Food for thought

There has been some interest recently in a report outlining the findings into research into what people were eating in Britain thousands of years ago. The main focus of attention was on hedgehogs and nettles. There seemed to be a degree of surprise that such foods were eaten, and what's more, they were cooked with other ingredients, not eaten raw.

Much of this was turned into a joke by media commentators. Okay, let's take off the menu any thought of hedgehog. Rather than eating them, I could do with some of them in my garden to eat the snails. But there are a remarkable number of nutritious wild foods in the UK that are widely available and enjoyable to eat. I use nettles for soups and flans. How about dandelion and blackberry leaf salad? How about rose hip tea? How about spicing up a salad with wild garlic leaves? How about roasted wild beech and hazel nuts, or blackberries or wild strawberries for a dessert?

Regular readers of this blog will know I am a bit of an enthusiast for wild food but the treatment of the issue as a bit of a joke by some commentators shows we have lost so much of our traditional foods in this country. That is a shame given we have good quality foods growing wild all around us. Making an occasional meal of them would save our environment so much by not having to import from thousands of kilometres away so much of the food we eat.

So if you haven't tried nettle soup, rosehip and crab apple jelly or a dandelion salad, put them on your menu!

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