April and May are great months to learn about the edible wild greens you find in your garden, in the hedgerows, for food and medicine. If you’d like to join one of my foraging walks in Wicklow see wicklowwildfoods.com for bookings and information 🍃
One of the great achievements of the year was to have my foraging tours listed in Lonely Planet Experience Ireland! I highly recommend this little book for the best local experiences and great local food and drink listings too
#failteireland #discoverireland #descobreirlanda #lonelyplanet #lonelyplanetireland #glendaloughdistillery
It’s such a busy time of year for me with foraging and teaching all month, I was so glad to get time this afternoon to forage in our own garden and make the first batch of elderflower cordial
#elderflower
#forager
#wildfood
Hedgehog mushrooms. My first time to try them. I didn’t forage them, I was at the green grocer and we of course chat about wild mushrooms at this time of year. When I said I hadn’t yet tasted hedgehogs he nipped out the back and gave me some he had foraged, lucky me. They taste a little like chanterelles, very good. And they have a firmer texture than most mushrooms. When I encounter a new mushroom I like to get to know the flavour, so I cook it simply on a cast iron pan, with olive oil, butter, garlic and some sea salt.
Hedgehog mushrooms are easy to identify, you’ll notice they don’t have pores or gills but spines.
#wildmushrooms
Acorn bread.
It is a mast year for acorns, it’s hard to get about without stepping on them or driving over them as they fall from roadside trees.
I gathered some to make acorn flour, first they will be dried, then peeled, ground, leached to remove the water soluble tannins and then used to make bread, cakes and other things. The bread in the photo is one I made a few years ago, I appreciated that sweet lovely bread more than any I’ve ever had, the long process made me not want to waste a crumb.
The unusual basket in the third photo belongs to a friend, it is made from oak. She calls it a spelk or swill basket, made from split green oak wood.
Hot in Ireland today. Apart from a cool swim in the river the very best herb I’ve found for cooling you down is Yarrow, Achillea millefolium. It has many health benefits but one is it’s ability to reduce body temperature. When taken as a tea or in a bath it relaxes the skin and thus opens the pores allowing the body to sweat. Be very careful to identify Yarrow properly as it does resemble some poisonous members of the carrot family. Flowers can be pink in the wild but are most often white.
We had a tour of the Avoca Woollen Mills yesterday, the oldest continuous running business in Ireland, 302 years and still going strong. All of the Avoca blankets are still made there! And what a pleasure to watch the weaver at work on the loom, the rhythm and pattern of his feet on the 4 pedals creating a herringbone pattern on this blanket, 1/4, 2/4, 2/3, 1/3, 1/4.
#irishhheritage
