Been Caught Stealing...
Iv always thought that it's a strange word....foraging!
To forage:
a wide search over an area in order to obtain something, especially food or provisions.
synonyms: scavenge, hunt, search, look, exploration, quest, scout, probe "a nightly forage for food"
Basically you are nicking stuff from Mother Earth...or is she is providing it for you to nick?
Well, I'm guilty as charged....and I'm having great fun doing it.
This is a great time of year for it and Iv been out in the mornings, carrying a brew and having a good scavenge.
The local markets are currently full of 'Porcini', retailing at about €20 euros a kilo which is a 100% profit if you been out and got them for nowt on a walk. Iv not been as lucky as to find porcini but i do seem to do ok most mornings for the run of the mill fresh fungi that pokes up in abundance in yonder front field.
There's loads of stuff for the taking if you look around. Walnuts come flying down if you get a long stick and whack the branches hard enough and the sloes have now been harvested and are currently sitting in 5 litres of gin, hidden away in a dark place for some rainy, hazy day that will remain forever secret!
The blackberries all shrivelled up with the heat and weren't worth bothering with this year but early on, apricots were turned into jam, pine nuts extracted and put into jars, figs were dried for the winter and almost daily I gorged myself on all the juicy mulberries until there were none left.
At the top of the drive, hidden in the hedgerows, wild red grapes 🍇 have been growing, so they were for the taking too, then pushed through the juicer to make some delicious....well, grape juice! Admittedly, there is another process I know that turns them into wine but Christ, I'm not the saviour and it's a bit beyond my current box 1 skill level limitations at present.
Meanwhile the 🐗 continue to forage nightly too, digging holes with their snouts to find the tubers and couch grass roots, mainly in the olive groves which regretfully are not bearing many olives at all this year.
The salad days are almost over now but even with the crazy hot weather we have had, we have done ok this summer for lettuce, basil, cucumbers and courgettes and now we are into some autumn Swiss chard, Cavalo Nero and fennel, all grown from the 'orto', or vegetable garden as you know it. Winter cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli are doing ok so far and the plan is to keep planting and growing veggies through all the seasons.
And if all else fails you can always 'buy' something local, like this little vino Rosso I found on a shelf, fermented in nearby Umbertide and delicious with whatever else you happen to have found...
'Been caught stealing' from 1990 is a classic indie tune and the best and most successful hit from US Indie rockers, Jane's Addiction. It's still a song that I instantly turn up to loud as soon as I hear the first chord and the dogs' bark....noisy euphoria and a crazy video to go with it.
Comments
Post a Comment