Foraging

I bought two books on foraging, the intent being to go away for a weekend in the van and not take any food, existing entirely on foraged produce. The books are The Forager's Calendar and Wild Food. 

Reading through them I was somewhat put off by just about every entry in The Forager's Calendar containing the words 'not to be confused with' or 'looks very similar to', with the highlighted confusion and whatever it looks like being something very poisonous and likely to kill you stone dead instantly or have you frothing at the mouth in agony.

Wild Food makes no such distinction and merely presents recipes containing what's mentioned in The Forager's Calendar and is thus the more dangerous book.

The plants, seaweeds and fungi that are unmistakeable seem to rather insipid, plain or just hideously bitter. They generally are not the kind of things that can sustain you for long - more like ingredients to flavour proper food, sauces to go over proper food, or infusions to make a horrible tea. You certainly won't get fat on foraged food and it seems necessary to add some recent roadkill just to survive.  

I think I'll shelve the idea of a foraging weekend and we'll take a few bags of real nosh.