Foraging

Heard about this guy on the radio: Fergus is going to spend one year just foraging for his food. If he’d been in South Africa, we’d say he’ll be eating from the veld. As it is, in the UK, he’ll be eating from the forests & the heaths & road verges & hedgerows and so on.

I think that's a lovely idea – living off the land – eating what nature provides. Well, the idea is good. Not too crazy about Fergus’s execution of it though – he described a meal that included pheasant breast. What ? Pheasant breast for someone who forages ? Yep. Road-kill. Which is where I part ways with Fergus.

Just imagine if Fergus had been a fruitarian. Now, that would have been fascinating. I have to wonder if it’s possible. Fergus clearly is an omnivore and he cooks & bakes - he grinds flour from fallen acorns & bakes bread from that. Again – not part of the plan for my fruitarian forage. But still I wonder.

Go take a walk through your village, dorp, suburb, city neighborhood. WALK. Don’t drive. Take your time & look – really LOOK – at gardens. You’ll have to peek over walls, through hedges & security fences of course - taking care not to frizzle yourself on electrified barriers. But even so. I’ve done this and you know, it might not be completely impossible to do a Fergus in a dorp or city. Just check out the back gardens & courtyards – you might be amazed at the number & variety of fruit & nut trees you see. Summer fruiters as well as winter fruiters – so you might be OK throughout a whole year. Of course you’d need to make friends with everyone to get around the security issue, & explain your experiment to get around the fears we’ve all learnt to live with.

And then you look at the street planting – see the hundreds of carob trees ? Well, there’s a whole load of free calories right there. And the thousands of palm trees – Oops, No – this is where my fantasy collapses utterly. They’re just ornamental – feeds neither man nor beast. Doesn’t even provide decent shade – certainly not to compare with a good-sized pecan nut tree, for example. I think it’s safe to say that our city planners are probably not fruitarians.

So here’s my suggestion for those of us who live in any kind of urban or peri-urban environment. How about planting as many fruit & nut trees as you can cram into your space – some can even do perfectly well in a good-sized pot on a patio. And then plant some of your fruit trees closer to your boundary or fence. And don’t over-prune the poor thing into a manicured poodle. Let the tree be a tree. Let it grow & blossom & fruit. You’ll enjoy it. The birds will love you for it. As will any fruitarian Fergus who happens to be foraging by.

Which reminds me of a lovely summer afternoon in Greyton – well in Greyton all summer afternoons are lovely anyway. But this one had something extra. It was grape season, and every so often, on our walk through the dorp, there’d be a handwritten sign on a piece of cardboard behind a small bowl or basket of perfectly luscious grapes: Please help yourself – they’re very good !

Fergus would have loved it.

4 problems - 1 solution

5 problems actually – and you’re guaranteed to encounter them when you’re new to the fruitarian lifestyle, and everything, quite frankly, just seems like more of a hassle… For example:

THE FRUIT GLUT
In-season fruit at a bargain price – but you have to buy a crate of the stuff. Apart from the fact that your ridiculously low purchase price means that the poor struggling farmer (without whom you & I would not survive) must have been paid next to nothing for his crop, you are now stuck with more of one kind of fruit than you can possibly consume before the fruit-flies move in.

THE TIRED BANANA
Astonishing, isn’t it, just how quickly they can go from green to spotty-black ? You can only eat so many bananas a day, and you’ll be d—d if you let them go to waste – especially if they’re organic (which I HIGHLY recommend) and came with an obscene mark-up.

THE VICIOUS PINEAPPLE
Picked too green, burning a hole in your tongue – now what do you do with the rest of the pineapple ?

THE SWEET TOOTH
Whether in the form of a whiny child, depressed adult, or well-fed guest still looking around expectantly for dessert… There will be times when you’d really like to have an alternative to the guilt-ridden ice-cream tub cave-in - especially if said child, adult or guest is diabetic, hypoglycemic, arthritic, overweight, or otherwise sugar-intolerant.

THE "I NEED SOMETHING" MOMENT
Make no mistake, you’re going to deserve a culinary reward from time to time. The usual socially entrenched artery-clogging riches won’t do it for you anymore. But you might still find yourself – from time to time – standing in the kitchen and pondering that most existential of dilemmas: Now what can I eat now ?

5 nuisances, with a single, utterly delicious solution – Eskom permitting.

Here’s how: Freeze your excess in-season fruit; ditto with ripe bananas (chunky slices). Make up your own combinations of (frozen & fresh) fruit including when necessary that bitey pineapple, always using bananas as your base (frozen bananas somehow give a better ice-creamy texture than unfrozen bananas – and here “organic” really makes a difference); whip up the whole lot with good (no preservatives / additives) coconut cream in a food processor. Heaven. All fruit, no sugar, always available, and excess again freezable.

There is simply no end to the combinations you could try. One memorable short-notice dinner party success: frozen bananas (lots), nastily sharp pineapple, lime, coconut cream and fresh organic vanilla.

Yes, yes I know – ideally the fruitarian should only eat fresh, unfrozen fruit. Directly off the perfectly healthy tree, perfectly ripened ON the tree. Like Kyloe’s persimmons, and wild mulberries, and grapes, and nectar-sweet purple plums, and golden greengages, and juicy round-flavoured satsumas, oranges & grapefruits… Well, we’re trying, but Eden is still a long way off, and in the meantime the freezer is my ally.

But there is one, much bigger difficulty every new fruitarian will face. And this one can derail you completely. That’s for next time.