HUNTER-GATHERING: wild & fresh food

Treehouses & Clay Ovens...

By gad...what a week! I haven't stopped for little more than food (not sure that anyone says 'by gad' anymore- I certainly don't, but I'm taking back!). Since coming back from France its been non-stop: Building a tree house for the Times Home Section in two days (I'd recommend building one in four), It was a superb weekend with James and his family all getting involved- never seen a 4 year old using a power drill! Also been doing the build at Safari Britain, where I managed to receive a double blow to the head from a pair of ash rafters dropping out of the crown whilst setting up the yurt...not recommended.

 

Things are moving along nicely at  moving along at HGC Headquarters. I have been lining up some interesting posts to follow, but with so much on at the moment just a quick update...pictorially.

The clay oven has come along nicely- a bit of a step up from the my last effort whilst tree- dwelling, I just have to do a bit of nip and tuck on the entrance. Thankfully I had the help of some fine instructions from this lad: Simon Brookes guide to building a clay oven.

Knowland's wood- where the HGC headquarters resides is looking beautiful, wood anemones first followed by the delightful onslaught of the bluebells. My new landlord very kindly helped me out with some timber for the HQ, we spent a morning cutting some oak trunks from the wood- so far everything in the off-grid HQ has come from the wood- making me feel particularly smug about my carbon footprint! (save all the fires I will be burning throughout the summer...)

Hope you are enjoying spring and the gradual transition to summer, if you fancy a day or even an overnight course in becoming a 21st century hunter-gatherer- get in touch!

Sea beet and Phat Beets: Saag Aloo.

Phat Beets at 'Bunkers', Capbreton.

Few things lift the spirit more than a fine Spring day in Blighty, except perhaps a fine spring day in South-West France, a spring day in Hossegor makes a British Summer pale in comparison. The 1^st April was 30C and hotter than Satan’s bollocks, my pasty complexion was shocked and probably thought it was an April fool…not so. The evening was spent sweating by the beach and drinking some of Bordeaux's finest at the beach in Biarritz.

Still scorching at 8.30pm. Spring indeed!

During my visits to Aquitaine, I always go for a bit of an exploration into the ‘Sauvage’ of the Cote des Landes, despite the volume of sand, maritime pines and cork trees, there are many similarities to our native Britain. Be it on foot, in the car or with the fishing rod, there is plenty to do and so far I have found many of the wild foods we have in the UK in serious abundance.

The French like to give the impression they are serious foragers- you cannot deny they’ve cornered the gastronomic market with their culinary genius, but it strikes me that the French have lost interest in food for free unless it has a pulse or a web of mycelium beneath it. Mushrooms are the Frenchman’s wild food of choice and perhaps that’s all that matters to them. They are old hands at gathering wild greens and the baton of thrift has been passed over the channel and lobbed over the Atlantic to let the Brits and the Yanks rummage through the undergrowth for a change.