guests were able to taste the classic combination of Summer Gin and tonic or more adventurously, Summer Gin and all-natural fresh apple juice kindly donated by Chiltern Ridge of Chartridge. Both combinations proved very popular.

Summer Gin is available to purchase here.

Every bottle sold will be helping our efforts to preserve the Chilterns countryside. What better excuse could there be a glass or two of this wonderful seasonal gin?

Gin makers
Cheers!

The Chilterns Summer Gin development team

 

A Tale of Tinctures

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Tinctures were first introduced to me in my travelling years in northern England. A fellow man of the roads named Pete had a reputation for working effectively with plant medicines and treating people who lived on the sites where we lived when they went down with coughs, colds and tummy bugs. Pete introduced me to his passion for making simple tinctures and 25 years on I make and use them all the time.

grinding herbs in a pestle and mortar

Preparing a batch of fresh herb for tincturing

Tinctures need not be a mystery, in fact in this blog I am going to tell you all about what they are, why they are useful and I’m generally going to de-mystify them for you, as one of the things that I often get asked is ‘what is a tincture’. Well… tinctures are useful things, I reply!

All living things, including plants, are absolutely jam-packed full of organic chemicals, many of which our amazing body is capable of using in different ways; there are essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals, enzymes that catalyse chemical reactions in our bodies, materials that provide food for the healthy bacteria and fungi that live inside us, compounds that block certain chemical reactions and provide relief from processes such as inflammation, substances that tone up mucous membranes and toughen up tissue, the list goes on and on and on and is in fact huge! Aside from the minerals, all of these compounds are known as ‘organic compounds’ because they contain the basic carbon building blocks of organic life – so the term ‘organic compounds’ has nothing to do with organic agriculture, or the notion that ‘organic things are good’. In this case, organic simply refers to the chemistry of carbon and molecules with a carbon backbone (think ‘carbon based life-forms’).

shelves full of tincture bottles

Tinctures – potent herbal medicines in a compact form

A herbal tincture is a preparation where some of the organic compounds in herbs are ‘extracted’ in a solvent which is usually alcohol in the form of ethanol (brandy, vodka, etc.) but it can also be glycerol (called a ‘glycerite’), or even vinegar, which is a source of the organic solvent ethanoic acid or ‘acetic acid’. What matters here is that we are using various organic solvents to dissolve the organic compounds present and get them into a solution. Depending on the solvent used, as well as its strength or concentration and how much water is also present, different strengths of tinctures with different ranges of medicinal actions can be obtained. Some of the compounds present in plants do not dissolve very well at all in alcohol, so for example if you were keen to create a medicine that used the soothing mucilaginous ingredients found in mallows there would be little point in making a tincture of your mallow roots or leaves in spirit – the soothing slippery substance known as mucilage has a low solubility in ethanol. Once in a solution the dissolved compounds in a tincture become very available to the various chemical processes that happen when we ingest them.

Angelica archangelica

Angelica, Angelica archangelica
used as an anti-microbial / anti-viral, keep the acrid sap off of the skin when preparing

There is less in the way of organic compounds in a few drops of plant tincture than there was in the amount of herb that was used to make it, yet some tinctures behave in ways when we take them that point to their active principles being very readily available to the body. Some tinctures can be quite powerful in their actions; very often with tinctures a little plant goes a long way!

To traditional folk herbalists a tincture is also much more than a chemical based medicine. In European folk belief, it is as if the very souls of the plants come to reside in the tinctures. Tinctures are seen as potions brimming with life forces and even consciousness rather than as the dead chemical medicines that we have come to expect, but that is a whole different story.

There are many methods that can be employed to make tinctures and each of them has its merits and its complications. Tinctures can be made by the slow passage of solvent through a large batch of herb material in the filtration method, and probably the most common method, the ‘weight to volume method’, requires that a given volume of solvent be used to extract the vital ingredients from a given weight of dried herbal material, providing a certain amount of standardisation as regards the process.

However it should be remembered that plants are not standard things. Depending on the weather patterns that year, the strains used, the soil type they are grown in, how many viral and insect attacks they have had to endure already and probably a whole load of other things we aren’t even aware of, plants are not easily standardised.

The most simple tincturing methods use chopped up fresh plant material rather than dried and here I am going to give you the most basic method, often known as ‘The Simplers’ Method’. It is more than adequate for most home use in that it provides very effective tinctures at a low cost and for the minimum amount of effort. Really it is perfect for the kitchen herbalist making remedies at home.

The Simplers’ Method

filtering Rose tincture

Beautiful, delicately perfumed rose-flower tincture
used by the most famous of European plague doctors, Nostrodamus

Firstly, by way of explanation, historically a ‘simpler’ was a person who created medicines from plants, and perhaps minerals too, employing a very small number of plants (often just one) in each medicine. This approach is great for making mild remedies that deal effectively with the symptoms of common ailments and is a thread of tradition within folk herbalism. In contrast, modern holistic practitioners look deeply into the whole life patterns of their patients and prescribe complex regimens of herbs to address deep seated patterns and imbalances.

At their simplest, most basic level, the ‘herbal simples’ include the tinctures made by the simplers’ method and a range of other ‘simple’ pills and potions that are perhaps most effectively used in a similar way to over-the-counter medicines. A fundamental difference that cannot be over-emphasised is that even a single plant may contain hundreds of organic compounds in a state of dynamic electrochemical balance. By contrast most over the counter pharmaceuticals contain one single isolated active ingredient – so in other words there is nothing simple at all about a simple!

Making a Specific Tincture

A simple tincture that uses fresh (non-dried) plant material in a ratio of 1 part by volume of herb to 1 part by volume of solvent (typically brandy) is known as a ‘specific tincture’. I use the abbreviation ‘sp. tinc.’ on my labels to denote this. In practice this produces a tincture that is weaker than 1 part herb to 1 part solvent due to the air spaces in between the chopped plants and the water content of the plants, but for our purposes these tinctures are generally plenty strong enough for use.

Plants that are useful for tincturing using this method include those with a lot of essential oils and other volatile (typically ‘smelly’) compounds as well as a range of other ethanol soluble compounds such as alkaloids and organic acids. It is also suitable for herbs with some water soluble components as brandy or vodka for sale in the UK typically contains 40% alcohol by volume, the remaining 60% being comprised of water.

In the days when alchemical methods dominated the preparation of herbal medicines, the ‘spirit of vine’ (brandy) was highly regarded. Because all fermented plant material eventually produces alcohol, which when fully distilled yields ethanol regardless of which plant you started with, ethanol or ‘pure spirit’ was regarded as the spirit held in common by all plants, in contrast to their soul or essence which bore the characteristics of the individual species and even the individual plant concerned. Using this alchemical terminology the process of tincturing is one of dissolving the soul of the plant concerned in a sea of plant spirit – known as the menstruum. Just as the metal mercury was regarded as the spiritual principle of all metals by the alchemist, so spirit of wine was regarded as the equivalent – a vital source of the spirit of all living plants, also metaphorically described in some mediaeval texts as ‘mercury’.

I digress… for those of you who have followed thus far, here is my version of the simplers’ method, laid bare for you I hope in terms that are simple to understand.

Recipe – Ingredients and some equipment that you need:

  • Herb material containing alcohol and water soluble compounds suitable for tincturing. In practice many but certainly not all herbs.
  • Spirit in the form of brandy, vodka or stronger spirit (‘spyritus’ / ‘everclear’) so long as it is fit for human consumption. Do NOT use rubbing alcohol / isopropyl alcohol as this is poisonous. The spirit should contain at least 40% ethanol by volume (abv) or be at least 80 proof. Stronger alcohol will extract more components but less of the water soluble components producing different characteristics.
  • A clean, sterilised bottle and lid
  • A funnel
  • A clean, thoroughly rinsed tea-towel or muslin cloth
  • An unbleached coffee filter or similar
  • Labels

Step 1) Take a herb that contains useful ethanol soluble and / or water soluble components. Typical herbs that fit the bill are rose flowers, lemon balm, angelica, skullcap, meadowsweet, etc. Avoid herbs that have very strong actions and carry a risk of toxicity like some of the nightshades for example. This method does not give a very clinically accurate dose and you wouldn’t want to run the risk of taking too much of these stronger herbs. According to folk tradition the herb should not be cut down with an iron blade and should not be allowed to touch the ground unless it is a root – make of that what you will – I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide if it has any importance themselves. It is most definitely important however that you use plant material cut at the time of the year when that plant is at its most potent (research) and that the material that you use is not diseased or damaged in any way by pollution.

Step 2) Chop, shred, bruise and dismember the herb using whatever means are available. Stone pestles and mortars can be useful as can rolling pins and perhaps a blender! The purpose of this is to rupture cell walls as well as dramatically increasing the surface area that will be exposed to the solvent. BEWARE though – once cell walls are ruptured, enzymes will be set loose that may catalyse the rapid degradation of your plant material. You will need to work quickly to get this stage complete and to get the plant material (known as the ‘marc’) into the solvent (stage 3) to counteract this as much as possible.

Step 3) Place the chopped, bruised herb material into a washed and sterilised jar so that when pressed down it three-quarter fills the jar. Pour in your spirit a little at a time, whilst stirring the herb about with a small stick or the handle of a wooden spoon, to release any trapped air. This will ensure maximum contact between the spirit and the herb, preventing any of the material from spoiling as ethanol is a very good preservative. Once you cannot fit any more spirit in, ‘podge’ (technical term) the herbs down with your stick / spoon handle so that they fit into the jar in a nice compact way and then top up the fluid so that it covers the herbs by around one centimetre. A little less is ok, this is not a precise science. The objective is to prevent the herbs in the jar from sticking out of the spirit for long periods of time as this could cause them to oxidise and spoil. Place on the lid and tighten.

Elderflowers tincturing in vodka

Elderflowers tincturing in vodka

Step 4) Place the jar somewhere where you will see it a lot. You will need to shake the jar once daily and podge the herbs back down below the spirit each time. If you put the jar on the shelf that is directly in front of you when you eat your breakfast you will remember to do this most days! You will need to allow the tincture to sit, shaking and podging once daily, for one month or roughly one lunar cycle. Leathery or waxy leaved herbs don’t give up their vital compounds so easily and you may need to leave them for longer, perhaps 6 weeks. The same applies to the tougher mushrooms such as the bracket fungi. The tincturing phase works best if you put the jar somewhere at ambient room temperature and with diffuse light. The UV light in daylight will encourage many compounds to dissolve by supplying a little extra energy to the mixture. Too much heat may cause some of the delicate aromatic compounds to be lost or to degrade, so when tincturing, extra heat is not recommended. Equally a cold room may slow down the process too far.

Step 5) After the allotted time has elapsed you will need to ‘press out’ and coarse filter your tincture, prior to bottling. The initial pressing out step involves passing the tincture – marc and menstruum together – into a coarse filter such as a very well rinsed clean tea-towel. The tea towel or similar is used to line a funnel and the tincture material poured slowly through it into a bowl. Once it has finished dripping, the solids can be wrapped in the tea-towel and the whole squeezed and wrung out to remove the rest of the remaining liquid. It will be cloudy and contains lots of small particles so will require further filtering if it is to be stored for long periods.

Filtering off the marc - the solids left in the filter paper

Filtering off the marc – the solids left in the filter paper

Step 6) The cloudy tincture can now be passed through a second filter to remove the fine particulates. An unbleached coffee filter works very well for this, as does a kitchen towel at a push. For maximum shelf life the resulting tincture should be completely clear.

Step 7) Tinctures, once made and filtered, should be stored in tightly stoppered bottles in a cool and dark place. Stored carefully in this way they should remain effective for at least 2 years, perhaps longer, with one or two exceptions.

How to Use a Tincture

Tinctures of the gentler herbs that are commonly used for many complaints can be taken several times per day in doses of between 5 and 30 drops per dose depending on the strength of the tincture and what it is being used to treat. The tincture should always be taken in a little water so as to reduce the alcohol by volume to below 20%. Anything above this tends to be evacuated from the stomach very quickly, hence the need for dilution. Some tinctures, for example tincture of Arnica montana, are traditionally used on the skin rather than internally. If you are doing this it would be a good idea to do a little spot test somewhere first to make sure that you are not allergic to the herb being used. Always do thorough research about the plants that you are working with.

Disclaimer: Everything in this article is provided for your entertainment only. I do not endorse you, the reader, to carry out these practices and if you do then you are doing so at your own risk. I am not responsible for the consequences if you decide to follow the information on this page. Always consume alcohol sensibly and if you take herbs check for any contra-indications that may be damaging to health or interact with other medications first.

 

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article! If you would like to gain some practical experience of working with herbs and of tincturing, you could try one of our herbal weekend courses here, where we will show you everything you need to know to get you started:

Putting the Spice Back…

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Where is the spice? That is a good question, as one could be forgiven for thinking our ancestors in these islands didn’t care much for it before the middle ages. I can’t help thinking that this may be a misconception that has arisen out of the cuisine of the last 100 years though; doubtless somewhere there is a food historian who can put me on the right track?…

Jack by the hedge

Jack-by-the-Hedge: image by Sannse at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (//www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)

We DO have wild spices growing here in Britain and Ireland. Much of the knowledge surrounding their use must be lost if it was ever here in the first place, so I am going to do a bit of learning by experimentation instead and from time to time share my experiments here, with you!

Jack by the Hedge / garlic mustard – Alliaria petiolata

I thought I would start with this plant because it is a good contender. Not only is it in the very edible cabbage and mustard family, its leaves are hot and spicy, tasting of mustard as well as garlic – as its other name, ‘garlic mustard’, explains… but what of the seeds I thought? According to Saul et al, in “Phytoliths in Pottery Reveal the Use of Spice in European Prehistoric Cuisine”1, garlic mustard was definitely in use as a spice in the baltic region of Europe over 6000 years ago.

seeds of garlic mustard

Jack by the hedge – garlic mustard in seed

Some time ago I remember sampling some out in the forest as I was walking along a shady wooded ride and being immediately taken aback by their ‘kick’. I revisited this place where garlic mustard grows all around, so as to recreate the sense of connection with this experience and take my spice journey further on to its next stage.

The first obstacle I came up against was that the seed pods appeared to be all ripening at different stages, meaning that some seed fell to the ground as soon as I touched the plant, but much of it was practically inseparable from the stringy seed cases surrounding it.

I soon resolved to harvest all of the seed pods regardless of maturity and attempt to ripen them in the sun when I got home. I found that I could save a lot of time by holding a large bag open and stripping the whole seed pods en-mass by sliding my hand down the stems. Here is the result…

garlic mustard seed separated from the pods

garlic mustard seed separated from the pods by sun drying then rubbing between the palms

Once at home, I placed the seed pods in a large glass dish and let the sun do its work. I brought them in each evening and waited until things began to warm again each day before putting them back outside on a table in the sun. After about 3 days more than three quarters of the seed was fairly ripe and I judged that the remainder had probably hardened enough to strip from the pods without much damage.

I found that the best way to remove the seed was by rubbing the pods between my palms, and to twist any that were stubbornly hanging on to their seed between my fingers until they ruptured and twisted undone. The seeds, being small and heavy, all sank to the bottom of the bowl. I then used a colander to separate the seed pods from the seed – putting the whole lot through it 3 times…

garlic mustard seed ready for storage

SPICE SCORE: 8 out of 10

I dried the seed a little further to lower the moisture content prior to storage, simply keeping it out in our warm scullery on a stainless steel tray for a couple of days.

The result is surprisingly good. Though the quantity obtained is small, it is very hot, packing a real punch. It is also pleasant in texture when used as a whole seed. There are definitely overtones of horseradish, garlic and pepper and a little will go a very long way but be warned, the heating effect is cumulative!

 

 

1 – Saul H, Madella M, Fischer A, Glykou A, Hartz S, Craig OE (2013) Phytoliths in Pottery Reveal the Use of Spice in European Prehistoric Cuisine. PLoS ONE 8(8): e70583. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0070583

Autumn Mushroom Season Update 2015

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The 2015 autumn mushroom season is well underway now, with choice chanterelles, porcini, saffron milk caps, chicken of the woods and many other things being found over much of the country. Things in Wiltshire and parts of the south /south west have kicked off pretty early due to the unusually cool and damp summer that we have been having, and if we receive sufficient rain as autumn progresses we could be in for a long mushroom season! It’s a great time to dust off that wicker basket, grab a small kitchen knife and get out there in the woods and fields to do some mushroom hunting

… as I write this I am tucking into a sumptuous omelette of forest mushrooms and preparing this year’s batch of amethyst deceiver vodka (a Russian speciality) after spending much of the past 3 days hunting for and eating gourmet mushrooms.

Omelette in progress

Amethyst deceiver vodka and a collection of wild mushrooms destined to be an omelette!

We have some great courses for you this autumn including the Secret Sunday Mushroom Club (recommended by BBC Countryfile Magazine as a way to learn to pick mushrooms safely) and our extremely popular Gourmet Mushroom Discovery Days with foraging and mushroom tasting that will delight chefs and foragers alike. We are hosting the UK’s first 2 day Medicinal Mushroom Conference in November where some well known authors, foragers, mushroom growers and herbalists (Roger Philips, Matthew Rooney, Fred Gillam, Cristina Cromer) will team up to raise awareness among health care practitioners and the general public about the benefits of medicinal mushrooms. After a short pause to take stock over the middle of winter, we will start 2016 with our Small Game Preparation course and the very popular St. George’s Mushroom Champagne Picnic in early May. We’ve got things happening in Wiltshire, Lincolnshire, Somerset, The New Forest and the Gower in South Wales, as well as leading foraging team building events throughout the autumn – so you are keeping us on our toes!

We’ve just heard that Vegetarian Living Magazine will be running a feature on mushroom foraging this coming October entitled ‘On The Toadstool Trail’ featuring exclusive hints and tips from our very own Fred the Forager (who brings 32 years of mushroom foraging experience to your table), so do look out for that… or you can get an exclusive member’s preview… here

secret sunday Mushroom clun

The Secret Sunday Mushroom Club in action

Starting in mid September – The Secret Sunday Mushroom Club: 18.5 hours of tuition spread over 4 non-consecutive Sundays and over several excellent habitats. Watch the occurrence of mushrooms change as the season progresses and see them at all stages of growth. Includes a guest ticket for one day and 12 months email support with identification. Locations are given out a few days before each meeting to allow time for reconnaissance, ensuring the best chances of success! Click the link for info and dates. Cost: £145.00. Gift vouchersGift Certificates also available.

Available from September through November – Gourmet Mushroom Discovery Days: A day out in the woods encountering choice edible species and some of the most significant poisonous ones. Get to know your death caps, destroying angels, fool’s funnels and deadly webcaps before learning to find the choice species such as ceps, chanterelles, blewits, bay boletes and more, then enjoy your finds with speciality breads and a glass or two of wine in the woods. Click the link for info and dates. Cost £90.00. Gift vouchers also available.

November 14th and 15th – The UK’s First Medicinal Mushrooms Conference: A full weekend discovering the healing potential of medicinal mushrooms, including guided foraging, talks, presentations and demonstrations by Roger Philips (author of “Mushrooms”), Matthew Rooney (the UK’s only bio-dynamic medicinal mushroom cultivator at www.mushroomtable.com), Fred Gillam (Fred the Forager and author of “Poisonous Plants in Great Britain”), Martin Palmer author of “Medicinal Mushrooms – A Clinical Guide”), Cristina Cromer (Medical Herbalist and former lecturer in herbal medicine at the University of Westminster) and Natascha Kenyon (forager and concocter of medicinal potions at The Wild Side of Life). Prices vary on a sliding scale – see conference web page.

preparing turkey tail


Preparation of turkey tail mushroom full spectrum extract, an immune modulator

Saturday March 12th – Small Game Preparation: This one day course will take you through all of the basic skills and knowledge required to prepare small game such as rabbits, pheasant or wood pigeon in the field for food. Not for gratuitous hunters or those who see hunting as sport, this course is designed to equip those who choose to eat meat from the wild with the necessary skills to do so with as little waste as possible, and teach relevant knowledge about hygiene, knife skills, game, roadkill and the law. Cost £85.00. Gift vouchers available.

Starting in April – The Secret Sunday Spring Forager’s Club: 18 hours of tuition spread over 4 non-consecutive Sundays and over several excellent habitats including ancient woodland, chalk grassland and river meadows. Learn to identify, gather and use a wide range of spring foraged ingredients including wonderous wild garlic, tasty burdock shoots, tender hogweed fiddles, crunchy pignuts, citrussy pine candles and more. You will also learn how to avoid Europe’s most poisonous plants. Click the link for info and dates. Cost: £130.00. Gift vouchers available.

Saturday 7th or Sunday 15th May – St. George’s Mushroom Champagne Picnic: The weather should be warming up now and there is nothing nicer than a champagne picnic in the spring sunshine. You will be taught how to seek the delicious St. George’s mushroom effectively, how to identify it beyond any doubt and how to combine it with other spring wild food ingredients to the greatest effect.We will enjoy a foraged dish of super St. George’s and wild herbs in the afternoon along with some glasses of bubbly and sample a range of other sumptuous wild food treats. Cost £85.00.

st george's basket

A basket of delicious St. George’s mushrooms in the spring

Don’t forget our gift vouchers make a wonderful surprise gift for anyone, whether it is for Christmas, someone’s birthday or just for the joy of giving something special to someone you love. I hope to see you all out in a wood or meadow sometime over the coming season, or perhaps next spring picking St. George’s mushrooms. Until then, have a truly wonderful mushroom season, may it be both bountiful and fascinating!

Best Wishes

Fred the Forager / The Wild Side of Life

A Day with the Bohemian Mojo Project

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The following extract comes directly from //www.bohemianmojo.com/index.php/129-fff and you can read it directly (with images from the day) 

The Wild Side of Life is proud to support the wonderful, inspirational Bohemian Mojo Project…

“The idea of foraging conjures images of grubbily rooting through muddy undergrowth in the heart of some primeval forest. This was only half true on our amazing day with Fred Gillam, the foraging wizard…

 Part I

The morning was cold, windy and threatened of a downpour as we piled in the car, trying our darnedest not to be victim to Mojo Meantime again! Today we were foraging with Fred Gillam, the amazing forager. We didn’t yet know just exactly how amazing he was but were excited to find out.  I have to admit even though I was excited to sightsee I was a little skeptical at what we might be foraging at Uffington White Horse which was where we to start our adventure for the day. What could we possibly forage on an open hillside? Didn’t foraging require the dank, damp, and brooding underbelly of ancient forests???

Fred met us in the parking lot; only slightly behind schedule we bundled up and began heading up the hill.  As we stepped out onto the expanse, I couldn’t help but pause for a moment to take in the amazing view around the valley, sobering my thoughts as I tried to imagine how this must have looked centuries upon centuries ago and Fred began filling us in on some ancient history.  Suddenly, it occurred to me that this was going to be no ordinary day; we were in the presence of yet another MajicMaker and could expect an adventure for sure.

As we fought the wind and traipsed up the hill Fred began pointing out the flora and fauna and my eyes began to see the landscape in a whole new way.  We befriended Nettle, tasting its succulent little leaves with no adverse effects (once Fred taught us the secret). We collected small bits of Yellow Dock, Amaranth, and even sampled some Hawthorne berries.

Walking along the impressive ridge, we worked our way over to Dragon Hill; which possesses an unassuming, yet somehow riveting presence. Legend has it that this is where St. George slew the Dragon (a legend I find quite distasteful for a variety of reasons) and the small, bare spot in the middle of the hill that will grow no foliage is where the Dragon’s blood was spilt.  I liked Fred’s suggestion much better that this was indeed a place for ritual and sacred activities.  There is a Hawthorne tree at the entrance to the hill so I picked a few berries and walked onto the plateau, allowing the land itself to draw me in. The sensations that happened next were unexplainable as I felt a heaviness settle onto my heart, perhaps it is no accident that Hawthorne grows in ready reach. 

As the wind buffeted, I left the hilltop filled with a sense of having touched the primordial pulse. As I was wondering how to clear my head and my senses and dive back into the day, the most perfect downhill slope presented itself…Nothing for it but to tuck and roll! It was perfect medicine as I bounced down the hill, smelling the sweet grass and rich earth with each rotation, finally coming to rest on the valley floor. Silly with laughter and a bit dizzy, I was ready to plunge on to the next phase. Looking back up the hill to see if there were any other takers, I clapped and cheered as Fred the Forager and Michelle follow suit, bounce, bounce, bounce. After a little more wandering and learning we made our way back to the cars, ready to get some lunch and continue to the Savernake forest. 
As we left White Horse Hill, I again was struck by the history and pre-history of this place, stopping on the car park ridge for one final sweeping glance of appreciation.

 Part II

We got to the Pub for lunch just in time as the sky opened the floodgates and rain poured. After our lunch of traditional fish and chips, cider, and plenty of heartwarming conversation we were now fast friends and ready to move on to the Savernake Forest….but not without stopping first at King Alfred’s blowing stone. The Mojo team was a twitter, what the heck was a blowing stone??? According to legend, the blowing stone was how King Alfred summoned his troops to fight off the Viking hoards and further legend reports that anyone capable of blowing the stone correctly, which will allow it to be heard up on White Horse Hill, is the future King of England.; Needless to say, none of us are going to be ordained as royalty any time soon. We all took several attempts, allowing ourselves to settle into the good humor of the ridiculous attempts to make a stone produce a magical note. By the time we were all light headed from our attempts, we decided it was time to continue to the Savernake. On to the mushrooms!!

The Grand Avenue into the Savernake Forest is impressive. The ancient trees and overgrowth instill a sense of mystery and hushed appreciation. We climbed out of our cars and were immediately regrouped by Fred’s command that for the next few hours we pick nothing, touch nothing, that he didn’t approve of first. We had no idea there were so many varieties of mushrooms with so many adverse effects! The rest of the afternoon was spent rummaging under fern leaves, looking into piles of leaves and the underside of felled trees. Majken proved to be the master of forest foraging. Her skillful eye and quick hand soon filled our foraging basket under Fred’s careful and informative tutelage. Soon we had enough mushrooms and other foliage like wild cress and rocket to compliment a lovely dinner. The rain began to pour again so we decided to adjourn to Bridge Cottage and prepare our day’s efforts. Alun graciously provided and prepared wild partridge. Fred cooked up our mushrooms, and the rest of us tossed up a wild salad and poured the wine we had acquired just the day before in Wales.

Dinner was served!! Cheers to fabulous friends, foraging and rekindling curiosity for forgotten times.”

With warm thanks to Stephanie, Michelle, Majken and of course Alun!

Wild Side of Life – Spring Newsletter 2015

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Hello Wildsiders!

Spring is here and as the soil begins to warm up, things are also warming up in the foraging world. I’m going to tell you about all the exciting things we are up to this year in a moment, and I am also going to share a recipe with you… a simple recipe so good that having just drained my second bowl I am left wanting more! 

Wild garlic, young stinging nettles and the herb known as cleavers are to be found in many many places around the UK at this time of the year, and I am going to tell you in a minute how to make a truly rewarding thick soup using just these three common plants. It is so ‘moreish’ that you will want to go out picking the ingredients every single day!

I’m just pausing for a little more of that soup… One day they will invent a ‘click to taste’ button but right now there is only one way to taste this and that is to go and make it for yourself. Once you have checked out the offerings in this newsletter, scroll down and check out this beautiful recipe… and thanks go to the talented Natascha Kenyon for having created all three bowls full 🙂

First, here are my spring offerings to you from The Wild Side of Life. Click the links to find out more:

SPRING FORAGING

St. George’s Mushroom Champagne Picnic (only a few places left)
We will forage for this beautiful spring mushroom that sometimes grows in HUGE rings, cook it together with other wild foraged ingredients, then enjoy with a glass or two of champagne! Delicious! Happening on the 26th April so book now!

Secret Sunday Spring Forager’s Club (only a few places left) 
An in-depth foraging experience where you will receive 18.5 hours of expert tuition in different habitats over the spring season. Bring a guest along for a feast, and send pictures of the foraging finds you make outside of the course to our private mailing list for identification. Starting in 2 weeks – book now!

Pignuts, Fiddles and Burdock
A special day focusing on finding and cooking these 3 ingredients in imaginative ways… it’s all about the taste and there will be plenty of it as we combine these exciting foods in a multitude of ways! We will also be walking through some stunning scenery on this day and will stop to eat out packed lunches in one of Wiltshire’s remotest spots near an ancient burial chamber of the Marlborough Downs.

Private mentoring in sap tapping and spring wild food cookery is also available, contact me to arrange: Fred@thewildsideoflife.co.uk

HERBALISM WORKSHOPS

Herbal First Aid Weekend 
On this weekend you will learn to identify many useful medicinal plants from the English hedgerows and use them to make between 15 and 20 remedies to treat common ailments that most of us encounter at some time or another. You will take home tinctures, elixirs, teas, electuaries, infused oils, capsules and salves for your own home pharmacy, along with the skills and knowledge to make them again and again.

Winter Remedies Weekend
Many of us tend to suffer a bit in the winter in our temperate climate. Coughs, colds, influenza, chilblains, aches and pains brought on by damp. Lots of conditions are exacerbated by the damp cold of winter and on this weekend you will learn to identify many useful medicinal plants from the English hedgerows and use them to make between 15 and 20 remedies to treat common winter ailments. You will take home cough remedies, immune enhancing mushrooms, anti-inflammatory teas, elixirs, capsules and salves for your own home pharmacy.

UK First Medicinal Mushrooms Conference
A conference held at a 5-star venue in rural Lincolnshire with practical woodland foraging & remedy making, guest speakers include Roger Philips (author of “Mushrooms”), Matthew Rooney (Biodynamic Mushroom Cultivator at ‘Mushroom Table’), Martin Powell (author of “Medicinal Mushrooms – A Clinical Guide”), Cristina Cromer (Medical Herbalist and former Lecturer at the University of Westminster) and Fred Gillam (author of “Poisonous Plants in Great Britain”) and Natascha Kenyon from The Wild Side of Life. Please send an email if you are interested to… Fred@thewildsideoflife.co.uk

BUSHCRAFT & WOODLAND BASED CRAFT COURSES

Family Bushcraft Camping Weekend
A weekend for all the family to learn the basics of camp-craft, putting up a ‘basha’ shelter, purifying your own river water, learning techniques for lighting the cooking fire without matches, making cord from tree bark, and much more. An idyllic woodland clearing with a clean flowing river awaits your adventure.

Ancient Pewter Smithing 
Using the ancient ‘cuttlebone’ technique known to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, you will be guided through all the processes needed to cast your own item of unique and attractive jewellery in English Pewter. Some say the look of the molten metal in the fire is like a magical window on creation itself – it is certainly a memorable and inspiring experience. We will do this in a small group over a native hardwood charcoal fire. You will take home a beautiful and unique item to cherish forever.

Coracle Making Weekend
Coracles (skin covered, wooden framed, tensioned boats) of differing designs were once widespread on rivers in many parts of the world and originally covered in animal hide. Since the industrial revolution in Britain they have been covered in calico cloth and waterproofed with tar. Still used for salmon fishing, these versatile and fun craft carry a surprising load and can take you to places inaccessible on foot. Make your own and take it home!

Woodcrafts of the European Nomads (flowers, pegs, baskets and more) – details coming very soon, please drop me an email if you are interested… we will be creating hand crafted items in the woods using the centuries old methods of the gypsies and travellers… baskets, clothes pegs, wooden flowers… and sharing Romany stories and cookery around a roaring camp fire! Fred@thewildsideoflife.co.uk

AUTUMN MUSHROOM COURSES

As featured in BBC Countryfile Magazine’s Top 10 UK Foraging Courses

The Secret Sunday Mushroom Club
Acclaimed foraging experience where you will receive 18.5 hours of expert tuition in different habitats focusing on how to locate and identify with confidence most of the best UK edible species. Fred the Forager regularly uses more than 100 species and there will be plenty of advice on how to build you own repertoire safely. Bring a guest along for a feast on the last day and have the finds you make outside of the course identified by sending your pictures to our private mailing list. Places go fast so book early.

Gourmet Mushroom Discovery Days in Wiltshire, The Gower and the New Forest
If you are looking for an exciting and special one day mushroom experience these days are for you. You will be introduced over the course of the day to some of the finer gourmet mushrooms and shown how to spot the poisonous lookalikes. We will cook our finds in the forest at the end of the day. These courses take place in some of the best locations in the region for fungi, and time will be spent discussing how to pick mushrooms sustainably without detriment to future populations. Take home some wonderful memories and feel free to come back for advice when identifying you future finds.

Gift Vouchers

Did you know that you can buy vouchers for mother’s day, birthdays, Christmas day, practically any day you like from my website? If the course voucher you need is not already available on the shop page, all you have to do is email Fred@thewildsideoflife.co.uk and I will prepare one especially for you with your recipients name on it! 

Here is what people have had to say about receiving our vouchers as gifts…

“My Gourmet Mushroom Discovery Day has simply been a wonderful birthday present. When I first received the voucher I wondered what it would be like but I have had an amazing time and have learned so much! I will never look at the woods in the same way again and I even feel confident enough now to go and pick some of the mushrooms for myself!”

“My son bought me a voucher for Mother’s Day for a day’s foraging tuition with The Wild Side of Life. I have had a lot of fun and I never realised just how much tasty food is out there for the picking. I enjoyed my present very much and I would definitely like to go out again, perhaps on one of the courses next time.”

There is a new loyalty referral scheme that you can join too, meaning that you can get your courses for less if you share the joy with someone else – which is a win-win situation. I am going to email everybody about this very soon so if you are one of our subscribers keep an eye out for it in your mailbox.

MEET US AT EVENTS & FESTIVALS IN 2015

We will be attending a number of food and festival events this year so pop in to our stand for a chat and a foraged fruit leather… we love to meet you all! We will be at the Great WIld Food & Chilli Fair at Molden in Essex on June 27th & 28th. The website for this fabulous event is here. As Fred the Forager I will be running workshops in ‘de-mystifying mushroom identification’, ‘tree foods’ and ‘herbal first aid’ as well as giving a talk on Poisonous Plants. You can find out about all of them here, where you can also pre-book your workshop places at this event.

On May 16th watch out for my talk “The Mushroom Forager’s Tales” in The Real Food & Drink Theatre at the Marlborough Food & Drink Festival in Wiltshire. There will be lots of other talks by well known foodies too, so check their web page to find the schedule.

The Wild Side of Life will be providing foraging workshops and medicinal mushroom talks at both the Green Gathering and Heart of the East festivals / gatherings this year, as part of the AVALON RISING programme.

…and now for the recipe, mmmm enjoy 😉 and don’t forget to check out our presence on Facebook and Twitter

Click here for the Wild Garlic, Stinging Nettle and Cleavers Soup Recipe

Best wishes and happy foraging!
Fred the Forager

Wild Garlic, Stinging Nettle & Cleavers Soup

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Wild Garlic, Stinging Nettle & Cleavers Soup (serves 8 to 10)

You will need:

3 big handfuls of fresh wild garlic (Allium ursinum) leaves – be careful that you do not pick any Lords and Ladies (Arum maculatum) or lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) by mistake. Look for the parallel veins running the whole length of the leaf and the unmissable garlic smell!

1/4 bucket of fresh stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) tops – just pinch the tops out with about 4 to 6 leaves on each. You might want to wear gloves for this although I teach everyone who comes on my courses how to pick them without being stung.

Two large handfuls of young cleavers (Galium aparine) plants – you might know this as ‘sticky weed’, ‘goosegrass’ or ‘sticky willie’ in some parts of the UK… make sure they are still soft and pliable as in a few weeks they will stiffen up and after that you use only the softer tip of the plant.

Add a large knob of butter or 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive to a saucepan, together with a few twists of black pepper and sea salt. Slowly raise the temperature to cook the seasoning a little but do not let the oil bubble ferociously – a sign that it is too hot. After about 1.5 minutes add a good splash of balsamic vinegar and 600ml of hot water straight from the kettle. Add all of the leaves that you have picked (ideally) chopped into little pieces first.

At this point it should look like this…

Put on a lid, watching the temperature carefully and stirring periodically. You don’t want the soup to get so hot that it boils as this will seriously affect the flavour, but you do want it to reach a slow simmer for a short period to assist in extracting the flavour from the leaves (this will also kill off bugs as it will cook above 74 degrees centigrade, but in practice this is not really a problem when freshly picked leaves are used taken from a clean spot).

Keep an eye on the soup, allowing it to simmer gently for 6 to 8 minutes, then remove it from the heat and transfer it to a blender. Give it a good ‘whizz’ until a thick creamy soup consistency is achieved, then transfer it back onto the heat and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, this time stirring continuously. Some people like to cook a few potatoes, blending them into the soup at this stage as a thickening agent. Whilst I do not think this is necessary it is a matter for personal taste.

That’s it! It is a good idea to keep a little of the garlic back and chop it into shreds to use as a garnish on top of the soup. A little finely grated manchego or parmesan cheese will also work well on top and a couple of tablespoons of live natural yoghurt swirled in to each bowl completes the picture properly… and by the way, every portion combines the effects of these herbs to great effect. 

Serving suggestions…

Wild garlic has a natural antibiotic action and is a circulatory tonic that thins the blood a little and warms up the extremities by opening up capillary circulation.

Lightly cooked nettles provide us with lots of vitamin C and iron, as well as a surprising amount of vegetable protein, not to mention huge amounts of the anti-oxidant chlorophyll.

Cleavers is well known to medical herbalists for supporting and clearing the lymphatic system. In short, this lovely soup is also a good medicine for driving away the last of the winter ailments that we tend to suffer from in our temperate British climate, and giving the whole system a kick-starting detox ready for the year ahead!

CLICK HERE TO SMELL THE SOUP – (ONLY KIDDING!)

You can learn much more about simple wholesome wild food cookery at the Secret Sunday Spring Forager’s Club