This week I became freshly aware of the importance of ‘variety’. While in theory I could survive this month solely on the tatties from our garden, this would make it into a miserable affair. The tatties are very tasty, don’t get me wrong, but to make a day exciting, there need to be different flavours and textures to look forward to.
Nutritional guides tell us to ‘eat the colours of the rainbow’ for a reason. As a rule of thumb, the various colours in fruit and vegetables correspond to certain nutrients. And we need all of them. As a forager and grower, eating a riot of colour is no problem at all! Yellow raspberries, orange carrots, red cherries and peppers, purple plums and blackberries, blue blaeberries, green nettles, sorrel, dock and plantain, brown seeds and mushrooms.
That sorts out the physiological needs. Then there is our mind to consider.
Earlier this week I was lucky enough to pick up a box full of windfall apples.
I made a wonderful compote, which is by far my favourite breakfast. After two weeks of berries, it felt amazing to taste apples again! Now, when I wake up, I look forward to my bowl of warm compote. It’s comforting.
The other thing I’ve been missing is chocolate. Yes, you can totally have a balanced diet without chocolate, but my soul would gradually sink into despair. So this week I made my own: from the roasted and ground seeds of the Linden tree:
Yesterday I went a step further and used the Linden powder to make boozy cherry brownies… Oh my, that was an incredible success! Here is the recipe:
Linden & dock seed brownie with boozy cherries
Ingredients:
1 egg
60 gr buttery
15 gr finely ground and sieved linden powder
80 gr sugar
20 gr white bread flour
10 gr ground dock seed
Handful of wild black cherries cooked in homemade blackberry wine
Mix everything together and spoon into the smallest cake tin you have (or muffin cases). Bake for 20 mins at fan 150C.
It has a perfect brownie texture, gooey and dense, but well cooked. It’s chocolaty and the cherries go beautifully with it.
So, psychological needs and physical needs – making sure they are both met is a recipe for happiness. That, and the joy of waking up to the sound of rain!
The healthy forager 