eating weeds - rosehip tea

The foraging of wild foods is a key way to ensure resilience in times when other sources of food are less available. Weeds are also often high in nutrients and vitamins. 

I'm only just starting to understand the value of weed foraging. When you're on a budget, they're a really great way to get free, fresh, nutritious foods into meals regularly, especially when you can't afford to buy a range of fresh food to feed yourself and your family. 

I'm not saying, go out an eat everything green in sight. Avoid spaces that are likely to have been sprayed with poisons (herbicides for example)... I generally find that for this reason starting in your own backyard or your friend's backyards is the best idea, as long as you haven't been spraying poisons of course! 

You also need to be careful with correctly identifying the plants... I've personally found starting with a few easy ones is a good way to get more experienced and start practicing your recipe developing.

I thoroughly recommend Annie Raser-Rowland and Adam Grubb's book The Weed Forager's Handbook for all new foragers, I've had mine for years, it's starting to get a bit dog-eared... largely because I carry it around in my handbag.

Milkwood also has a heap of amazing wild food recipes on their website and in their book. (Disclaimer, I work for Milkwood, but genuinely think their recipes and book are really handy resources... I use them all the time)

This season, for the first time I've made rosehip tea from a wild rose bush on a local farm. Rosehips are pretty easy to recognise (they're on rose bushes).

And why have I been sourcing these rosehips (especially because picking them can be a slightly prickly business)?

Free Vitamin C. Yup, these babies mean that all through winter we can have vitamin C. It's kind of especially important because oranges don;t grow in Southern Tasmania. Bastards.

Plus also: shipping oranges in from California, in a time when we are heating the planet up due to over use of fossil fuels unnecessarily is kind of... shitty. Wanna know how to turn rosehips into tea?

Step 1 locate rosehips and initiate finger acupuncture (or wear gloves)

Step 2: Take a fancy picture of them in your hand so you can post a picture to your social media account like a wanker. (Optional)

Step 3: Dehydrate. I used our dehydrator. I'm sure there are other ways you could use the sun... but I'm not entirely clear on the details.) I used the "fruit setting" on my dehydrator. 

Step 4: Check if they're done by squashing the rose hips in your fingers, when they snap in a dry snappy way, they're done, if they squish, they're not (mine took about 24 hrs)

Step 5: put those little bastards in a food processor (this smaller one made it easier).

Step 6: Blend until well broken up but not so fine that the pieces would go through a sieve. 

Step 7: Sieve out those nasty fibres. Careful not to breathe them in because those fuckers are uncomfortable in your throat. Nasty.

Step 8: Put the stuff in the sieve in a jar. 

Not pictured: Step 9: Me drinking rose hip tea like a freaking boss in my armchair reading Lindy West and not being sick.

The end.

PS. Forage for weeds mate.