Foraging Recipes

Beautiful photo of elderberries by Alla Kemelmakher on Unsplash Elders have been revered throughout the European continent and the British Isles, significant ritualistically and in herbal lore. Although elderberries and elderflowers are both products of elder trees, they are very different medicinally. While elderflowers are soothing to irritated mucous membranes, making it ideal remedy for hayfever as well as coughs and colds, elderberries are gentle expectorants, and elderb

Along with water mint and vervain, meadowsweet is part of the triad of core medicinal herbs used by the druids. It was also used to flavour mead, and mythological Celtic warrior Chu Chullain was cured of an attack of fever using a bath of meadowsweet. Faithful to its Celtic mythos, it is a herb that calms inflammation, soothing upset stomach, arthritic joints and even crampy periods. Traditional remedy for hayfever, I don’t think it’s coincidental it comes into bloom about no

Greater plantain (Plantago major) on left, Ribwort plantain (Plantago lancelota) on right Plantain is an old favourite amongst herbalists, with Nicholas Culpepper in the Seventeenth-Century stating: ‘…plantains are singularly good wound herbs, to heal fresh or old wounds, or sores, either inward or outward’. Its Gaelic name ‘San-Lus’ means ‘all heal’. It is a powerful detoxicant, used to treat snakebites, It has been observed in both India and North America that toads and fro

Elderflower Recipes Elderflower is the key ingredient in French liqueur St. Germain, and included in our own Edinburgh Gin. Most European countries from Denmark to Italy consider the Elder sacred, with Danes and old English believing its deep connection with the faerie folk, while Sicilians and Russians believed it drove away evil spirits and bad luck. Elderflower, both as a plant and medicinal herb, was so well known in the time of Nicholas Culpepper in the 1600s, that he

Hawthorn is an essential medicine carried by almost every British herbalist. It is the protector of your most vital organ: the heart. Both flowers and berries contain Oligomeric proanthocyanadins, known to normalise heart function, strengthening heart activity without upping the heart-rate or blood-pressure. Other constituents relax the cardiac blood vessels, bringing more nutrients and oxygen to the heart muscles, helping the heart heal. It also has long traditional use for

Nicholas Culpepper said of Cleavers: ‘It is a good remedy in the spring…to cleanse the blood and strengthen the liver…fitting it for that change of season that is coming’. A spring clean herb, to help move that stagnating lymph, to clean and spruce you up for the new growing year to come. Cleavers and Wild Garlic Pesto Ingredients: ½ cup cleavers leaves (stalks are too stringy, so remove the leaves from stalks) 1½ cup wild garlic leaves ½ cup parmesan cheese (freshly grated