Raw Rob: Raw food, wild food & consciousness

Lime Flowers

I just ate some lime flowers for the first time, wow, they are delicious. Very sweet with lots of subtle flavours, I recommend you look out for them.

Photo Copyright www.moorhen.demon.co.uk

There is lots of info on lime flowers on the PFAF website including “Lime flowers are said to develop narcotic properties as they age and so they should only be harvested when freshly opened” so be careful!

1 comment June 13th, 2007

Lime leaves

I’m slowly beginning to feel some level of confidence in being able to find a good variety of wild food. I’m eating plant leaves and flowers, tree leaves and blossoms, berries and small insects. I’ve recently started eating ants and have finally lost that squeamishness I used to get when eating insects. I’m sure I’d still get it with larger insects, but with the small ones I’m feeling like it’s a very natural thing to do.

Lime leaves (as in Tilia x europaea, not the citrus fruit) are very tender at the moment and have a very mild taste. Here’s a photo of a lime tree and a close up of a leaf:

7 comments April 25th, 2007

Hawthron and Borage

Spring is here and wild food is appearing everywhere. Now is the perfect time for eating hawthorn leaves, they are young and tender and very tasty.

Hawthorn leaves are supposed to be good for the heart and circulatory system. (See info on PFAF website.) Later in the year, you can eat the flowers and in the autumn, the little fruits.

Borage is also in abundance now. Edit: Thanks to the comment from Katrina I’ve now correctly identified this as Green Alkanet, Pentaglottis sempervirens, which is a member of the Borage family, Boraginaceae.

The leaves are a little prickly, but once you get used to them, they are good to eat, they have a flavour some people say is like cucumbers. The flowers are also edible, great for adding a bit of colour to a salad.

5 comments April 17th, 2007

Funky Raw update

I’ve not posted in a while so I thought I’d give you an update on what’s going on. Issue 10 of The Funky Raw Magazine came out a couple of weeks ago and I’m really pleased with it, maybe it’s the best one yet. I love the cover artwork, called “Spring” by Merav Wheelhouse. In my wild foods article I’ve created a table which compares the nutritional data of some common wild greens with cultivated greens, with interesting results.

I’ve also started releasing the magazine as an eBook for only £2.50 (about US$5), particularly for people outside of the UK so you can save on postage… I’m starting to convert the back issues to eBooks, Issues 7, 8 and 9 are available now and the rest will be soon.

And the other exciting news is that the Funky Raw Festival will be happening again, at the same organic farm in Cornwall, Wednesday 22 to Monday 27 August (bank holiday weekend). Yoga, music, dance, wild food walks and delicious raw food in the cafe.

For any of you in or near London, I will be running another Raw and Wild Food Day, where I will be teaching you how to make all my favourite raw foods (including chocolate pudding!) and taking you on a walk to identify the wild greens growing around here (now is a perfect time for greens, there are so many.)

Add comment April 13th, 2007

Rose Hips, our local superfood

Rose hips are the fruit of the rose plant. There are many different varieties but the one most often found in the wild is the Dog Rose (Rosa canina), pictured below. Rosa rugosa has larger, rounder hips. I was eating rose hips in the Autumn but I found them quite tart and the little hairs on the seeds could be a problem, but I’ve found that now is the best time to eat them. They are so much sweeter now and it seems the hairs are less of a problem. I pick the hip then kind of squeeze the seeds out without losing too much of the flesh.

Rose hips are extremly high in vitamin C in a form very useful to the body and have high levels of calcium, iron and vitamin A. They also contain selenium which can be hard to get on a raw diet.

Add comment January 11th, 2007