The Pigeon Dilemma

I'm back! Well it seems like I haven't posted much in ages as there just hasn't been a spare minute. Bear's challenge has gone out of the window for another month, although there was some closure on the pigeon front.....

I had the opportunity to go for a walk in Bramcote Park in Nottingham, which is quite lovely despite the background hum of traffic. I chatted with friendly dog walkers, spotted a few familiar wild foods and was just generally enjoying the evening, when there was a 'plop'. I was walking through some trees and something small had fallen out of one of the trees. I turned round to investigate and found a dead pigeon on the ground with a bundle of soft fluffy feathers beside it. The bundle of fluff was a baby pigeon still clearly alive, but with a cracked beak and it must have literally dropped out of the tree just as I walked past.

Dilemma. The parent bird had clearly been killed by a cat or fox ( I am thinking cat, because it wasn't eaten whereas a fox would have had it for dinner). The young pigeon's feathers were not mature enough to fly and it would no doubt die without a parent bird, even if the damaged beak recovered. Why did it plop down next to me?

I could see the nest in the tree and it was too high up for me to reach, but with my heart thumping I grabbed the scared little bird and tried to balance it on a lower branch in the hope it would climb back. Plop!

Now I stood for several minutes thinking this through. There was absolutely no way I could save this bird or any hope it would survive. I have saved baby blue tits before, but they had fully fledged wings that had got wet in a shower, so lifting them into a hawthorn bush until their wings dried out meant they had a good chance of surviving. This pigeon had none. Plus they are classified as a pest (for good reason) so you are not supposed to rescue them.

Could I kill it? It was clearly going to die anyway, so a quick bash with a stick would save it from suffering. I still couldn't do it and just walked away. Let nature take its course and no doubt something will come and eat it.....just not me.

And so the great pigeon question has been answered - roadkill I can just about handle. Killing is something I am still not ready for. It does seem rather pathetic, but I am being honest with myself, which would be fine if I was a vegetarian, and wasn't expecting other people to kill animals for me to eat.

I have watched some of 'The Island with Bear Grylls' series 2, where a group of women and a group of men were left to survive on separate desert islands. It was interesting to see the women struggling with the dilemma of killing their adopted pet piglets (episode 6), which they aptly named Sage and Onion. In a situation where you are starving hungry your survival instinct clearly kicks in and they describe not thinking of them as animals anymore, just food. If you think you have the strength for this then you can apply for the next series here.

Tastier Than Bear's 6: Meat on the Menu

A lot has been happening the last few weeks, and I have a so much to blog about, yet very little time. I left you all on a cliff-hanger over 2 weeks ago with my quest to kill a pigeon, so it seems only fair that I start with an update on my foraging antics.

Well................I still haven't killed a pigeon, though I bought Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'The River Cottage Cookbook' (at the carboot sale for 50p) which follows his early antics at River Cottage. He has a whole chapter on Hedgerow, including wild meats, and is informative on preparing pigeon, rabbit, squirrel and ......snails (Hugh and Bear would get on a treat!). So having read more on the subject, I am feeling much more prepared for the pigeon-caught-in-a-net day to arrive.

 

But all was not lost on the meat front. Driving along a country lane I spotted some road kill. It was a cock pheasant and looked in very good condition, considering it had been hit by a car. I quickly jumped out and having some compost sacks in the boot, I stuffed the pheasant inside one and drove off full of excitement. This was it - true foraging with my first road kill dinner!

I was heading to collect horse manure from Suella, who is always very generous at sharing her horses' produce and there was quite a gathering. So I consulted with the wise Suella, Janet and Martha on my road kill and the first question was 'Is it still warm?' Why did that not occur to me? I had managed to bag the carcass without touching it, so I tentatively reached inside and yes it was warm, so very fresh. It was a bit smelly, but as they pointed out 'All living creatures are smelly'. Here it is.

Note to self: Don't stuff it in a bag next time, lay it flat! Nice how David Cameron is thoughtfully positioned to be consulting with my dead pheasant ;-)

Hugh doesn't mention pheasant, so I checked out some simple techniques on YouTube for removing feathers and gutting, but they all had shot birds whereas mine was already a bit damaged with guts spilling out. I was quickly losing my nerve, as a pre-packaged chicken doesn't come with the same smell, feathers, feet and undigested corn falling out. So I just dived in and cut out the breasts and quickly discarded the rest. I know it was such a waste, but I was overcome with squeamishness. Bear just rips off the head, feet and wings and skewers it for the fire, but I am not up to that yet (if ever).

I calmed down once faced with just the 2 pieces of breast and chopped them up for a stir-fry. I then dashed out to the woods (not shops) for some accompaniments - more wild garlic, hogweed shoots and stinging nettles.

I decided to break the rules and use some olive oil for frying as it is much easier than to keep adding dribbles of water. The hogweed shoots are absolutely delicious fried and were the best tasting part of the meal still. I may have forgotten to mention that I ate them last week on a bed of dandelion leaf salad, and they are so much more delicious fried than steamed.

The pheasant wasn't gamey (probably because it was too fresh), but rather plain and overcooked. I had thought to cook the breasts whole, so that I could leave them pink in the middle, but this was road kill and overcooked seemed a far safer option, if somewhat less appetising.

So I have eaten foraged meat and I survived ;-) There may be more meat menus to follow, if I can catch one of those darn pigeons.

Tastier than Bear's 2: Beacon Hill

I am trying to cook a foraged meal each week that is tastier than the ones that Bear Grylls cooks up for the celebrities he takes into the wilderness with him. Last week's jelly ear mushroom, dandelion root and nettle soup was edible, and probably nutritious, but unfortunately rather tasteless - the main flavour being soil :-( Was it tastier than Bear's wormy omelette though? Not the best start, but now at least I know that jelly ear mushrooms don't taste like mushrooms and are better for absorbing the flavours of the other components.

This week I decided to look for some really flavourful mushrooms - oyster mushrooms. I set off to Beacon Hill for a long walk and to scout around. I really don't know very many mushrooms, but all of the tasty ones I have spotted before at Beacon Hill. Apart from oyster mushrooms, I have seen ceps, bay boletes and chicken-of-the-woods...none of which are in season. Well you never know, I might get lucky.

Beacon Hill in Charnwood Forest, is the 2nd highest peak in Leicestershire, though only 248m (814ft). It still whips up a fair wind at the summit and gives spectacular views in all directions.

It was the site of a bronze age hill fort, and during the summer the upper part is grazed by rare breed sheep, pigs and cattle (and alpaca to protect the sheep from dogs), to maintain the natural heathland habitat.

Lower down the slope is covered with woodland, and more recently some natural play areas and a labyrinth have been added for kids. There is even a woodcutters shed where there was some chainsaw carving in progress.

Beacon Hill is the site for the National Forest's Woodfair which is held on the August bank holiday. It is an opportunity to see the woodcarving and other woodland skills in action and buy some locally crafted natural products (like the chopping board I bought last year).

Below is the 'Old Man of Beacon Hill'.

This theme has been introduced in many of the carvings around the hill. There are also carvings of little fairy houses in the labyrinth, but I can't go in there with my dog.

Instead we walked through the woods and admired some of the shelters that have been built by visitors. The one below was the best.

 

There is only one thing that irritates me about Beacon Hill and that is the strawbale shelter that has been built.

It looks lovely with it's stone base, thick curvy walls and green roof, but as a demonstration of the benefits of building with strawbale it is a bit rubbish.

The main benefit of strawbale is the super-insulating properties, but anyone visiting this shelter wouldn't notice those because it is an open shelter and even has large gaps in the walls.

Secondly, on the wall inside is the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf who blows down the house of straw. This re-enforces a message of a weak and vulnerable building, because a clever pig would build his house of bricks!

If you continue reading it explains why this strawbale structure is strong and how it is built, but I don't feel this is the best way to get this across. I need to do a post on some real strawbale buildings soon.

The ground under the beech trees was covered in leaves and empty beech nut cases. When I was a kid at primary school, my friend and I used to walk past a big beech tree each day. We would collect handfuls of the tiny little triangular nuts to take to school, and sit at our desks picking the shells off and munching on the tiny but tasty morsels. Really beech nuts are small and fiddly and other than showing them to my kids, I have never bothered with them since.

But the prospect of having just a few tasty nuts for my foraged meal was worth a bit of a hunt through the carpet of leaves. I knew that there were still some nuts about, because every flat stone or tree stump had the remnants of a squirrels dinner on it (The beech nut is top right in photo below). But every little triangular nut I picked up was empty and could be squashed flat between my fingers. It is only the fat ones that have a nut inside.

I soon gave up and focused on mushrooms, but really there were very few to be seen. Plenty of hoof fungus which isn't edible.

 

However I found a small cluster of oyster mushrooms. I wasn't sure they would taste great fried without butter, and didn't want to waste them, so I just picked two smallish ones. I also gathered the tops of some sticky weed, with a plan to make a salad. For the rest of the ingredients I decided to use the weeds from my garden. Apart from the fact that it is illegal to dig up the roots of plants without permission, it just makes sense to combine a bit of weeding with dinner.

 

My back garden is very shady and home to plenty of wood avens, The roots smell and taste mildly of cloves. Given how flavourless last weeks meal was, I wanted to find flavourful ingredients this week. I had a munch on a wood aven root and it was really rather pleasant and made my mouth feel very fresh. I might try making the recipe for mouthwash in one of the books, but for today I decided to make tea, as the roots are tiny, so won't be filling. I found a couple of small dandelions too. The roots don't taste too bad raw, but I decided to fry them with the mushroom for added flavour. The leaves went in the salad.

 

My front garden is sunny and the weeds are mainly red valerian (above) and my most hated weed, ground elder. It turns out that the leaves of both of these are edible too. What luck! So I weeded harvested a bucket of them. It is a shame that the ground elder roots aren't edible as it would have looked like a bowl of noodles.

The red valerian and a really lovely texture, but for me it tasted vile, so that was taken off the menu. The ground elder was great though with a mild parsley flavour. According to John Wright, in 'River Cottage Handbook No. 7: Hedgerow', ground elder was introduced to the UK as a popular vegetable, but then despite growing out of fashion it continued to grow regardless. The flavour should help mask the bitterness of the dandelion leaves, as I have no dressing to add.

 

I started chopping the oyster mushrooms and out crawled some little white maggots. Now Bear Grylls may think 'Great - extra protein', but for me it was not what I had planned for the menu! So I ended up discarding one of the mushrooms and finely chopping and inspecting the other.

In the photo above clockwise from the top right there are wood aven roots, sticky weed tips, oyster mushrooms, dandelion root, ground elder, dandelion leaves and more dandelion in the centre. Once the mushroom hit the frying pan the smell was divine. Frying with water worked, except that it evaporates very quickly, so you have to keep adding more. I decided to add a little extra liquid to give a bit of mushroomy sauce for the salad, and a sprinkle of salt.

 

Ok so it may be a small portion this week, but actually it tastes great. I could really eat this. The dandelion roots were thinner and straighter, so easier to clean and took on the mushroom flavour. The salad had flavour too because of the ground elder, although the bitterness of the dandelion wasn't completely masked. Obviously frying in butter or adding a dressing would really make this, but I am sufficiently happy :-) What do you guys think? Better than Bear's?

Tastier than Bear's

It is quite fun watching Bear Gryll's torturing teaching celebrities on an adventure in the wilderness. But really for someone so experienced in the great outdoors, the food he provides looks really disgusting! Take a look at the crunchy worm omelette he prepared for Zac Efron in his "Running Wild with Bear Grylls" series. (it is at 22 mins in)

Apart from the fact that the birds eggs could have been old and rotten, just the thought of eating wriggling worms is vile, (Remember wormy spaghetti in 'The Twits' by Roald Dahl?). Surely an adventurer with Bear's experience could provide a better meal from the wild than that?

Anyway, as I walk my dog through our little woods and muddy fields, I see all kinds of edible goodies, so I am convinced I can do much better than Bear does at eating from the wild. And so the challenge begins......

 

 

I am going to cook myself a meal each week that comes solely from food I have foraged that day and the challenge is to make it tastier than Bear's. I have a few books to guide me on what is edible or not. All I need is for you guys to be the judges and luckily for you I won't be asking you to taste mine or Bear's dishes! You can base your judgement on how appealing each meal looks and which you would rather eat...... if you had to.

Please feel free to join in with ideas, foraging tips or try the challenge too and send me descriptions of your meals to share, or post them on your own blog and I will re-blog them here.

It is tempting to use nuts foraged back in autumn or frozen fruit picked last summer, but it wouldn't be a fair comparison as Bear won't have those to hand. If I were Bear I would carry a few emergency sachets of salt with me, so I am going to allow myself salt and water to cook with, but other than that it is just what you can find on the day. Bear's wilderness probably has a lot more wild stuff available than my semi-urban locality, so I am probably at a disadvantage.

 

Being February, winter in the Northern hemisphere, this is going to be challenging. That is why this weeks challenge is up against wormy birds egg omelette. I think it would be fairly tough finding anything more disgusting than this, so I am hoping for an early win.

So yesterday I headed out into the little woods behind our house to see what I could find. Jelly Ear mushrooms was an obvious first choice because they are really abundant. They grow on the dead wood, and are very difficult to mistake looking and feeling like a human ear. I have picked them before, but never got round to cooking them. The texture is really very odd, and it is difficult to know what to cook them with. But any mushrooms should add some flavour and substance....I am hoping.
 

There were also plenty of stinging nettles starting to grow, so I carefully snipped off a few of the young heads, as a healthy spinach alternative. I was hoping to find something else, but our woods is not very old which means there is not a great variety of species. Apart from loads of poisonous Lords and Ladies springing up and seeing a few snowdrops, it was a dead loss.

The field next to it did have some dandelions around the margins, so I dug up 3 or 4 big ones, so that I could use the roots and the leaves. Even the young flowers are edible apparently. There were also daisies, their dark green rosette of leaves are edible according to my books, and looked quite tasty.

I headed down to the brook hoping for something to add some flavour growing on the embankment. I found some yarrow, which is supposed to be good for tea, some rather discouraging looking plantain, some young white deadnettles and finally some common sorrel.

Thoughts of a lovely green salad were circulating in my mind by now. But I still wanted some more substantial roots. Silverweed roots are reported to be tasty, so I checked out a few spots that are packed with them in summer, but there was no sign at all. The roots must still be there, but without the plant to guide me, I wouldn't know what I was eating.

It took a fair while to sort through my haul and wash all the mud from them. The greens looked quite delicious....... until I tasted them! Below clockwise from the left are white deadnettle, daisy, yarrow, common sorrel and young tips of cleavers.

The daisy leaves were vile and went straight in the compost bin. The dandelion leaves weren't great either, but then the leaves looked old. The common sorrel did have an interesting acidic taste, and might act like a squeeze of lemon. The young cleavers tips or sticky weed as we call it, was actually quite a nice fresh taste, and the deadnettle was a fair spinach like taste. It made me wonder why I didn't just pick the deadnettles instead of bothering with the stingers?

First I made a pot of yarrow tea. It was quite a nice flavour, although a bit weak - I need to pick more next time.

I started a soup by adding the chopped dandelion roots and jelly ears to some boiling water.

After 20 mins simmering, in went the nettles, sorrel and dead nettles for 10 mins. Then at the end I threw in the sticky weed and seasoned with salt. Ta dah!

It really didn't look too bad, and the first few tastes of nettle didn't taste too bad either. The dandelion is not a great flavour, but it did add some texture and felt filling.

But the jelly ear was definitely not the texture I was hoping for. It was still very firm and didn't seem to have softened much at all. Maybe I should have cooked it longer, but John Wright describes in the River Cottage Handbook on Mushrooms, how he boiled it for 8 hours and it still had the same texture! Ignoring the texture, it just had no taste whatsoever. So much for imparting a nice mushroomy flavour!

After all my careful washing of leaves and roots, the soup was still a bit gritty and earthy. Adding salt and more salt made no improvement to the taste. I tried to imagine it with a dash of soy sauce and some egg swirled in and managed to eat a third of the bowl, but it tasted worse with every mouthful so I gave up and had peanut butter toast instead. It was very nutritious and if I was starving I probably could have eaten more. But then maybe worms would look tasty if I was starving.

Ok...eating from the wild is not so easy, or at least not in winter. Part of me thinks this was a stupid idea, but then I am already planning how I can do better next week! What do you think?