I am always looking for ways to save money or to visit the supermarket less.  During the pandemic I ran out of wholemeal bread flour and so I foraged some dock seeds and used that [...]

Flavoured gins and vodkas are all the rage now, but they can be expensive.  The nicest ones I have ever tasted are home made blackberry gin and vodka.  They bring back that taste of summer [...]

It is that time of year again when I am busy preserving foraged food and things from the garden.  When ever I cook black berries (brambles) I usually mix them with foraged apples to stretch [...]

I needed to make some room in my freezer the other day as I was making bread and it doesn't last as long as shop bought because it doesn't have the additives. I tend to [...]

Yesterday I was collecting female seeds from the nettle and drying them out to use in bread, porridge, smoothies and seed bars. You can tell the female nettles as the seeds hang down in big [...]

Our local moors are totally covered in bilberries at the moment. I think that they have other names if you do not live in the North of the England, and are also known elsewhere as [...]

I don’t pretend to be a doctor, or even a herbalist.  I am definitely not a professional forager, but I do like to study and utilise the plants and trees that are around us to [...]

This week I went on a retreat that taught some skills of self-reliance.  It included basket weaving, making toiletries from nature, archery and making fire by friction.  These skills might seem a strange thing for [...]

I am always looking for more ways to consume elderflower as it is full of goodness and is a free medicinal and nutritious resource.  Nature provides every thing we need, if we would only use [...]

Every where I go walking at the moment I am spying elderflowers.  Did you know that they have incredible health benefits?  They are full of antioxidants, are anti-inflammatory and are so are good for my [...]

I have only just found out how beneficial raspberry leaves are to our general health, though I remember drinking raspberry leaf tea when I was pregnant in the early 1980s.  The books of the time [...]

Finding and gathering wild and natural foods is called foraging. I remember watching the news about 30 years ago and it was about food shortages in Russia.  It showed an old Russian woman picking dandelions [...]

A lot of food that I make during April involves wild garlic as it adds a lovely taste to food and saves me buying onions or garlic. We use these  air fryer wild garlic scones [...]

My aim is to be more organised for next winter and make sure that we have enough preserved food for the 'hunger gap' that occurs between us eating most of my crops (usually by the [...]

The wild garlic is finally out in Yorkshire.  This is one of my favourite things to forage as I use it in meals, in baking, to flavour butter and to make pesto (which I freeze [...]

A free resource We were away by the coast last week and so I collected a bit of kelp seaweed for my garden as there was loads on the beach that I walked every day. [...]

I used to forage in my late teens to supplement my food but then my life improved and work and home took over and I rarely had time to forage, except for brambles.  I didn’t [...]

Apple trees are everywhere.  Birds drop seeds and they spring up unnoticed. Some times Councils plant them. Over the years I have become more mindful of what is around me when I walk and suddenly [...]

WILD GARLIC The woods are full of wild garlic near me and so we picked some whilst on our daily walk.  If you intend to pick some make sure you pick away from the paths [...]

I use foraging to increase my nutrition each year. I am seeing loads of rosehips in the hedges and so I am going to pick some and take them home to makevrosehip syrup. The [...]

It is that time of year again. I always pick some elderflower in May to make this refreshing drink. It grows a long the canal near where I live. The flowers have healing qualities [...]

I try to keep my food budget low and so cordials and bought drinks are for special occasions. I get fed up of water sometimes and so make cordials from fruit from the garden [...]

As you know from my last post the blackberries are out in Yorkshire now. Out of all the berries you can get blackberries have the most antioxidants, vitamins and minerals and they are FREE. [...]

Nature offers a lot more variety than the supermarket. Domestically we only farm about 35 plants but there are about 700 edible plants out there in the countryside. During the first lockdown our fruit and [...]