Foraging is Mother Nature's treasure hunt. Your essay brought to mind the brilliant British-born forager queen, Patience Gray, whose book _Honey From a Weed_ I am sure you are familiar with. Foraging for wild edibles changes, depending on where you are. You were wise to learn from the local women in Greece, as Gray did in Greece, Spain, and Italy. I have gone on foraging walks with experts in Southern California, when I lived in Los Angeles, and in theVirginia Piedmont, when I lived in DC. I don't do as much foraging in Maine, because my arthritic spine and prosthetic knees discourage bending and kneeling. But I have a large jar of dried black trumpet mushrooms from the huge wild 'shroom harvest two seasons ago. As a possibly interesting side note, my British son-in-law's mother grew up playing with Patience Gray's children, because her father--my son-in-law's grandfather--the well-known graphics designer F. H. K Henrion, employed Patience Gray as his executive assistant and she lived across the road from him. Gray mentioned him in her book as one of her primary design mentors.
I LOVE all these circles that join up! Patience Gray was a hero if mine, too. I have always wanted to be her. When I joined The Observer, where she had been the first women's page editor, giving women features on the arts and literature and more until her replacement, a man, decided what we needed was cooking and shopping, her spirit still stalked the corridors. A wonderful woman with an unconventional life. You're so right that free plunder alters with the area. In Sri Lanka, where I was recently, it was astonishing just how much food outside the towns was foraged for.
What an interesting life you've led! I can see that a sensible job would feel like wearing a straitjacket. And youth is too precious to squander on sensible.
I love the pie recipe, just wondering if it would freeze well ... that way, one would keep me going most of the summer! Young hawthorn leaves are good in a salad, and my gardens always boast a nettle patch and a dandelion or three ... the neighbours think I'm nuts. There again, as my American buddy Herb was wont to say, there's no percentage in being Joe Normal!
Joe Normal is not a personnage I'd wish to share a desert island with. I haven’t tried freezing the horta pie but I don't see why it wouldn't - and well, I'd guess.
I've only ever really foraged for berries, and even then I ended up eating yew berries, which are supposed to be toxic! They didn't do me any harm though, so either I'm immortal or I unwittingly built up a tolerance...
Like a lot of these things, humans have to consume a fair amount before the poison has much effect. Just don't confuse monkshood (Aconitum napellus) with horseradish ... not so much toxic as nastily lethal!
My cookbook editor had conniptions when my recipe for French apricot tart said to blanch the kernels inside the stones and scatter them over all as the French do. No amount of assurance that you'd have to eat your body weight in kernels before the minute amounts of cyanide had any effect was enough. The suggestion was withdrawn and almond flakes added instead.
Typical of today's culture of fear. Presumably the French have some sort of innate immunity ... either that, or they're trying to kill off the rest of the world through their cuisine!
A friend in Puglia was so transfixed by her he made a pilgrimage to all her haunts. As for your Greek adventure Mamma Mia had nothing on you!
What a wonderful project!
Foraging is Mother Nature's treasure hunt. Your essay brought to mind the brilliant British-born forager queen, Patience Gray, whose book _Honey From a Weed_ I am sure you are familiar with. Foraging for wild edibles changes, depending on where you are. You were wise to learn from the local women in Greece, as Gray did in Greece, Spain, and Italy. I have gone on foraging walks with experts in Southern California, when I lived in Los Angeles, and in theVirginia Piedmont, when I lived in DC. I don't do as much foraging in Maine, because my arthritic spine and prosthetic knees discourage bending and kneeling. But I have a large jar of dried black trumpet mushrooms from the huge wild 'shroom harvest two seasons ago. As a possibly interesting side note, my British son-in-law's mother grew up playing with Patience Gray's children, because her father--my son-in-law's grandfather--the well-known graphics designer F. H. K Henrion, employed Patience Gray as his executive assistant and she lived across the road from him. Gray mentioned him in her book as one of her primary design mentors.
I LOVE all these circles that join up! Patience Gray was a hero if mine, too. I have always wanted to be her. When I joined The Observer, where she had been the first women's page editor, giving women features on the arts and literature and more until her replacement, a man, decided what we needed was cooking and shopping, her spirit still stalked the corridors. A wonderful woman with an unconventional life. You're so right that free plunder alters with the area. In Sri Lanka, where I was recently, it was astonishing just how much food outside the towns was foraged for.
What an interesting life you've led! I can see that a sensible job would feel like wearing a straitjacket. And youth is too precious to squander on sensible.
I love the pie recipe, just wondering if it would freeze well ... that way, one would keep me going most of the summer! Young hawthorn leaves are good in a salad, and my gardens always boast a nettle patch and a dandelion or three ... the neighbours think I'm nuts. There again, as my American buddy Herb was wont to say, there's no percentage in being Joe Normal!
Joe Normal is not a personnage I'd wish to share a desert island with. I haven’t tried freezing the horta pie but I don't see why it wouldn't - and well, I'd guess.
I've only ever really foraged for berries, and even then I ended up eating yew berries, which are supposed to be toxic! They didn't do me any harm though, so either I'm immortal or I unwittingly built up a tolerance...
You're definitely immortal. Do you also have a horn out of your forehead?
I'm more narwhal than unicorn...
Like a lot of these things, humans have to consume a fair amount before the poison has much effect. Just don't confuse monkshood (Aconitum napellus) with horseradish ... not so much toxic as nastily lethal!
My cookbook editor had conniptions when my recipe for French apricot tart said to blanch the kernels inside the stones and scatter them over all as the French do. No amount of assurance that you'd have to eat your body weight in kernels before the minute amounts of cyanide had any effect was enough. The suggestion was withdrawn and almond flakes added instead.
Typical of today's culture of fear. Presumably the French have some sort of innate immunity ... either that, or they're trying to kill off the rest of the world through their cuisine!
That sounds like exactly the sort of mistake I would make... I *love* horseradish, wasabi, all of that eye-popping sinus burn!