It’s been a while since my last post – I have been preoccupied with physical pain. As one of my friends knows, my enthusiasm far exceeds my climbing ability, so when a 1.60m small person tried taking on a 5m tall cherry tree, it had to go wrong at some point. Sadly I think I’ve sustained a hernia in the same place where I had one before, many years ago.
I told my student and they knew me well, as the first question was: “But did you get the cherries?” Ha! Yes, I did. They were delicious. But I’m awaiting a scan and then a likely operation. I still have a little hope that it might be a torn muscle instead. Meanwhile I’m drugged up with very strong painkillers, which enable me to get about just far enough to get some tasty grub. I have been told “no swimming”, but nobody said anything about “no floating”, so that’s what I’ve been doing in the river, just face-down with prescription goggles, observing the plentiful wildlife below:
As a result of not posting for two weeks, I have a massive back log of food pictures to share! All the stuff you see below was picked since my injury, which I find encouraging as it shows it hasn’t completely knocked me out of the game.
First up are some beautiful potatoes. This bowl is just from one plant. We have 20 plants, so go figure!
With these lovely potatoes, and together with the first of our onions, I made a Vetch soup. Vetch is abundant right now and I wanted to pick it before this week’s heatwave. It tastes a bit grassy, pea-like, which is not surprising as it’s from the same family.
The herbs come from Hazlehead Park. Next to the restaurant is a border with all sorts of plants. I imagine the original owner intended this to be a kitchen garden. I doubt the current owners are using it as such, and nobody stopped me when I walked in wielding a pair of scissors. I’ve dried them in a low oven. I think I’ve got thyme of two kinds, marjoram and sage.
Things are also happening in the fruit department. The Shire is absolutely bursting at the seams! I can cycle about 20 miles in my current state, which is far enough to pick a bounty. It’s an exceptionally good year for cherries. We’ve also got blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries. The other plant on the photo is Pineappleweed, which makes a lovely calming tea. In the background, our elderflower wine is bubbling away nicely.
And then there were the mushrooms! We had one morning of rain this week, which brought them out. I feel immensely grateful that a beech forest starts about half a mile from my house, featuring most types of mushroom that I would also find further afield. I picked a wonderful collection of Charcoal burners later that day (they shoot up out of the ground at almost visible speed) and later on discovered that a beech log had started sprouting tiny pinheads of oysters. I feared that the heatwave might kill them off, so I went back the next day and the next with bikebottles full of water. It paid off! Yesterday and today they had grown enough for us to eat them:
To end this epistle, let me tell you about another fruit that most people don’t eat, but which is in fact quite tasty: the fuchsia berry. Fuchsias come in lots of different varieties, and some berries are tastier than others, but they are all edible. Look for the plumpest ones that come off easily. The taste, I’d say, is something like a cucumber with very faint notes of fig. Give it a go!
I’ll keep you all posted about the results of the scan and whether it is indeed a cause for surgery or not. If it is, I will probably the first patient in the Albyn hospital to ask if they can bring in their own foraged soup. August is August, after all. Watch this space!
The healthy forager 