I’ve been inspired by John Lewis-Stempel’s “The Wild Life“, to resurrect my fascination with wild and local foods. Although I haven’t actually foraged much further afield than Borough Market, I am currently preparing a pot of slow cooked, wild, rabbit stew. I might not have shot it myself but I was rather perturbed when I noticed bunny fur remaining on the quartered carcass. De-fluffing the tea brought me a bit too close to the harsh realities of our carnivorous lifestyle but that can only be a good thing.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to persuade any one else to join me for a serving so I’ve taken the precaution of preparing a backup leek and potato soup.

Back to the book, John committed a year of his life to eating wild produce hunted or foraged within the grounds of a derelict farmhouse that he and his wife had bought to renovate. It sounds like a hell-ish challenge. He started in game season so he had plenty of meat to hand but had to grub around for meager offerings of greenery. He managed to poison himself more than once by over-reliance on dubious quality produce.

His ingredients list for February reads:

Pigeon, rabbit, squirrel, dandelion, corn salad, nettles

He was pretty strict about the source of his food and so beyond the stuff he gathered or shot on a daily basis he would have to rely on foods he’d managed to preserve or dry such as nuts, oils, rosehip syrup and copious quantities of alcohol.

I think I was particularly inspired by his ability to keep himself stocked up with daily supplies of alcohol as well as his ability to stomach some of the concoctions brewed. Home brew wine is rank at the best of times and I don’t think oak leaf wine would fare any better than the usual culprits. Dandelion and Burdock beer sounds delightful though and I was impressed to discover you can turn the brew around in about a week.

The book is illustrated with many historic and authentic hedgerow recipes which must have taken some time to unearth. We have Chickweed soup, Stuffed Bistort Leaves, Fat hen pancakes with horseradish and as I’ve seen them lined up next to the rabbits at Borough Market, perhaps this one will do for next weekend:

Herby Squirrel Burgers
Serves 4

1lb/450g lean minced squirrel
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp hedge garlic, chopped
2 tsp equal parts wild thyme and wild chervil
pinch salt

Mix together the egg, meat, herbs and salt in a bowl.
Shape into flattened patties and fry in goose fat. Serve with a green salad.

I haven’t been down to the plot since the great leek disaster but this morning my electronic to-do list beeped to inform that it would soon be time to plant broad beans so we gathered our sun screen and headed off into the heatwave to prepare a bed.

Here’s the M1 Gardener basking in the sun, mocking me. Lynn and I are collapsed under the shade of the shed having spent 20 fruitless minutes trying to start the frustrating machine in the hottest day since the last unseasonably hot day, probably back in April.

I am beginning to hate the rotovator. It offers so much in the way of pain free cultivation but its always such an arse to use. It weighs a tonne, requires repeated muscle wrenching yanks to even hint at a splutter and then when you finally get it started it roars for a matter of seconds before choking its way to a pathetic end. Then the process repeats.

I ended up reverting to the good old fashioned way of soil cultivation.

Today’s trip to the allotment was a disaster of mythical proportions.

A plague of juicy maggots reduced an entire bed of leeks to this pitiful harvest.

I have to confess that I rarely do well with my leeks but I’ve never seen them as bad as this. They are completely peppered with holes, riddled with the maggots and turning to mush below the greenery.

Much wailing prevailed.

Having come back to my computer I have cheered myself up with a trip to soilman who has a whole page dedicated to leek miseries. Also on my web search I found a tip which suggested that you cut the leeks down to soil level and wait for them to re-sprout. Too late for that now but it might have been worth the risk with a few of them, I’ve barely got enough for a leek and potato soup here.

The same tipster made a point of saying you should burn the diseased trimmings. I’m afraid I didn’t do that, I like to save as much as I can for the compost heap but I’ll regret it if the bugs flourish ready for next year.

I suspect it is the leek moth as I’ve found the perfect description on this site. It’s description of the life-cycle of the leek moth includes the following:

Adult moths overwinter in plant debris. As temperatures rise in the spring, the moths start to become active and egg laying begins in April and May.

Sounds like I’ve created them a home from home in the warm heap of plant debris. I wonder if I’m too late to go back and incinerate the pile of discarded leeks.

I’ll be growing them under enviromesh next year. I had my carrots under enviromesh and for once I can be proud of a carrot harvest.

I’ve spent a good proportion of the bank holiday reading about food and quite specifically how to eat food.

I started with the seriously irritating Allen Carr and his Easyweigh to Lose Weight. I’ve read this once before and threw it out in disgust but I have to cut Allen a lot of slack as I’m into my tenth year as a non smoker thanks to his EasyWay methods. Still, when it comes to food and nutrition he drives me nuts.

His main premise is that we should look to wild animals for advice on what to eat, after all they don’t get sick or obese. Somehow he manages to jump from wild animals to the instruction to eat a vegetarian diet with fruit and nothing but fruit for breakfast. I can cope with all of that and resist the temptation to argue the point of predation and age-related conditions but when he starts on slugs and snails I’m afraid the book has to go into the charity pile again.

I know about slugs and I’m not too enamored of them. Allen likes to use the example of the slothful slug and snail to illustrate his suggestion that exercise is overrated. You don’t really need to exercise as, after all, have you ever seen an obese snail? That sets me wondering. If I match sluggy slime trails to body length, I reckon our squidgy friends are really quite active critters, especially of a damp evening and if we are going to be critical, I’m not sure I’d consider them the slenderest of creatures either. Quite podgy I’d say.

Next on my list was Savor, a Buddhist guide to mindful eating. This book attempts to fuse nutritional advice with the buddhist concept of mindfulness through the discussion of the four noble truths and a series of exercises or meditations that encourage a focus on the present. Mindfulness is not restricted to eating and Thich Nhat Hanh takes us through mindfulness for eating, exercise and living.

The eating messages I’ve taken home are:

• Eat at the table
• Avoid multitasking – so no TV, work or magazines
• Appreciate your food by use of all the senses
• Chew and take it slowly
• Quality not quantity

There is a particularly useful exercise on appreciating the apple and I’d encourage anyone to spend 10 minutes with a Discovery apple, reacquainting yourself with its joys.

I’m a big fan of food and this time of year is particularly conducive to appreciating food. The plot is so productive that I can’t help but serve up meals that are at least 70% home grown and it is such a delight to look at the plate and remember the soil turning, seed sowing, weeding and watering that led to the harvest.

We’ve snuck a few yellow courgette plants into the flower border at home and I find their unexpected presence on the plate extremely satisfying.

Not content with the first two books on food, I’ve turned now to Michael Pollen for the down to earth advice succinctly wrapped up in the title of this post: Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants. Homespun advice that would make your mum and grandmother nod their heads in appreciation.

In Defense of Food, contains Michael Pollens manifesto for eating and attempts to find the commonsense lost in the nutritional world that has become hijacked by commerce and the food industry.

In addition to the above advice you’ll find tips such as:

• Only eat food your great grandmother would recognise as food
• Avoid products with unpronounceable ingredients or more than 5 ingredients

I’ve been overdosing on common sense, so now it’s time to set the table and enjoy the products of our labour.

The plot and the hedgerows are so productive at the moment. It seems about two months too early but the sloes are already plump and juicy. I’ve just had to polish of the last remaining drop of slow gin from last year so that I can re-use the bottles for this year’s vintage. Extraordinarily tasty and potent stuff!

This year we remembered to take carrier bags for a trip around Mitcham Common and have collected enough apples and blackberries for about 30 pies. The trees were almost breaking under the burden of fruit, it’s a shame more people don’t take advantage of the free crops.

Back on the plot we’ve found ourselves overrun with beetroot and I’m in the unusual position of trying to find creative ways to cook and store it.

The Preserves book from the River Cottage Series has a fabulous recipe for sweet beetroot relish. I made slight adjustments, replacing creamed horseradish for the requested home-grown pickled variety and I also cheated with the tomato puree which I couldn’t be bothered to make from scratch. Here is my cheats version:

Sweet Beetroot Relish

1kg Beetroot – roasted at 180′C
250g Sugar
150ml cider vinegar
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
large onion finely chopped
2 tbsp creamed horseradish
4 garlic cloves crushed
1 tbsp tomato puree

Put all the ingredients except for the beetroot into a preserving pan and boil for 5 mins.

Peel and coarsely grate the roasted beetroot. Add this to the mix and cook for another 10 mins.

The juice should be syrupy when ready to transfer to the sterilised jars.

It should last up to a year.

It’s been an incredibly productive season. Today we bagged up 3 sacks of assorted spuds and loaded the car boot with beans galore.

It all feels vaguely sinful.

The freezer is bulging, I’ve cooked dishes to last a week, I have beetroot roasting for a delicious chutney and still we have buckets of beans left in the kitchen.

We’ve dropped produce off with a friend and will offload more with the neighbours but it would be nice to pass these beautiful crops to someone who struggles to afford fresh crops and who hasn’t already done their weekly shop.

What’s happening with the weather gods? The rain has come too late for a bounteous crop of spuds but is perfectly timed to ruin my garlic bulbs that are desperately in need of a good sun basking.

I had a tricky decision to make this weekend. The ground was sodden and with no respite promised, the bulbs of garlic that had appeared to be drying a fortnight ago were now disintegrating into a white fluff. I decided to pull the lot up and deal with the drying task at home.

We’ve now got close to 100 bulbs of wet fresh garlic, lined up under every radiator in the house, acting as a dubious pomander. I’d put them in the airing cupboard but I don’t think the clothes would maintain their just washed, lenor freshness.

While I was despairing over the bulbs, Lynn was constructing the insect hi-rise. This has been a monster in the making – cutting hundreds of nettle and bracken stems to size has tried our patience but Lynn had the worst of it while trying to bring the whole she-bang together.

As ever with construction tasks, we start off appearing prepared, drill charged, screwdriver to hand, multiple assorted screws and so on but then the facade begins to crumble. Drill bits aplenty but they are all masonry bits, screwdriver does the job until the screw head flies out and disappears in the neighbour’s strawberry patch.

This is when the job really starts and the cursing and sweating begins.

I did my best to get in the sartorial spirit of the weekend but my enviromesh veil was hardly an Alexander McQueen.

I’m all for Royal Weddings, I get to weep with a good proportion of the nation and then as a bonus I get an extra day to play around on the plot.

After two long and sunny weekends we can sit back contentedly and consider ourselves back on track as far as planting and weeding is concerned. We even had time to start on the insect houses we’ve been plotting for at least a year.

Two successive weekends on the plot and I can officially declare the allotment season open. This weekend was particularly glorious and I may have even acquired a little sunburn.

I always get over excited at the first sign of spring sun and despite the old timers warning me that the soil is still too cold, I scatter my seeds and tubers with gay abandon.

Last weekend we dragged out the M1 Gardener and rotovated two of the cleared beds, planted a couple of rows of spuds and set up the seed bed with leeks and cabbage.

This weekend was much warmer but I found it far too easy to sit on the bench, basking in the sun, and passing out instruction as Lynn continued with the digging and planted another 4 rows of spuds. My only contribution was a little raking and the planting of 100 onion sets.

As ever I’ve ordered far too many potatoes and I could easily fill the entire plot if we weren’t interested in any other crops.

I was sent a copy of The Allotment Source Book by Caroline Foley a few months ago. With my new found gardening enthusiasm I’ve been tempted to pull it off the shelf and turn through the pages. It’s a massive tome at 384 pages and quite unlike the usual vegetable gardening books on my bookcase. Although it does have a monthly what to do guide and an A-Z veg guide, I would say that at least half of the book is given over to inspiring ideas of the veg growing variety.

It has a scrap book feel to it and the most fabulous photos. I’ve enjoyed flicking through the book – it has left me feeling as though I’ve been on a reconnaissance tour through a series of allotment sites and I’ve picked up tips for new structures and swanky pea supports.

I was very impressed to see the step by step guide to making nettle rope. I’ve had a go at this on one of my foraging trips and the demonstration looks very thorough.

The Allotment Source Book by Caroline Foley is available from New Holland Publishers.
Enter the discount code warrior at the checkout to receive 20% off and free P&P. (Offer valid until 31^st March 2011.)

There has been a slow and soggy start to the 2011 allotment year but the urge to plant is becoming more forceful.

The urge to get out there and dig over the plot isn’t that strong yet though.

Hopefully it will come soon as the potatoes are taking over the house….