DoomsdaysCW<p>A British feast from garden weeds</p><p>Jessica Vincent, 8 May 2020</p><p>Excerpts: "It was an unusually hot April morning in Colchester, England, and the fields, now in full bloom, were bursting in brilliant yellows, whites and purples. Armed with a wicker basket and David Squire’s book Foraging for Wild Foods, I scanned the Essex countryside for the ingredients to my first-ever foraging taster menu: stinging <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/nettle" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>nettle</span></a> soup; gnocchi with <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/dandelion" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>dandelion</span></a> leaf pesto; <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/WildGarlic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>WildGarlic</span></a> and stinging nettle ravioli; and, for dessert, dandelion flower cookies.</p><p>[...] </p><p>"The earliest memory I have of <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/foraging" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>foraging</span></a> is picking wild <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/blackberries" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>blackberries</span></a> with my grandmother. Our quest for England’s sweetest wild fruit led us to our local park in Banstead, Surrey, a small patch of green which, between August and October, would burst with swollen blackberries. Under strict instructions, I’d carefully manoeuvre my way around the thick, sharp brambles, my eyes scanning for the darkest and shiniest berries of them all. My grandmother had learned from her mother – who, as a young evacuee during World War Two, would forage wild fruits and plants as a supplement to the meagre food rations – that the plumper, darker berries were the sweetest. Those juicy crimson-purple morsels would often be turned into blackberry crumble, the perfect sweet finish to a Sunday roast dinner."</p><p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200507-foods-you-can-forage-from-your-own-garden" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">bbc.com/travel/article/2020050</span><span class="invisible">7-foods-you-can-forage-from-your-own-garden</span></a> </p><p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Foraging" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Foraging</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Gardens" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Gardens</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/SolarPunkSunday" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SolarPunkSunday</span></a></p>