Since it’s come up on the Daily, here’s our SW Scottish coastal top six foraged edibles:
1) Laver (seaweed) - very similar to Japanese Nori, delicious and highly nutritious, foraged in winter when veg selection is at a low ebb.
2) Wild garlic - early spring, incredible flavour and gives a real boost coming out of winter.
3) Rosehips (mainly R. rugosa) - we eat these through the winter, having harvested in bulk, scraped out the seeds and frozen in portions. They are an excellent alternative to tomatoes for making sauces, in fact I prefer them. We dry smaller rosehips for tea.
4) Nettles (stinging, leaves and seeds) - mainly for tea, sometimes soup.
5) Brambles (wild blackberries) - for jelly and wine making.
6) Watercress - early season soup, we don’t dare eat it fresh because of the potential for liver flukes in the wild stuff.
Interesting to note that all these fall mainly outside of the main fruit and veg season, enriching those parts of the year when things are quieter in the garden.
Edit:
There was some discussion further up about eating garden snails. We do and they’re delicious (our fave is Cretan-style), but it is important to let them purge out the contents of their digestive tract first. There’s no need to feed them anything, just keep them for a week in a secure but not air-tight container and rinse daily.
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