Welcome to wild-food.net

Welcome to my web site which supports the fungus forays and seashore forays I run in Dorset, Devon, Hampshire and elsewhere. It also supports my three foraging books - these are Hedgerow, Mushrooms, and Seashore sections linked at the top right of this page. These provide (or will provide shortly) extra content for my three foraging books. Here is some for the Hedgerow book.

New: All my New Forest Mushroom Forays are now fully booked, though I may release one more day soon. But I am hoping that the mushrooms will be out in Dorset in September for my Dorset Hedgerow and Mushroom day on Saturday 15th September. I have updated the form (which had a few mistakes on it as well!). This date is not appearing in the box on the right so please click the "see all courses" button to find more details and the booking form.

New: I have added two forays which I run in Kent at Moon Down. This was great fun last year. Moon Down is a marvellous place for fungi because of its enormously varied habitats.

New: The Seashore Forays in Dorset are now fully booked.

This is the time of year to look out for Sarcoscypha austriaca. You can't eat it - I have tried - but would you want to eat anything that looks so lovely against the dead woodland floor of January and February? My friend Norman, who lives in my village, tells me that when they were children he and his friends would make posies of this and snowdrops for their mothers. The Scarlet Elf Cup, as it is called, is a member of the Asocmycetes and thus a relative of Morels, Truffles and, rather surprisingly, yeast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books:
I have written three books on foraging for the River Cottage Handbook series:

The Mushroom Handbook is written to provide the easiest possible introduction to the rather worrying world of wild mushrooms. I cover most of the common edible species with descriptions of dangerous look-alikes. There is a simple key and extensive guidance on what to look for when trying to identify a species.

There are also some recipes!

 

 

 

 

Writing the Edible Seashore was a big adventure for me and I share in its pages what I already knew and what I learned in the writing of it. Seaside plants, seaweeds, crustaceans and molluscs are all covered. Again there is a chapter with some pretty good recipes.

 

 

 

 

My most recent foraging book is Hedgerow. This fills in all the gaps left by the other two, exploring the vast amount of wild food available from hedgerow, field, heath, wood and bog. This time I wrote all the recipes myself (with the invaluable help on some of them from Pam Corbin - the lady who wrote the excellent Preserves Handbook). I can highly recommend Juniper Toffee and Elderflower Delight!