I foraged my own breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here’s what happened

Similarly, foraging clubs, of which there are hundreds across the country, have been enjoying a boom in membership, while professional guides are offering free or cut-price courses to attract those trying to tighten their belts.

Online, too, foraging is more popular than ever, with so-called TikTok foragers (a term that has 111.7 million views and counting) showing a new generation of foodies how to find free food. Heavily tattooed Alessandro Vitale, better known on Instagram as @_spicymoustache_, looks like an unlikely forager, but more than one million people follow what he calls his “urban farming” adventures around London, while in East Sussex, Megan Howlett has over 32,000 followers on her @the_gardencottage account, where she shares guides on what to forage, month by month.

But is it really possible to eat an entire day’s meals without paying a penny — in winter? And is it safe? Evans is in no doubt, and has agreed to take me, a city girl who’s only been in the countryside for 18 months, out foraging to prove his point.

Mushrooms and herbs foraged by Rainey

GEMMA DAY FOR THE TIMES

“It’s a dying art,” he says, plucking a clump of what looks like grass (I later learn it’s yarrow, a pungent leaf that works well in salads or sauces) from under our feet. “We don’t live or eat like our grandparents did. Everything has to come out of a packet. People don’t see potential in the things growing around them, which is a real shame.”

As someone whose diet once comprised Deliveroo and microwave meals, I can feel myself blushing. Like many first-time foragers, I love the idea of finding food — and it wouldn’t hurt to have some help with my family of four’s weekly shop, which regularly tops £100 (not including wine). But my biggest fear is picking something inedible — or worse, toxic. How could I risk feeding my children foraged food?

Evans, who says he has never been sick from something he’s found, says the key is to arm yourself with knowledge before setting out. And make the best of what’s growing around you; foraging, he insists, is possible whether you live in the countryside, the suburbs or deep in the urban jungle.

“With greenery, you’re generally fine — worst case, it won’t taste very good. But the problem comes with mushrooms. There are over 15,000 species growing native in the UK and plenty of poisonous ones — like the aptly named deathcap — in this woodland.

Wild mushrooms, eggs and foraged greens; hogweed cake with figs; and woodland nut roast

GEMMA DAY FOR THE TIMES

“We advise beginners to have 10 to 20 species they can 100 per cent identify. These are mushrooms with easily recognisable, key indicators which are very hard to confuse with something else.”

With Evans, who grew up in a family of caterers and has been foraging for 15 years, by my side, I’m feeling slightly more confident. He thrusts into my hands a wicker basket — important for that bucolic look, but also so that spores from the mushrooms can fall naturally as we walk — and a mushroom knife, which has a brush at one end and a blade at the other.

It’s 10am on a crisp wintry day and, as the sun breaks through the thickets overhead, I can feel my stomach beginning to rumble.

Breakfast

Wild mushrooms with scrambled eggs and foraged greens
We climb over a fence and wade through ankle-deep leaf litter to reach an innocuous patch of forest floor. Here, Evans pulls aside brambles to reveal a clump of purple-tinged, squat mushrooms, almost glowing in the dirt. “Aha! These are wood blewits,” he pronounces.

Chopped up with the shaggy parasol we found earlier, fried and added to some scrambled eggs (kindly donated by a neighbour who keeps chickens), these blewits make a tasty breakfast. To jazz up the dish, Evans picks some sheep’s sorrel, its delicate green leaves sprouting from the ground at the base of a tree. If he hadn’t pointed it out, I would have stepped on it.

“It tastes like apple peel — try some,” he says. Sure enough, the tiny leaves are fresh and zingy and, when we eat them later stirred through the eggs, they add a lovely, herby flavour, like wild garlic.

Another option for breakfast, he suggests, is pancakes made from acorn flour, which I know would be a hit with my kids.

Acorn season lasts from September to December, and although you can’t eat them straight from the tree, like sweet chestnuts in summer (not to be confused with horse chestnuts, which are green not brown, with much wider spaced spikes), they are perfectly edible when peeled, ground into powder and leached, which involves soaking them in cold water to remove bitter tannins.

The acorn flour makes the pancakes nutty and sweet — perfect served with a tart jam made from bullaces, a wild variety of plum that grows on hedgerows and ripen into winter.

Lunch

Nut roast with wild horseradish and shaggy inkcaps
Trudging onwards, Evans leads me to a grassy bank. “We focus on three areas for finding good edibles,” he explains. “First: dead, dying or rotten; second: something really old, like a tree trunk; and third: boundary edges, so the edge of a woodland, field or stream.”

Here, standing proudly in a row and swaying in the icy wind, are the most unusual-looking mushrooms I’ve ever seen. Called shaggy inkcaps, they are tall and bulbous, with white caps dripping glistening droplets of what looks like black ink. “When these are on the turn, they start melting — a process called ‘deliquescing’ — so you have about 12 hours before they turn to mush,” Evans says. “The flavour is rich in umami savouriness.”

He shows me how to pick them, treating them with the same delicacy you would precious jewels, and we lay four in the basket, ready for lunch.

Evans, who eats mostly foraged food at home with his wife and three children (who are now grown-up, so slightly more tolerant of their dad’s passion), spots a tuft of dead-nettle growing by a tree and bounds over to add it to our collection. “It has a square stem and no stingers, but you use it just like nettles, to make tea, in salads, or for flavouring pasta or rice,” he says. “It’s also a perennial plant, so can be found all year round.”

Back at Forage Kitchen, the head chef Ricky Withers adds the dead-nettle to a bunch of wild horseradish — green, spinach-like leaves and a spicy root — and serves it with mashed potato. These were plucked, with permission, from a nearby farmer’s field and stored over winter, but you could buy them loose from the supermarket for a matter of pennies.

Withers has also made a nut roast with chestnuts and hazelnuts (ideal for winter foraging; we’ve just missed walnut season, which ends in early November), and gently cooks the inkcaps to make the most incredible salty, creamy sauce.

Foraging is hungry work, and I happily scoff the lot. Evans says he can spend four hours outside at a time, and would expect to come home with 20-30 species of goodies. “And if you return to the same spot 24 hours later, you’ll find something completely different,” he says. “That’s the joy of being led by what nature has to offer.”

Dinner

Hogweed cake with sautéed figs and sloes
Still full from lunch, I skip Evans’s savoury dinner course — a delicious-sounding tempura oyster mushroom dish with ketchup made from hawthorn berries (these can be picked from hedges in autumn and winter) and a salad of cleavers (a climbing green plant you might know better as “sticky willy”) — and go straight to dessert.

For this, we need hogweed, a green, leafy plant also called cow parsnip that grows on hedgerows, roadside verges and waste grounds. This must not be confused with toxic giant hogweed, which has jagged leaves and distinctive, purple blotches on its stems (if in doubt, check the Woodland Trust’s online guide: woodlandtrust.org.uk).

Given we’re wading through remote woodland, I’m astonished by how urban some foraged foods are; indeed, urban foraging is a genre in itself, with enthusiasts searching city streets, car parks and industrial estates for things to eat. “You can forage anywhere, you just need to know what to look for,” Evans says. “Morels grow in woodchips around new-builds. You can find a bunch of mushrooms growing outside an Asda.”

Hogweed picked, we head back to the kitchen, where Withers grinds up the seeds — they taste like cardamom — and mixes them with pumpkin flesh to make a dense, flavoursome cake. Pumpkin season usually ends in November but if it’s warm (as it was until late last year) you may get them later, and — like squash — they can be grown indoors all year round.

He serves it with sautéed figs and a plum-coloured sauce made from sloes, which I’ve only ever tasted in gin. Both have been foraged nearby — the sloes in November, the figs in October — then dried and stored in sealed jars, which will keep them edible for several months. They can also be frozen.

The whole thing is sweet, syrupy and indulgent — the ideal way to round off a day of free food.

Planning the kids’ dinner on my way home, I drive past the local supermarket. Perhaps I’ll take them out for a look in the fields. Or perhaps, just this once, we’ll stay in and order a takeaway. You can take the girl out of the city. . .

Do’s and don’ts of first-time foraging

DO go on a course before you set out, or bring an expert so you know what to avoid. Forage Kitchen runs six-hour beginners’ classes for £75 per person, including a meal at the end, from April to October (foragekitchen.co.uk).

DO start with a small number of easily identifiable foods. Evans suggests limiting yourself to six mushrooms: giant puffball (the clue’s in the name), beefsteak (bright red with marbled flesh), chicken of the woods (looks — and tastes — like chicken), ceps (which have a stout body), jelly ear (growing mostly on dead or living elder) and parasol (miniature umbrellas with grey/brown flesh).

DO invest in the right kit: a wicker basket or string grocery bag to collect produce. A mushroom knife (available online or from outdoor shops, from about £7) comes in handy to cut stems and clean off mud. “Good boots are a must,” Evans says. “And it can take a while, so bring a sandwich.”

DON’T rely on an app or book, which may be outdated and won’t take into account the weather, the ground conditions or the environment you’re foraging in. “Advice changes regularly,” Evans says.

DON’T forage on private land unless you have permission. On common land and byroads, it’s fine to collect moderate amounts of foraged food for personal consumption. But if it belongs to a farmer (or your neighbour), remember to ask first.

DON’T rush. Slow down, look around and you’re more likely to find something exciting. Set aside several hours and switch your phone off.