Spring is here, collecting wild greens again

Posted on March 28, 2009 by Rob

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.

Tax on chocolate?

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Rob

In the news today, doctors calling for chocolate to be taxed like alcohol and tobacco to tackle increasing obesity levels. Of course the answer is simple, they just need to switch to healthy chocolate. And eat a healthy diet and do a bit more exercise.

Mushrooms in a creamy sauce

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Rob

I made this for dinner and it was delicious and fairly simple to make:

Finely chop a piece of leek (about 20g) and tear up some fresh coriander leaves and marinade them in lemon juice and flax oil. (If you don’t have leek, I’m sure onion would work just as well.)

Slice some mushrooms and mix them in well.

In a seed grinder (or blender) grind a couple of handfuls of pine nuts. Then add a handful of coriander and a little water and grind until smooth. Mix this in with the mushrooms and it’s ready to eat.

Mango salsa

Posted on December 24, 2008 by Rob

I saw a version of this in a shop and got inspired to make a raw version. It’s fairly simple, just blend the following ingredients:

4 soaked sun dried tomato halves
flesh of 1 mango
about 10 cherry tomatoes
1/2 a red pepper
small piece of fresh ginger
small amount of cayenne pepper

Tomato curry sauce

Posted on December 18, 2008 by Rob

I made this last night and it worked really well. As usual, I had it with a big plate of wild greens.

6 sun dried tomato halves, soaked for 10 minutes
6 prunes, soaked for 10 minutes
4 cherry tomatoes
1/2 red pepper
1/4 courgette
small handful fresh coriander
small handful fresh parsley
a few leaves of fresh rosemary
small piece of ginger
small piece of red onion
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
pinch of cayenne pepper

Put everything in the Vitamix and blend.

Delicious raw chocolate truffles

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Rob

The part of my job I like best is when people send me free stuff. Well, particularly free raw chocolate! Last week Booja Booja sent me a sample of their new raw chocolate truffles and they really blew me away. They have two flavours, Raspberry and Dark Chocolate, and they are sublime. They remind me of chocolate truffles from pre-raw days…

The truffles comes in cute little boxes of 8:

Now, you want to know where to get them from? Well, just so you know, Booja Booja have a policy never to sell their chocolates in supermarkets, so you want to be looking in independent health stores and naturally, with a raw and organic product this good, ~~you can get both the Organic Raspberrry Raw Chocolate Truffles and the Organic Raw Dark Chocolate Truffles from Funky Raw!~~

Videos from Funky Raw gathering

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Rob

At the Funky Raw Space of Love gathering The Holistic Channel came and did a bit of filming, including a brief interview with me. I forgot all about it, and just recently thought to look on their website, and they have the video up. Click on the images below to see the videos, they will open in Windows Media Player (or possibly in your media player if you have something different.

The first one is a general snapshot of the festival, although not really very representative of Funky Raw: (12 mins)

This next video is Anima playing their beautiful music at the festival: (17 mins)

Banana and avocado sweet snack recipe

Posted on November 6, 2008 by Rob

Here’s a quick and easy recipe, I just made this and I though it was worth sharing:

1/2 avocado
1 banana
2 teaspoons mesquite meal
2 teaspoons lucuma powder

Simply mash the avocado and banana with a fork, then mix in the powders. Great as it is as a sweet snack, or could be used as a cake filling.

Wild fruit: Rose hips and Hawthorn berries

Posted on October 10, 2008 by Rob

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.

Spicy sauce recipe

Posted on September 19, 2008 by Rob

I made this for my dinner last night and it was delicious so I thought I’d share. The tomatoes I used are a rare type, called “Black Cherry” they’re well worth trying if you spot them, they are less acidic and slightly sweeter than regular cherry tomatoes. $\"Black Cherry\" cherry tomatoes$

1/2 sweet yellow pepper
2 “black cherry” cherry tomatoes
a small piece of courgette
3 sun dried tomato halves (soaked for 10 minutes)
about 5cm of the green leaf part of a leek
a small piece of fresh ginger
a small piece of a fresh hot Thai chilli
a good handful of fresh basil

This all went into the blender. I served it on a load of wild greens, with an avocado and a bit of unpasteurised goats cheese.