Wild foods.

[Gliondrach]

I've just wathced the third programme in Ray Mears' latest series. He is attempting to discover what our hunter-gatherer ancestors could have eaten in Britain. Today's programme was very interesting. He and a scientist chappy, who is an expert on plant foods, collected some nettles. Instead of boiling them, Mears held them over a fire to wilt them. Then ate them. He said the flavour was better than when boiled. They also ate the roots of reed mace. I remember seeing an earlier series of his where he retraced the route of Roger's Rangers in the American War of Illegal Independence. He ate reed mace roots then as well. He says that it is better to just chuck them in a fire until they are black, split them open and chew and suck the starch out of the middle. Better and easier than grinding it into flour. He also said that you can eat poppy leaves. I've never heard of that before. They were corn poppies, I think. Other things they ate were the flowers of blackthorn, which he says taste of almonds; flowers of lady's mantle; chickweed; and the leaves of salad burnet. I had better check when it is repeated on Sunday that it was lady's mantle and not lady's smock. The leaves of both can be eaten, according to Richard Mabey, but he doesn't mention the flowers. Mears said that he likes to eat dog rose petals in salads.

If you can see British television, it is repeated on Sunday at 7pm on BBC2. Today, they almost did a whole programme without eating any animals. They had a goose egg each, though. But, after it had been on for 45 minutes, Mears went fishing and caught two.

[Oracl]

A lot of British TV programs are shown here, so I may get to see it eventually.

[Gliondrach]

This recent episode was the 3rd of 5. They were in Australia for most of the first episode. They visited two groups of Aborigines, one in central Australia and one in Arnhem Land. Of course, they ate a witchty grub each. But they also tested various plants.

[Gliondrach]

I forgot to mention that they harvested sea buckthorn berries and pressed the juice out of them. They found it very tasty. Sea buckthorn is not the same as buckthorn or alder buckthorn.