Friday&Foraging

NB: This is last year’s post that I’ve put up again. It is still valid (except that I haven’t picked sloes yet and plan to do so in a few weeks). But the romtopf will happen, some elderberry syrup will surely happen and much more. The next few weekends I’ll put on the wellies and head into the wilderness (or patches of wilderness. In one case an allotment. No danger of getting lost or anything).

Last weekend a few hours were spent foraging  for sloes in the woods and on the way back home, there was a detour to pick elderberries from trees that grow closer to civilization (but still far away from traffic).

The first rule of foraging is, and will always be, don’t pick anything that you don’t know that you can pick. Is it edible to begin with? Is it picked away from traffic (i.e. not full of lead)? and are you allowed to pick it? The answers to the questions must be yes and clearly so.

Foraging is a skill that has been passed down to me from older generations. Even though sloes were never picked I knew what they were. Making sloe gin is very easy, it has quickly become a tradition and I have tried a few recipes from books and exchanged tips with a friend’s mother on the best way to make it.

I’m out very early this year, as it turns out this was the weekend when I would have time to do it. Sloes need a few nights of frost for the sweetness in them to come out, but putting them in the freezer from a few days will have the same effect. It was also very clear from the beginning that the pickings would be slim. The spring was cold, so not much blossoming and of the sloes that did develop, many withered away in the heat wave over summer. Add to that the source of nutrition that they are for birds. One always has to pick with discretion and respect. This was not the year for big batches of sloe gin, just a small jar of it, to enjoy around Christmas.

What there was plenty of in the woods were signs of human negligence. I would here like to suggest to people who if you are out partaking of natures bounty, you might repay Mother nature’s generosity by picking up after yourself and others. Bring a big bag and a pair of gloves and “forage” for glass bottles, beer cans and other bits of trash left behind by others, and make sure it is disposed of correctly. It breaks my heart to see so much litter in the woods.

What there is more of is elderberries and blackberries. I have made elderberry-& red wine syrup previous years, and will do so again, but I don’t know how much. Last year I started giving it away after few months as I wasn’t using all that much of it. There is no point in making something just because it is easy, I need to justify it by using it. What I’m thinking is using it as a base for the Swedish traditional “Glögg” (like mulled wine). We’ll see.

I don’t have anywhere to pick blackberries wild but I do have friends that grow them, and with a warm summer there should be a lot this year. Homemade blackberry liqueur is something that I don’t think I’ve made but I would like to try. I usually just put them in the romtopf jar with all the other berries. The only romtopf that I have ever made with just one kind of berry, which means that the taste was single flavored, was lingonberry. Might make that again this year.

I will buy quinces and put in brandy for sure and we’ll see how the rosehip-situation develops. And then there is the question of the mushrooms, I’m afraid the chanterelle have all dried up this summer, that there won’t be anything to pick. I’m still gonna get my wellies on and go hunting for them, the worst thing that can happen is that I do the odd bit of tidying in nature.

-Suss