Spring Foraging | Foraging and Cooking Lunch Using Spring Wild Edibles

This weekend I took a trip out with my wife to do some spring foraging.
The challenge was to find enough food to supplement a meal using spring wild edibles. Then cook the meal.

It was a great day out and the food was superb!

Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:28 Common Hawthorn
02:45 Greater Stitchwort
06:00 Herb Robert
07:17 Annual Honesty
09:11 Abundance of Wild Edibles
10:44 Jack by the Hedge
12:30 Wild Garlic
15:28 Cowslip
18:02 Ribwort Plantain
19:15 Where to find wild edibles
22:40 Dandelions
24:42 Bullrush
25:37 Nature
30:54 Washing and Cooking
40:38 Presentation
42:28 Eating the Bounty

#springforaging
#naturesgarden
#wildedibles

hello and welcome to Camp life Bushcraft thank you for clicking on the video as the title suggests going foraging today I’m out with my darling wife Mrs clb give us a wave and uh Lolly the stupid boxer tripping me up man so yes today we’re going out we’re going to walk I don’t know four or five miles in a kind of a uh ambling style and we’re going to see what we can find in the way of spring wild edibles it’s uh early May going to cross some different terrain uh we’re going to cross over to another Village and sort of circle around and come back yeah there’s an abundance of sort of salad type bits and uh various other things so we’re going to see what we can find that will then supplement a meal so we’ll get a bag full of stuff we’ll talk about it as we go take home cook it up with a bit of steak for lunch lunch ingredients are going to be very very simple I say one piece of meat maybe a bit of flour and some oil and butter and that’s about it and we’ll see if we can produce you know a tasty lunch from the things we find along this walk does that make sense good good good right enjoy the video and uh we’ll see what we see I okay so this is a common Hawthorne tree reasonably easy to recognize little five pointed flowers with the these uh black little dots on them leaves are pretty easy to recognize common hor form you got a creamy Brown kind of bark fine grained lot uses in for sort of turnery and Engraving cabinets and boxes and things boat parts they’ve used to use this for it’s a good firewood Burns at high temperature so it’s a it’s a good tree overall and very abundant in England flowers young leaves and the flower buds can all be eaten uh the Young Leaves we can add to a salad uh also the flowers but we could equally we could you know cook them up so we’re got a mixture of you know the flowers the buds and the young leaves all I’ve sort of picked them in bunches so when we shove it in the bag things don’t get confused and look an ant as well bonus lemony you going be full when we get there okay this is a good section this is uh the white flowers we’re looking at we’ll have a closer look in a minute but I think these are chickweed or a member of the chickweed family and then there’s some pink flowers in here which is I think herb Robert the blue is forget me not but yeah these white flowers that you can see a lot of this is what I’ve been after um and see as I’m off the path these are less likely to have been weed on by a dog so let’s see if we can just double check the idea of them some of the reference points I’m using for this um because you you shouldn’t really mess about with plants if you don’t know I’m reasonably confident but I’m still always going to check so I’m using the picture this plant identifying app on my phone um and also I can reference the Woodland Trust website because there’s lots of good information on there so let me just check this the white flow one as I say I think it’s chickweed so yeah this is greater Stitch wart um which is a member of the chickweed family there’s greater Stitch wart and there’s also lesser Stitch wart uh and they look like that which is kind of a grassy stem with some Thin leaves coming off of it and then you’ve got 1 2 3 4 5 six flowers but it looks like 12 petals but the petals are kind of double petals and uh yeah the green CHS can be chopped into salad steamed or quickly boiled so you canny the leaves as well as the stems in terms of iding them I think the flour is the best way but the stems themselves you know they’re quite identifiable they got these pretty little curls on them uh where the leaves the new leaves are coming and you know as well as the stems and the leaves you can eat the flowers of this uh Stitch wart uh things you can confuse this with this is I think greater Stitch wart uh there’s also lesser Stitch wart and uh yeah the greater and the Lesser Stitch wart look very similar um one is slightly bigger than the other um but both are edible equally I think you know one of the things to be careful of harvesting things like this in the forest is um is not picking other things by mistake in there you know you can’t just grab massive handfuls do have to be you know selective and take your time so that you don’t accidentally pick something else without noticing that’ll do for now and we’ll pick up some more as we go uh right so this is that herb Robert let’s have a double check yes Herb Robert part of a geranium family we will pick some uh this as well as being edible is also a um insect repellent it’s supposed to have a weird smell to it uh I think more for animals than people but uh yeah if you have it in your garden it’s supposed to keep deer and foxes away and if you rub the leaves on your skin it’s meant to keep mosquitoes away one of its uh also known as his death comes quickly which you know is a bit ominous we won’t pick too much uh it’s perfectly fine but it does have a scary name yeah it’s pretty little thing I like the purple flowers on 2 3 four five little lilu purple petals and the um the leaves themselves are those I don’t know how you describe them the weird kind of leaves with lots of uh lots of little bits that come off them great description Dan great description anyway we’re going to move on cuz uh these aren’t the main prize these are just some nice little things to make a salad okay so this is a really good one uh this purple flour here is annual honesty and um this is a really cool Plant the purple flowers you got four petals on them uh the leaves are very much looking a bit like stinging nettle leaves uh you’ve got these seed pods on there as well so every bit of this plant can be used the um leaves can be chucked in a salad or cooked as a vegetable the purple flowers can go in a salad and the uh the seeds themselves when they’re ready these ones aren’t ready but when they’re ready they can be crushed up and uh mixed a little bit of water as like a mustard substitute and also damn it I didn’t get it the roots can be peeled and eaten as well you know and there that’s an actual carb thing they’re a bit Cherry but that’s not bad reminds me of um coconut flesh but yeah going to take some of this is a bit big for the bag but break some of it off I’m not going to go mad I’ll just take this one there’s loads growing here so it’s not going to hurt I’m just going to fold this one up and put it in the bag as it is and we’ll use some of the flowers and some of the leaves for lunch that’s a that’s a find that is I I’ve got that in my garden honestly and um yeah it’s uh finding it just grown wild is awesome this is an abundant wild edible Source here lots of Jack by the Hedge which is the uh this one with the white flowers the sort of garlic mustard smell to it we’re going to pick some of this but not now um cuz it’s everywhere at the moment um we’re going to keep moving for a bit Nettles edible this stuff sticky weed edible not particularly nice a little bit uh little bit sticky in your mouth so we probably skip that one today yeah there loads along [Laughter] here St at my shoes just walk through the middle yeah oh poor Lolly she can get over it she doesn’t like water such an idiot you’re right there well it’s either that side or this side come on let’s keep moving come on go yeah we’ve had a lot of rain over this uh winter everything is still a little bit sticky and horrible we’re in early may now which you know I’ve been I’ve been on holiday with the kids at this time of year in shorts and t-shirt and uh yeah no chance no chance at the moment it’s still rainy and all okay and this is of course Jack by the Hedge which is probably my favorite wild edible the one I’m most familiar with this time of year it is absolutely everywhere and um yeah it’s a garlic mustard kind of flavor flowers are really easy to identify they grow generally where Nettles grow they look a bit like nettle leaves obviously they don’t sting they got a real garlic mustard smell to them it’s like a milder version of wild garlic um really good for cooking I cook with it generally every year um goes well with kind of lamb and beef steaks and things um anyone who’s followed my channel will have seen me cook with this on a regular basis uh in the springtime that will do it just smells great yeah we’ll put this in the bag bag smelling good yeah bag’s getting full doing well ideally I’d like to find some genuine Wild Garlic uh cuz I have in mind to make some flatbreads or banck type thing uh with the wild garlic and then uh put the Jack by hedge sort of in with the steak to give it the garlic mustard flavor but not seeing any so far but we’re about to sort of hit some areas where there’s water and garlic Wild Garlic likes the water so hopefully we’ll come across some right we going be cover some distance been dawling plenty of nettles here oh here you go just said it hey here it is Wild Garlic nice easy to recognize thing basically rip a bit rub it smell it jeez it stinks smells like GC oh yes I’m going to harvest a bit of this now uh that’s good that’s made my day that is now I just want to go you know this is a track so the stuff on the edge has got kind of dust and stuff on it so I just want to go a little bit further down towards the water without falling in get something Shar there I really hope you fall in just double checking every leaf don’t need a lot of this can you eat the flowers uh I’m not 100% need to have a look I I will look that up in the uh Forest guide thing yeah go it smells really strong T is it Wild Garlic is the gift that keeps on giving as well as eating the leaves you can also eat the flower buds flour seed heads and even the bulbs though pulling up the bulbs means it won’t grow the following year okay so yes we’ll take some flowers in sh we yeah I won’t pull any root up or bulbs just take pretty a little bit of the flowers yeah they are aren’t they ni M got me some flowers sometimes I go walking and I see Wild Garlic everywhere and then when I look for it I can never find it I always see it when I’m driving yeah and then smell it yeah yeah used to be a place where I live when I was young uh Down by the River where just massive areas of it and I walked the dog through there and just treading on it you know and it smells so strong strong right let’s March ooh are they what is that Prim Rose I’m going to check this with the field thing I thought they were slightly smaller yeah but then again I didn’t chunky leaves so this is the app I’m using uh it’s called picture this and now I want it I got no signal damn it hand in the air likey just don’t care oh yeah there you go you had a phone for more than 10 years you’ll understand that take a picture of said plant so put the plant in the viewfinder take a picture and it will process cow slip Primrose and a glasses cow slip a species of Primrose also known as cow slip Primrose common cow slip English cowli fairy cup mayflower plant looks healthy so this is the free version so there’s other information that it doesn’t tell you um but it does give you a bit of a description and where in the world it grows and stuff so we’ll then double check that cow slip so according to the Forest guide or this is according to totally wild. co.uk the leaves are slightly bitter but can be used in salads or cook like spinach flowers have a lovely citrusy flavor and look great in salads but there’s no flowers on that one they been used to flavor country wines and cow slip pudding for an Old English dish so yes edible but not necessarily the best tasting thing in the world that one’s quite close to suspiciously wet yeah I think I think it’s probably big dog pea height yeah I’ll get one from the back like oh hello some weird dog hope poison to dogs it’s quite plain she likes it you got s on your face man it’s um do SL get out of B in your hand yeah that’ll do just a little bit to go in the salad in the bag so this is rib W plantain and uh while it is edible it’s the Leaf part of it is not particularly nice they’re bitter and stringy and uh if you pick a leaf you can see on the back the uh kind of spiny bits and those are best removed but nevertheless it’s still supposed to be a bitter flavor the seed heads which are these bits here they can be eaten raw and have a taste apparently reminiscent of um like a RAW button mushroom so maybe we’ll pick a couple of them just for fun but uh I’m not going to bother with the leaves cuz I don’t want to process them too much but we’ll just try a few of these knobbly bits in our salad just to give us a mushroomy taste or maybe I’ll throw them in the pot with the steak there’s a better idea that’ll do won’t go too mad we were now we were s cross some Heath land and um that Heath land is particularly you know poor soil which is why you get the scrubby gor bushes which incidentally the gor flowers are edible but um they taste a bit like soap I’ve eaten them before um but yeah you get GS you get Silver Birch and sort of spindly Oaks that are trying to grow but it’s uh say typically poor soil which is why it was kind of Heath land I think that’s how it gets its name it’s sort of Sandy and uh use it for kind of animal grazing wild animal grazing wild horses and things but uh yeah there’s not there’s not the array of stuff in the kind of Heath areas that there is in kind of hedge RS and footpath verges and things you know yeah I’m might be on yeah I think you’re right there’s no flowers on it though tiny Bunch yeah we’ll come back to that we’ll find some more yeah one thing we were while I was kind of had my heart set on finding was Elder flowers um and we’ve yet to come across them uh back in that Heath land as I say poor soil uh there was loads of uh Rowan trees um Mountain Ash and they look quite similar to the elder flower but obviously not the same but yes as I was saying we’re now coming back into these kinds of slightly overgrown foot paths and you know the kind of the Edibles are just there you know growing along the side so yeah there here you go look this is the gor you know you must have seen this in ow videos before spiky bush with the yellow flowers and those yellow flowers are edible but not particularly nice uh there is another plant similar to that with bright yellow flowers and that has um no spikes on it it’s like a smooth almost coniferous looking Bush and uh yeah that is toxic if you eat more than I 50 gram of it you’ll get circulatory problems and heart problems and all that sort of thing so to be steered clear of yeah it’s nearly lunchtime getting hungry so I think we’ve got we’ve got enough kind of choices there’s one or two things I’d like to pick up uh dandelions I haven’t mentioned them dandelion are edible flowers are edible leaves are edible stems are edible uh Roots can be processed and turned into a kind of a coffee so I going pick some dandelions I’ve seen plenty I just haven’t stopped for them uh and then yeah as I say if I can find some Elder berries or Elder flowers that’ll make a nice pudding so yeah we’re nearly there let’s grab the last couple of things we need and speak of the devil here they are so dandelion flowers you know we all know what they look like dandelion leaves they get their name because of they look like Teeth lion’s teeth you know dandelion being what is it Latin for tooth of the lion so we’ll pick a few of these as we go these are a little bit in the dog piss Zone though aren’t they we’ve got water so perhaps we should just wash stuff before we stick it in our gobs what say you I think that’s a good idea de buggery and dewe them yeah there’s a classic dandelion Lion’s tooth shape and you know the jagged um gnarly teeth that Lions have looks similar to that flowers you know we can all recognize them that’ll do going in the bag nearly lunch you’re hungry my stomach’s growling how you doing dog all right good girl well done so these here are bull rushes that grow in the water they’re a good carb Source I’m clearly not going to wait in and get some a little chicks look that clings um but yeah if you pull up the roots you can peel them back and if you get to the white inner that can be eaten like a like a stick of celery but you do have to be a little bit careful I’ve known people that have eaten them and gotten sick because you know the the funky water has permeated Into The Roots so you do have to keep peeling and peeling and peeling until you get to Pure White Center but yeah they got lots of sugars much like eating a potato in terms of um carbs um but yeah sugars and things so that’s a good source of uh carbohydrates but I say I’m not going in the River today in this is a very disgruntled deer kly just said never heard them run and grunt before he he literally bolted off that way going oh oh that was funny I don’t know if I caught him on camera but I just caught the back end of him but yeah we we accidentally surprised him can still hear him listen not a happy boy maybe he was having it away and him he was having an afternoon nap I think he was doing something else and we Disturbed him he was only there by himself and they don’t have opposable thumbs not hoof he’s having a hoof job hoofing you don’t yourself always off off road you got to love him he’s so special Lily so we’ve just about covered 5 miles 5.01 miles so it’s probably time to go home we’re not far away from home now yeah legs are getting weary but we got a good haul so we’ll uh we’ll cook a bit of lunch no Elder flowers though that’s annoying I was hoping to make elder flower fritters as a pudding but we haven’t come across any at all loads and loads of mountain ash which looks very similar but no Elder flowers we got half a mile or a mile to go so might get lucky if not we’ll uh see in the kitchen okay that’s not a bad hole at all plenty here to supplement a lunch uh the herb robber it’s going to go in the salad Jack by the Hedge going to put some of that in with the steak and cook it down uh this is going in the salad what’s that Honesty uh this is salad as well this is the peppery one so a little bit like rocket um chickweed style uh bit of dandel irion in the salad so the garlic Wild Garlic going to make some flatbread type thing with that uh that they apparently taste a little bit mushroomy so I’m going to throw them in with the steaks as well and then I might make some dandelion and Hawthorne fritters to just go on the side um so that’s that’s good I’m pleased with that so bit of self- Raisin flour and a bowl so this is going to be the flat breads salt in there little bit of oil and some water we’re going to chop up Wild Garlic FL and [Music] [Music] leaves put that in there drop my water this mix is similar to like a banck type thing but going to try and sort of fry it just get the mix made it’s an old sort of Scottish bread mix they had it with every meal in the old old days that do I do two decent Siz flat RADS just let that rest for a minute right in this bowl little tiny bit of baking powder few drops of vinegar see that just react a little bit little drop of water bit of flour in there self raising [Music] [Music] [Music] is a little bit of batter [Music] [Music] [Music] put the back on nice and low just let that cook through dip The Dandy lines in the batter some of this Hawthorn as well [Music] [Music] bread looks good man they look Co [Music] it all right let’s prepare a bit of salad while these cook go some Hawthorn in with that was that one I’ve just put on there honesty some flowers on there too just pulling off any of the kind of spiky spiky bits of uh you know where the um where it’s a bit coarser so just being a little bit fussy with it and then the chickweed I think just going to take actually just take the top parts off have the flowers and the stems in there a bit of dandelion some purple honesty flowers for a bit of fancy garnish and some herb Roberts as well looks like a salad that’s Jet by the HED going on there that is going to be cooked with the steak and the plantain seeds just ch that through you will in off them bread another turn these are the little battered flowers so they are hathorn that’s Hawthorne so those three for our hathorn then these are all the Dand lines it’s a bit of RI eye [Music] put Plum fan in there the Hedge around the edge should give it a nice garlic mustard butter kind of flavor that’s looking good right let’s check this bread out oh that’s not bad is it a bit of oh that smells good bit the garlic bread okay and then steak nice bit of the plantain and Jack by the Hedge liberally distributed [Music] a little garnish for good measure that looks awesome oh that looks lovely it’s nice it really looks nice good girl so I battered the dandelions and a couple of the Hawthorns just to see what they’d be like oh that’s really cute yeah you just eat the whole lot yeah yeah yeah dandel right oh my God very nice crispy very nice flavor though m Hawthorn flour the SLE that one mhm sticking all yeah oh I like the hn that’s nice oh like all that ever T the shle flavor but it’s nice yeah yeah oh I really like them add done a garlic banck with a bit of Ste do banic lovely I’m a bit of a banic fan I just St my Fe you that’s nice I’m really enjoying these it’s nice with the garlic wow oh yeah this is banck with garlic yeah oh crap that lovely m M again I thought it was going to be really overpowering cuz the smell was Sor it’s not it’s just subtle it’s quite a lot in there yeah oh y I’m going to have to have some a bit of a mix of that sounds good as well rockety [Music] again all the flavors are quite subtle they’re not overly powering which is nice oh thanks s going to get start no is that CH by the head no it’s [Music] um uh what you call it uh honesty oh is it you want some there you go you can have have a flow no thanks oh okay and what’s the MH on top of the steak that’s the Jack brother hedge and plantains the little plantain seed oh I got an ant you’re not eating them and is it cooked no it was walking lemony it was like walking off my plate it’s a natural lemon dressing what yeah Taste of lemon that’s really lovely m really really impressed you cook this and not me it wouldn’t have look like this that’s a good day foraging yeah and cooking as I say yeah it’s the the stuff we wanted to find was to supplement the meal so we’ve used a bit of meat and a bit of flour and a bit of you know oil and some salt and pepper but that’s it but yeah know a nice oh it’s lovely nice refreshing lunch it is refreshing that’s for sure is it using you know natural garden as it were Nature’s Bounty and I think in the olden days you know people would people would do this thing they would forage it’s a sort of a forgotten thing isn’t it in back there isn’t it people are doing it yeah that’s really good it’s lovely I generally really like this and the fact that it’s basically on my morning walk so yeah that’s probably about it from us we’re going to have a lunch yeah thank you so much for watching I hope you learn something I mean you know don’t I wouldn’t suggest you just go out and start ripping stuff out the ground you know have some reference material Woodland uh Field Guide is is pretty good that’s that’s a website you can visit there’s lots of wild edible websites that you can look at there there are apps you can have you know you don’t necessarily have to Lug about books yeah but um yeah thank you so much give the video a thumbs up if you like it we’ll see you soon bye for now T surpr how much I like the salad part yeah there’s every now and again there’s a like a hint and then a bit of an explosion of flavor M I’m not quite sure what I just have but it was quite strong but it was nice the chickweed stuff’s really nice it was um very mustardy what if I just yeah that’s the chickweed this one is the skinny one yeah it’s uh pepper like um rocket yeah I like it