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Thursday 24 March 2022

Foraging: a rant.

The headline said:

Three of the best foraged recipes

Well, there's not that much around in England to forage at the moment, but there's wild garlic, and bread-and-cheese (bread-and-cheese is the new sprouts of the hawthorn trees). 

Still, perhaps you can find roots to dig up that, if boiled for four hours, taste almost like a turnip.* 

It might be worth walking a fair way with a bag, some secateurs, and a trowel, if there's a chance of fresh free food.

The first recipe in the newspaper article was for Lyme Bay scallops with wild boar black pudding

Lyme Bay? 

Wild Boar?

,,,but that would involve chartering a fishing boat. It would also involve borrowing a hunting gun.

Foraged? 

Only an army of occupation would call that foraging.

Ah.

Well, I suppose it might come in useful, then. 

Better an army is hunting wild boar than innocent people, anyway.

Word To Use Today: forage. This word comes from the Old French fourrage, and probably from a German language before that. It's probably basically the same word as food and fodder.

*That's a line stolen from a short story by the glorious Diana Wynne Jones.


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