Wild Garlic ramblings …

…At the bottom of the lane where we live are some very beautiful woods.

I try and walk at least 3 or 4 times a week and aim get up as early as possible. I find it helps to start my day with my best foot forward – being active, positive and feeling alive!

With the waking of another day, the brightness of the early sun and – at this time of year – the glorious beauty of buds bursting with life – I certainly have a spring in my step! There is always something new to see or smell – animals to watch, birds to listen to, foliage & wild flowers to enjoy (and occasionally pick) and the opportunity to breath deeply.

I’m often listening to an audio book – recent favourites have included Bryony Gordon’s ‘The wrong knickers’, Mary Portas’s fabulous ‘Work like a woman’ and Rupert Everett’s entertaining biog ‘Red carpets and other banana skins’! My next audio-buddy will be Bryony’s new and fabulous book ‘ eat, drink, run’.

My recent walks have taken me through carpets of wild garlic. It grows profusely through our garden and surrounding woods – you can smell it as you come down the lane. I use it all the time in my cooking and sometimes with flowers – although the garlicky-scent in the sitting room can be a little off putting!

Last week I picked garlic leaves for soda bread, pesto, salsa verde and a wonderfully mild and delicious wild garlic soup – and I roughly chopped up the last few leaves and scattered them on my breakfast fried eggs!

The garlic flowers are also very versatile – floating on the top of soup, scattered through salad or just eaten on their own. The seeds pop in your mouth like a natural ‘popping candy’ and release a sweet garlic taste.

I’ve also tried freezing the leaves and heads, to use later in the summer, but like many leaves and herbs, they tend to bruise and definitely aren’t as vibrant and robust as fresh.

So I’ll be baking for the freezer, stocking up my fridge with pesto and trying to make my salsa verde last as long as possible!

All delicious and so beautifully green!.

"So pretty"