Raw Rob: Raw food, wild food & consciousness » Wild Food

Edible beech nuts from Epping Forest

Rob — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:13:00 +0000

I was walking in the forest when I heard a pitter-patter sound, like the sound of water dripping from the leaves after it has rained. But it hadn’t rained recently so I stood still and watched to see what was falling. Beech nuts! I’ve seen the empty outer shells before but never the actual nuts – I think the squirrels get them if you’re not quick.

The individual nuts were falling out of the outer shells onto the ground. I picked up a nut and found that unlike most nuts it was very easy to open with my finger nails. The nut looks a bit like a pine nut, and surprisingly it also tasted a bit like a pine nut.

I’ve done a little research and found that beech nuts (also called beechmast) are high in tannins and shouldn’t be eaten in large quantities. Soaking them for 8 hours or more and then rinsing them removes some of the tannins and probably makes them easier to digest.

We opened and then soaked the ones we collected and made pesto with them, not quite as creamy as when made with pine nuts but still delicious.

Spring is here, collecting wild greens again

Rob — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:55:15 +0000

Spring is here and the wild greens are back! It’s been a particularly bad winter for wild greens which makes it even more exciting to go forraging again. In the last week I’ve been picking garlic mustard, wild garlic, wild leek, dandelion, plantain, sow thistle, sheep’s sorrel, chickweed, hawthorn leaves and possibly more.

Here’s a photo I took of some sheep’s sorrel. It’s got a strong lemony taste. It’s not good to eat in large amounts due to it’s high oxalic acid content, but because of it’s strong flavour you usually only want to use it in small amounts mixed into a salad.

Wild fruit: Rose hips and Hawthorn berries

Rob — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:20:15 +0000

Here in London, the rose hips are ripe! They are one of my favourite wild foods, they taste great and if you read my post last year on the subject, you will know that rose hips are full of vitamin C.

There are a couple of indicators of ripeness:

they go a bit squashy and possibly look a bit wrinkled
the colour changes, ripe rose hips are a bit less shiny than the hard unripe ones

Rose hips have lots of seeds which are hairy and can be irritating to the throat. After picking, it is possible to pull the end off and squeeze all the seeds out at the same time, although this doesn’t always work. I do find that when they are properly ripe the seeds are not irritating.

Also still around at the moment are hawthorn berries. These taste a bit like avocado and are supposed to be good for your heart.

When picking wild food, always make sure you have the right plant, especially with red berries. With hawthorn berries, check the leaf shape to make sure you have the right tree.

Edible Wild Flowers – Colour and nutrition for your salad

Rob — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:25:24 +0000

Spring is here, brining with it lots of wild flowers, many of which are edible. Here is a selection I found yesterday. Click on an image to enlarge.

Hawthorn flowers are a good flower to start with, they don’t have a strong flavour. White dead nettles are another easy flower, not too strong and can be quite sweet. They are not related to stinging nettles so they won’t sting you!

Dandelion flowers can be a bit bitter and can take a bit of getting used to, but I like them now. Wild garlic (ramsons) flowers have a delicious sweet garlicky flavour while Jack by the hedge flowers have a stronger flavour – garlic and mustard with a little bitterness.

As always, take care when picking wild food and make sure you are certain about what you are eating.

Spring Flowers

Rob — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:35:03 +0000

The wild garlic (ramsons) is just coming into flower. The leaves are great in salads or made into pesto.

The flowers are delicious, they have a strong garlic flavour with a nice touch of sweetness and creaminess.

Tulips are beautiful, this is taken in Nunhead Cemetery. According to Twinkel’s article in the latest Funky Raw magazine they are edible but somehow they look too good to eat!

I don’t know what this is but it is very pretty. It’s in Peckham Rye Park.

(Click on any photo to enlarge.)

Wild Garlic Pesto

Rob — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 02:48:39 +0000

I like making pesto with basil, but it’s not really in season at the moment, so I used some wild leaves I collected. I used mostly wild garlic (pictured), a few chives and a few sorrel leaves. I ground up a couple of handfuls of pine nuts, then added the leaves and some flax oil and blended. It had a strong flavour, delicious on a green salad of dandelion leaves and other wild greens.

David Wolfe on eating Ants

Rob — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 22:34:48 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLF57MMavHs

There has been a lot of speculation on this topic, I think it’s the first time I’ve heard David Wolfe say he eats ants. His viewpoint is pretty much the same as mine.

Rose Hip Seeds

Rob — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 02:31:49 +0000

If you’ve been eating rose hips you will know about the seeds, they can be a faf to remove and some of them are so hard that even the VitaMix won’t break them down. So today I discovered a very simple way of using them – I put them in the blender with my hemp seeds when I am making the hemp milk, so the flesh gets broken down and goes into the milk and the seeds get left behind when I strain the milk. The milk tastes prety good like this too.

Rose Hips and Vitamin C

Rob — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:54:47 +0000

The latest addition to my breakfast of chocolate pudding is wild rose hips. They are in season now, you will find them growing all over the place, a local, highly nutritious superfood.

First, gently squeeze the rose hip to check if it is ripe. If it is firm then it’s not ripe, you want to feel for the softness and only very gentle force to pull it from the plant.

Rose hips are full of seeds which can be hairy and irritating when ingested, although I find that when they are properly ripe they don’t cause problems. There is a technique to getting the seeds out – hold the hip in between thumb and finger with one hand, and with the other, gently break the skin around the closed end of the fruit then pull while squeezing with the other hand – if successful all the seeds will come out in a clump. The seeds are edible, they are high in vitamin E, just some of them are very hard.

Rose hips are amazingly high in Vitamin C, according to Wikipedia, rose hips have 2000 mg per 100g compared to oranges with 50 mg and dried goji berries with 73 mg. I just recently found out that most animals can make their own vitamin C within their bodies, humans along with the other primates are some of the only creatures who don’t have this ability and have to rely on food for their vitamin C supply.

It starts to get interesting when we look at how much vitamin C other animals make. According to this article by Bill Sardi “A 160-pound goat produces about 13,000 milligrams per day” and “A dog or cat will produce about 40 milligrams of vitamin C per kilogram of body weight per day, or the equivalent of 2800 mg per day if these animals were about the same size as humans.” Compare this with the RDA of 90 mg and you begin to think that something might be wrong. The Vitamin C Foundation suggest that humans might need 5000 mg per day. In the Sardi article, it is suggested that this kind of dose of vitamin C can increase our lifespan and health.

So it all starts to fit together, by eating a raw food diet you would generally be getting a lot more vitamin C than the RDA, but maybe we need even more than that. I did a rough estimate of one day’s vitamin C intake for myself and it came out at around 500 mg, nowhere near the suggested 5000 mg. But adding 100g of rose hips per day could take that up to 2500 mg, so that’s what I aim to do while they are free and in season.

Shazzie’s Superfoods are for real

Rob — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:00:40 +0000

This is part one of Shazzie’s superfoods videos, in this one she finds some wild greens in her garden, a great start in helping you to identify wild food:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1wzs256OK4