Urban foraging in London: ‘It’s day two and I’m going to die’

Is it possible to feed yourself for a week simply with food you find growing wild – in London? Bella Bathurst takes up the urban foraging challenge

By Bella Bathhurst
The Observer
Dec. 6, 2009

Foraging is very now. On trend and magnificently seasonal, all you need is a pair of gumboots, a set of Kilner jars, and the time and inclination to preserve everything you see. There’s wine out there, and gin, and beer, soups, salads and soufflés – a whole great Waitrose of stuff all just waiting to be turned into chutney.

“Everyone,” says one wild food expert glumly, “is making jam this year.”

So why, when it all sounds such fun, should the cities be left behind?

The challenge is therefore to feed myself for a week from what I can find in the royal parks, the public squares and the two best-known cemeteries – Brompton and Kensal Green. I’m not allowed to use Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon Common or Richmond Park, and most of the canal towpath is off-limits. Whatever I forage has to be the main ingredient to any dish, but can be supplemented with shop-bought extras (sugar for jelly etc). It’s going to be interesting; I am neither an expert forager nor a good cook.

DAY ONE

At the moment, it is not the threat of either starvation or poisoning that bothers me, but lack of coffee. Acorns are probably the best-known natural substitute but are universally considered disgusting. Still, if I want a cup of coffee without standing by the Starbucks’ bins and begging, acorns it is. I gather up a couple of handfuls from Hyde Park, take them home, spend a remarkably long time peeling, chopping, roasting and grinding them, and then stick the kettle on. The resulting brew looks like coffee and smells nicely nutty. And to my astonishment, it’s OK. It doesn’t taste anything like coffee and it helps to add a bit of sugar, but it’s not half as vile as I thought it was going to be.

I set off northwards in search of dinner. In Primrose Hill, under Macclesfield Bridge, I find a few brambles, some rosehips and elderberry. Further on there are what looks like wild strawberries. Wild strawberries are the nectar of the Gods, the best fruit ever invented. These look right – right leaves, right colour, right size. Wrong time of year, though. And these are weird-looking – neat and fat and sprayed with little red pips in ruthlessly tidy rows. I pick one, inspect it and (ignoring all good foraging advice) eat it. It tastes like mattress stuffing.

In Old St Pancras graveyard, directly below the new Eurostar line, there is a patch of waste ground full of yarrow, nettles, and plantain. I pick the cleanest examples I can find and keep going past the plum trees of Judd Street (too high) to the squares of Bloomsbury. In Tavistock Square the branches part and a squirrel the size of an African baboon descends, its mouth so stuffed with walnut it can’t even manage the usual armpit-chucking up-yours gesture of the true WC1 Grey before vanishing into a bush.

Back at home, it is late and I am hungry. There’s the crab apples to turn into jelly, the rosehips to boil, six or seven plants to try to identify, and nettle soup to look forward to. Three hours later, I have identified the bionic red thing at Gloucester Gate as a mock strawberry – evolution’s idea of a practical joke. I also have three jars of crab apple jelly, one pan of carbonised rosehips, an inedible plum crumble and absolutely no idea what the hairy serrated leaf which smells strongly of parsnips might be. Finally, in a filthy temper, I produce some sort of soup from the nettles and plantain, stuff half of it in and go to bed.

See more days with Bella Bathurst and the complete article here.

See the London Forage here.