As August has been unfolding I have been sneaking up to the moors and delighting in the tinges of purple, pinks and yellow as the heath-land takes on its late-summer coat. Bell heather (Erica cinerea) is the first to appear with her larger purple bell-shaped…
Song, verse, sound and rhyme have been used by humans for thousands of years to communicate, respond and express. Sound is an integral part of our daily landscape. It has been used functionally (to explain things) as well as for fun and as an essential…
It’s raining and cold and I’ve just put the heating back on. Time for comfort food, something that will warm me from the inside out. Rice pudding has childhood memories for me, to be honest not brilliant ones. A blob of jam on top of sweet ambrosia rice wasn’t hugely exciting to me.
But wild rice pudding, I’ve had a lot of fun making wild rice puddings over the years. This gorse flower rice pudding is easy to make, and utilises both fresh flowers (in the baked pudding) and dried or semi-dried flowers for the syrup. You can read the full recipe in my Wild Food Foraging book. It doesn’t use much sugar either. Hurray!
It always feels odd arranging to meet a stranger in a car park. Though that is where I met photographer Rick Davy at the start of my working day. I was on a mission to collect a specific green, and I said to Rick that…
Part of the fun of foraging for me is coming home with a wonderful choice of unusual ingredients to cook and create with, or drying them to use another day. In my kitchen pretty much anything goes, of course there have been disasters along the…
Inspired by a winter sun rise and these wonderful bright yellow flowers, here’s a little video about foraging gorse flowers (ulex gallii and ulex europaeus) and making the most of the winter light.
It’s deep December and I’m standing outside. Actually, there’s 8 of us standing outside and waiting for the one that’s gone astray. Once we’re all congregated, we begin. There’s something innately quiet about walking in Winter, as if all around us is sleeping, and in…