The healthy forager

Orange is good. As a Dutch national, this fact was drilled into my head from a tender age. And as it happened, the most fantastic, memorable moments of the past week involved wild food that was indeed – well, orange!

I stayed in Glen Affric this week, and had two aims: cook chanterelle omelettes, and swim in one of the lochs. It turned out that the swim was a lot easier to realise than finding the mushrooms! Despite being an ancient forest, wetter than Aberdeen and covered in moss, the chanterelles did a great job at hiding. However, as luck would have it, coming out of the water and walking back to the road, I saw these little beauties growing right beside the loch. Searching hard and continuously while on the road (got a stiff neck to prove it ;-)), I found more. And the next day, too.

In the end I found enough to cook myself something absolutely divine on both nights. Added to the orange delights was an Orange Birch Bolete:

This beauty grew half a mile from where I was staying, and I picked it before breakfast. It needs to be cooked quite long, about 15-20 minutes, to remove any toxins. It was in pristine condition and large enough to feed me twice.

On the last day, I cooked up a feast with all this, and was able to sit outside in the sun with a glass of white. I felt so blessed to a. live in this part of the world, b. have acquired enough foraging skills to make this meal that I wouldn’t have gotten any other way. Unique flavours and textures, fresh from the surrounding forest:

Back home, the Orange Fest continued. There were some brown things as well (Scarletina boletes!), but this afternoon I was thrilled to find Salmon Berries in a large thicket growing very close to home. Just a bit of woodland I normally never walk through. The Salmon Berries is a member of the rose family, and you can tell that from the fact that the flowers and foliage is carried high on the stem. It was a wonderful experience to walk *underneath* the bush to pick the berries, a bit like picking grapes off a vine.

At the end of this week I’ve got a few more days off, which I shall spend exploring our own woodlands here, in search for more orange, yellow and brown, and who knows maybe some other colours. July is a season of bounty in many ways – I hope everyone who can, will make the most of it. Enjoy!