Do you forage- and if yes, what ?

It’s OK after the first year!

You have more self-control than I have!

M0nica I make my sloe gin one year and don’t drink it till the next.

Idk if it counts as foraging but one year, as an experiment, I took an ink cap mushroom, extracted the ink, and used it to draw with as apparently it was used for writing in the past. It faded to a brown colour and wasn’t that visible.

I make sloe gin. 1/2lb sloes, 1/2lb sugar, one 75cl bottle of gin. Put in a big covered container (I use a demi-john jar with a cork ) for three months. Give it a stir once a week.

This year I bought my gin in Aldi, for just over £10 a bottle, the cheapest I could find.

It's a LONG time since I made it, but I think it's just cheap sweet sherry, with sloes bunged in and left for 6 months. That's what I remember anyway. I'm not a sherry fan, but the stuff I made that one time was fantastic!

Gagajo how do you make sloe Sherry please?

I bet you've been surprised by the great response Kali!
so many foraging grans out and about.

My Swedish neighbour used to follow an old Polish man during the mushroom season and watch carefully. He knew what he was doing.

On a walk to the pier near Leith recently with DS he told me it was the Eastern Europeans who were line fishing. He asked one what he'd caught and if he was selling them to a restaurant. "No, they're pollock and mackerel for my tea" came the reply from the Leither .

I was sad to find that East Lothian council cut back the seabuckthorn each year and don't use it. It grows prolifically all along that coast.
However, on googling I find an enterprise has started
www.seabuckthornscotland.com/why-seabuckthorn

Found some sloes, which I have been looking for since I moved up North. Already picked over so not many but might go back with a stick and some gauntlets so I can get deeper in the bushes to get more.

Sloe sherry is incredible! I've only made it once but drunk the whole lot myself, rather than giving it as gifts. Use sweet sherry then you don't need to add any sugar.

My mum used to take me into the forest to collect fungi. She was a farmers daughter and Italian so was confident when foraging. I'm afraid I enjoyed eating them but never paid much attention to what they looked like, or the best places to find them.
I've picked the usual stuff like wild garlic and blackberries etc. and was introduced to some other interesting fruits when volunteering with the forestry commission when I first retired.

I never realised that fuschia berries were edible. They are delicious and taste a bit like cherries.
Sorrel leaves have a nice peppery tang with a sort of citrus after taste.
My favourite discovery was the fruit of the wild service tree. They are sweet and have the texture and taste of dates. They need to be very ripe/slightly over ripe to be at their best.
Some people freeze them first to start decomposition.
A century ago you could buy them in the shops apparently.

I’m scared of the mushrooms here because there is one that looks exactly like a normal one but is actually deadly. I think the only difference is that it lets out slight yellow sap when cut but not always noticeable. I would love to know about bush tucker but I have never learnt. Nearest I get to wild things in the garden are nasturtium leaves and flowers in salads.

Namsnanny How do you.use Meadowsweet? I've always loved that plant - smells good enough to eat.

Loving this thread for so many reasons. The origins of Joules - amazing! Wish I'd been there.I

I remember picking Lavabread (Welsh seaweed) as a child - but the rinsing to get the sand out! ?

Well I've got a Joules top and a Sea Salt top but they are charity shop buys so perhaps they don't count.

When we lived in Cornwall the field opposite us produced beautiful giant puff balls. Sliced up they fry like a lovely omelette

I remember Joules when it was one tiny shop in her dad's backyard! He sold minor antiques and old tools, garden implements with a Cafe (no 'é' - it was pretty rough) - and sold basic meals- but Sunday lunches were fun, always with a band playing. Great fun.

Anyhow, I am chubby with 2 new knees, one still dodgy due to very old injury- and the fields are separated by 2 rows of electricfied fencing, or 1 electric and 1 barbed- so I have to drop to the floor, roll under like a Viet Veteran and somehow get back to my feet, with my bum in the air - not a sight for the fainthearted- but as I am in the middle of nowhere - ah well, who cares. Today I had much younger guests, but they were very friendly and gracious, and laughed with me, rather than at ....

Lilyflower

If you are after blackberries it is only called foraging if you are head to toe in Boden, Seasalt or Joules and carry a Sussex trug over your arm. Otherwise you are blackberry picking with the hot polloi.

???
I have a Joules mac which leaks and a wicker basket which DD used for HE at school. Will they do?
No Hunter wellies, though, mine are green Dunlop.

Just watching the Hairy Bikers foraging in the woods with an expert.
As Si said when they were foraging mushrooms "You only get it wrong once".....

Yes, we've foraged fruits and some seafood and I've just realised that the weeds I hauled out of the garden at the weekend are a good flavouring similar to cloves! Wood Avens apparently.
And we have lots of Alpine strawberries in the garden but they never produce much.

I've always called it picking too but have never found damsons in the wild unfortunately.

Today I found some ceps/penny buns, Millers, and some very rare ans scary looking, but delicious wax caps- bright yellow and orange! And lots of juniper berries- I spotted them the other day so took cloves and secateurs. Will pick the when the branches have dried a bit (very spiky!) and dry them some more to use to put in gin bottle for extra flavour, and other meat dishes.

Lilyflower

If you are after blackberries it is only called foraging if you are head to toe in Boden, Seasalt or Joules and carry a Sussex trug over your arm. Otherwise you are blackberry picking with the hot polloi.

lol, nope- I have been foraging way way before any of the above existed for sure ahaha.

Today I had old trainers on, black trackie bottoms and a stripey jumper, my dad's 50 year old wicker basked - and Swiss Army knife, the real thing, not from the airport, 1940s...

I call gathering anything from grass verges and hedgerows 'picking'. This year I have picked blackberries, sloes and damsons.

I confess to, once, buying a coat from Boden but it was a long time ago and it pilled badly and I have bought nothing from them since.

If you are after blackberries it is only called foraging if you are head to toe in Boden, Seasalt or Joules and carry a Sussex trug over your arm. Otherwise you are blackberry picking with the hot polloi.

Grew up blackberrying, mushrooming and on the beach winklepicking, limpeting and various other rock pool treats.

25Avalon I am going to try the rose hip syrup recipe. I usually pass them by and don’t pick them I will now Thanks.

My grandfather regularly used to gather nettles on Wimbledon Common (wearing very stout leather gloves) and even as a child I liked them! It's said they taste rather like spinach though the texture is very different.

Much the same as everyone else - crab apples, brambles, wild garlic, sloes. I tried an elderberry and apple pie once and it was pretty disgusting so leave them alone. I would love to go foraging for mushrooms but have no knowledge of them. DH bought me a book for Christmas one year. We both read it and thought better of it. Would love to learn properly but too much of a risk after reading the book. Angel of Death was scary!

I'd love to forage, but I think the only thing near me is likely to be seaweed!

I live in the North of Scotland, tree are few (apart from Forestry land - which has prohibited access), and I've not seen any fruit trees of any kind. I can't even garden here - I'm maybe 1000 yards from the sea, and the winds are fierce. I brought lots of plants with me, but not many survived the latter part of the winter (we arrived here at the beginning of February). I haven't seen even Brambles, as yet!

GagaJo

Ooooo Ginpin, what do you do with rosehips? There is a FANTASTIC huge area of rosehips near me but when I thought about picking some a few years ago, all the advice I could find about using them was very pessimistic about being able to filter out all the tiny, incredibly irritant (to the body) hairs out.

Make rose hip syrup. It’s lovely instead of sugar on porridge, great to sip a spoonful if you have a sore throat, and full of vitamin C.

Rose Hip Syrup
You need about 400 rose hips (700g). Snip the calyx off each and put in a pan. Just cover with water and simmer for 20 mins until soft. Strain into a bowl through a fine sieve. Return pulp to pan, add same amount of water and repeat for a second and third extraction. Strain all fruit through muslin in the sieve. Measure liquid into clean pan and add 600g sugar. Simmer 20-25 mins until frothy, removing froth with large metal spoon. Pour into sterilised bottles and seal when cold. Use as a drink diluted with water, or on top of pancakes, or with yoghourt or ice cream.

Surprised to hear that raspberries and black currants are to be found in the wild in some places, only blackberries and sloes around here. Made sloe gin last year but haven’t drunk it, so haven’t bothered this year. The gin makes it an expensive business!
I went on a course to learn seaweed foraging, so did that in the summer, great fun. A bit cold now though. Also samphire. Also people now gathering seaweed for commercial gain, concerns about over-exploitation.
Not confident enough to pick mushrooms, sadly. Old friends, originally from Italy, used to go gathering penny buns, ceps I think, which you can buy dried to soak and use, but I could never get the hang of identifying them properly, so never tried it unless with them. They could never understand why nobody did this in UK. And friends in Germany take foraged mushrooms to the local pharmacy, who will tell them if safe to eat