Foraging (1 Viewer)

jumar

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Didn't know whether to post this here or in Nature and Wildlife or Cooking. When we were in the north of Spain near the Sierra de Gredos, we collected these chestnuts. Just finished them today and perhaps just past their best.

Would love to be able to collect mushrooms but too worried about picking the wrong ones. Whilst in Italy earlier this year a French friend was collecting different mushrooms and told us that they were wonderful.

My parents used to make wine from many different foraged fruits and flowers but I haven't followed their example.

Do any Funsters do "foraging" and what's your favourite "forage".

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laird of Dunstan

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Haven't done it for a while , if I saw a deer or a muntjac that was road kill I'd put it in my car boot , used to make wine from the sap of the silver birch , you need to know what your looking at with mushrooms , I can recognise three edible type and one hallucinogenic, used to guddle for trout

It's quite easy to live from foraging by the sea shore ,early Britons would move around the coast following the foodstuffs that were in season
 

Doctor Dave

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Sloe gin or wild damson gin.

I would be wary about mushrooms.


Dave

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Allanm

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We forage a lot. Blackberries ( jam and eating) damsons ( jam, gin and wine) sloes ( sloe gin) elderflowers( cordial). Elderberries ( wine) hazel nuts, wild garlic and other wild herbs, apples, pears, plums and cherries ( lots growing wild in Kent) and occasionally mushrooms, although we only do that in France where pharmacists can tell you if they are good to eat or not.
 

Munchie

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Here we have chestnuts by the bucket, Ceppe mushrooms which we know and Girolle which we are unsure of.
Also in season we have apples, pears and brambles!
We are bona fide French foragers!
(as well as being a tightarse Jock n Yarkie)
 

thehutchies

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We used to do a lot of foraging; all kinds of fruit, herbs, nuts and vegetables.
For the last year, though, we haven't done any at all because we are being given so much food by other campers (y)

We've had endless jars of jam, fresh fish, barrowloads of fruit, even twenty cans of beer and a dozen bottles of Hardy's Semillon
Chardonnay (try foraging that!)
:)

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scotjimland

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It's good round our way at harvest time..

we glean for whatever is left in the fields..

onions, peas, lettuce, parsnips, carrots, potatoes.. .. etc..

also collect brambles, apples, pears, plums..

I made plum jam and chutney last year .. still trying to eat it all :rolleyes:
 
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jumar

jumar

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Last year we picked wild strawberries and bilberries in Austria, raspberries in Slovenia, blackberries in France and Portugal and then almonds back in Spain.

Munchies and I (Judith) then foraged the oranges after they had been picked for the market, although we felt a little furtive!

Love the feeling of using food that would normally go to waste.
 
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jumar

jumar

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Earlier this year on a bike ride we picked up some broccoli after the fields were picked. It was the best tasting brocolli we had ever had - we could have just eaten a plateful on it's own.

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magicsurfbus

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I wouldn't mind knowing how to forage for truffle$.

Someone with a bit of survival training pointed out green walnuts to me and I had a go at pickling a load of them but without much success.

The French are expert forageurs au bord de la mer - this is a very common low tide sight:

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We have buckets and spades, they have buckets and rakes. On the Ile de Re recently I noticed a sign setting the limit at 10Kgs per person per trip, that's 22lbs of shellfish. You could almost live off that.

As one involved in historic re-enactment I tend to forage for materials rather than food - particular favourites are birch bark and flint. Antler would be a major find. I recently found a 53lbs flint nodule on a Suffolk beach and no way was I leaving that behind. I lugged it half a mile back to the MH and nearly did myself in. Worth it though. I will also root around for historic artefacts near rivers - a recent half-hour search beside the Thames in central London yielded all manner of stuff from fossils onwards.
 
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I'm a newbie and always will be. You never know it all.
They used to do quite a lot of foraging around Morecombe, I understands it's been stopped now though.:whistle:
 
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Razor clams cooked in garlic and white wine. Fresh off the beach on our recent Hebredian trip. A quick look on google gave us loads of recipes. There were so many as you walked along the deserted beach jets of water squirted out of the sand !
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Don Quixote

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Not long enough, but a little common sense helps..........
When in the army I used to teach foraging to the guy's, but the only thing I could not stomach was eating worms in an omelette with or without mushrooms.
I still forage to this day after all everyone likes something for free and it aways tastes better.

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magicsurfbus

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@magicsurfbus

And what will you use it for, out of interest?
We're overrun with big flints here in Wiltshire.

To practice flint knapping, in the full understanding that I'll probably end up with 52.99 lbs of assorted rubble and maybe a tiny vaguely sharp pointy thing at the end.

There's no natural flint where I live, so I have to travel to find it.
 
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Chockswahay

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We love foraging, loads of blackberries this week :) In Brittany a couple of weeks ago we feasted on moules and Velvet crabs :)

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Last year in France we did Sloe Gin and Figs (not at same time tho!)
 

DBK

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I gather wild mushrooms (toadstools) whenever I can but I always double check with a book. "Mushrooms and other fungi" by Roger Phillips is good guide covering the UK and Europe. It is still in print and having just looked on line he has another more recent book out dated 2006 which I must get. Both have nice big clear pictures.

My favourite, partly because it is big and easy to find is the parasol mushroom. A couple almost make a meal! Morels are delicious but scarce. Shaggy inkcaps are common but vanish on cooking. A giant puffball, I've only ever found one, will feed you for a week.

But you can of course kill yourself. I only ever eat a wild mushroom if I can identify it and I am 100% sure it meets every single identification criteria. I found something in France recently which I was fairly sure was edible but I wasn't totally sure. That the locals had walked past it on the path was another hint!

We gathered blackberries on our recent trip to Brittany, and there were plenty of apple trees overhanging the hedges and the two together are very nice stewed and served with cream - which was harder to find than the blackberries!

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DBK

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Is foraging the same as scrumping ? If it is I was a great wee forager when I was a kid and the farmer had no right to put his boot up me arse .........................:D
My neighbour has just given me permission today to gather the cider apples from her garden which are lying on the grass. Will try to make cider from them - which must count as foraging. :)
 
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Don't do too much now, but as a kid, could always find a feed on the Sea Shore, or Young Pidgeon in a bombed Chapel, Seagulls Eggs, Blackberries, young Horse thistle for greens, the Red or bright green seaweed. Gorse flower, wild Sorrel, Rose hips Nettles,even Brambles(pick then while still soft, peel and eat either raw or in a stew).
Even the cattle feed "Mangles", (a very large Turnip type veg)

Sea Shore or Hedgerow, there is no excuse for going hungry

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denisejoe

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Which bits of the razor clams can you actually eat? Also which bits of the velvet crabs can you eat or is it all of them including the outside shell?

Joe
 

DBK

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Which bits of the razor clams can you actually eat? Also which bits of the velvet crabs can you eat or is it all of them including the outside shell?

Joe
I don't think there is a lot to eat in the average velvet crab but I have seen them added very effectively to a seafood stew. They were just cut in half and chucked in for extra flavour.

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C

Chockswahay

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which bits of the velvet crabs can you eat or is it all of them including the outside shell?

Joe

If not cooked as DBK says then you eat the white meat in the main body and the meat in the claws if possible (they are small). You should deffo NOT eat the 'dead mens fingers' tho' (the gills).

It is true to say that 5 velvet crabs only amounted to a cheeky starter :eek: ........... tasty tho' :D
 

denisejoe

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If not cooked as DBK says then you eat the white meat in the main body and the meat in the claws if possible (they are small). You should deffo NOT eat the 'dead mens fingers' tho' (the gills).

It is true to say that 5 velvet crabs only amounted to a cheeky starter :eek: ........... tasty tho' :D
Thanks. I thought they were a bit small. Wondered whether they are anything like soft shelled crabs in Chinese restaurants.

Joe
 

movan

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I don't, but my daughter forages for loads of things .... mushrooms, elderflowers, wild garlic, dandelion leaves, blackberries, apples .... etc. etc etc Some of the meals she comes up with are amazing .. :)

(but some not so :( )
 
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When we first got motorhome I was really taken with idea of getting a license and a couple of lobster pots, hubby vetoed that idea, said garage would stink, he conceded to a couple of fishing rods but has no enthusiasm for self sufficiency unless it involves a crumble. Fishing rods only get used if son comes.
I have mushroom book but would have no luck in telling them apart! Just looks too dangerous to me.
So our foraging is just nuts herbs and fruits. This year just herbs, figs, cherries and berries. Once cooked some shrimps we caught, struggled to see them once they were cooked. Tried salt round razor shell holes ..... Nothing!
 

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