Mushroom Foraging, Wild Cooking, Hammock Camping and Wild Swimming in The Lake District

Hello, Jim from Forage Box TV here, Jim from Forage Box. Just out in the woods up in the Lake District, just come for a wild camp before one of my workshops tomorrow. Thought I'd do some mushroom picking. Not really, hang on, how does the camera show? Yeah, a few different bits and bobs there that I found just on my way up from parking the van over there. Yeah, I mean, there's not really much to say. It's been a while since I've done one of these, you can see my beard growing a bit longer, my hair's a bit floppier, probably a little bit, look a little tireder, more tired, whatever. Yeah, been looking after the old brain box for the last month or so, it's gotten on top of me a little bit, so just come to unwind before the stress of the workshop kicks off tomorrow, getting everything in place. I found some edible mushrooms in here, some really delicious, some not so, still fine, still going with tea. I'm going to be on the hunt for porcini seps today, penny buns, hopefully something like that, going to an old beech woodland, that should hopefully provide me with the right habitat to find these wonderful mushrooms. It is the middle of August, so it's possibly slightly too early in certain parts of the country, although yesterday I found a big basket full further down south, so, you know, hopefully this is the right sort of environment and that we've had the right sort of weather. Yeah, usual things, what do people say at this point? Smash the like button, smash the subscribe button, silly things like that, so yeah, it'd be great if you guys could like, subscribe, head over to foragebox.co.uk, that's something maybe I'll talk about later, although maybe not, and yeah, tell your friends. I like doing these and it makes me very happy when I see the play count going up, so help a middle-aged man going through a midlife crisis out, I mean I'm not that old, but you know, midlife crisis, quarter-life crisis, help me out, give me a good pat on the back every time again. Yeah, right, let's get some arty walking through the woods shots. Hello! Just as a car went past. I promise you I haven't wreckied this, I haven't planted this, but I've not even gotten off the road, look, and I already found some porcini, which is very exciting, smells amazing, more cars coming, Nutter filming himself picking mushrooms, I'm underneath a big beech tree here, so that bodes well. Right, I'm gonna turn my camera off before I get totally self-conscious. So just out in the woods, as I think I've said, away from the cars now, yeah, gonna try and find a place to camp, but on my way there I'm making diversions to places like this. So I'm in a big larch, not plantation, but certainly a larch woodland, maybe it was a plantation once upon a time, they're not actually larch trees anymore, but they're larch down there, and there's a huge beech tree next to this oak tree actually, this beech tree here. Now at the ground you see where the grass isn't growing and all the leaves from last autumn are still sat there, well that's where, well that's the best place around here really to be looking for porcini. Now I promise you I haven't recce'd this, so this is, this is live, I haven't walked up here, I'm still with the one that I found down by the road, but with my heavy bag on, come have a quick browse under here, ah okay, not really that much, you can see where some deer have bedded down for the night I believe, I think that's what they do, and if we just take a quick look around this beech tree here, I can't see, I can't see any porcini or chanterelle, no, boring clip, never mind, still going in, yeah I'll keep hunting out and maybe the next one will be camera's been a bit wibbly wobbly, but there's nothing above me that will fall on me in the night, that's obviously quite important if you are camping under beech trees, they tend to lose branches quite easily, yeah I'm gonna tie my tarp and hammock to this tree here, to that tree, which is a little bit longer than maybe a standard setup, but as you can see the trees are quite far apart, so this is a, this is a good spot, so I'm gonna get set up and then well, I'm gonna go and find some mushrooms for my tea. Hello, ding ding, porcini here, beautiful thing, a little bit slug eaten but that's fine, it'll still cook very nicely, see that big fat base, that's a nice important thing, and I don't know if you can see, but there are no gills underneath, they're sponge, it's more like it, so it's actually lots of pores, this puts this in the bolete family, depending on where you are in the world, this is porcini, this is the stuff you buy in the supermarket or very expensively from France if you're on your holidays there, absolute gourmet mushroom, one of the most sought-after ones, you can eat it raw, although on first eating I wouldn't eat it straight away as a raw mushroom, I would cook it first, but I've eaten plenty of these so I might nibble on this later, a little bit of olive oil, a bit of salt, maybe some wild herb like yarrow, something like that, but I just found that just in the undergrowth down there, so I'm going to go for a bit of a route around in the bracken here, scare the locals, but hopefully find a big old basketful, so I'll tidy it up, put the camera down and I'll pop it in with the rest of them, beautiful, look at the size of this beast, I can barely get my hand around it, absolute monster, and it's going in my tea, home sweet home, well we made it back, I have to tell you, viewer, it's, what time is it, quarter to eight, I got lost, I've hidden my tarp and hammock and everything too well, so stomping around in the undergrowth for a bit, but I did find a few more mushrooms with that, so it wasn't all lost, but I have been stomping around, so I think it's time, sit down, quick refresh, and then we'll have a look at what's in the basket, all right then viewer, let's have a look at what's in the basket, so in this corner we've got our whopping sep, porcini, penny bun, whatever you want to call it, and then we've got all these lovely little seps down here as well, all the way down here, got a couple of babyleets that have formed, there's one and that's the cap of another, there's another one down there, a big pile of chanterelle, beautiful mushroom, over here we've got a, this one is called a charcoal burner, a member of the brittlegill family, easily ID'd by the fact that these gills aren't that brittle, also in this corner we've got this tiny little one here, and this slightly bigger one up over this direction, this is called the blusher, now I'm not going to do ID stuff on this video because I don't think ID should be done outside of in person, but this is a slightly tricky one to ID, can be confused with something called a pumper cap, another agarix, but yeah, absolutely delicious if you get it absolutely right, I've also got a large belete here, this isn't actually a particularly great example, you can see where it's slug eating, but this was the first one I picked, in lieu of any porcini, I think what we will do is we'll return that to the slugs, it will have done all of its spore spreading anyway, so we don't have to worry about having picked it, but there are a couple of little dinky ones down here as well, and then over here I've got some sorrel, common sorrel, growing in the grassland that we were walking on before, a nice citrusy lemony flavour that should go well with our shrooms, I'm trying to see if there's any other bad boys hanging around in here, there's a few stems of some things, that's another bay belete, a couple of stems of some brown birch beletes that I found, basically it's going to be one big old, I mean I'm not going to eat all this, I'll take some home to dehydrate, one big old feast, right, best to fire up the stove, okay so in my pan I've got some melted butter that melted quite quickly, and some onions, on the lowest heat I can manage, now it's not working, I'm going to just start to soften those bad boys up, got my trusty hand-carved spoon there, and into that pan I'm going to put a blusher mushroom, blushers need to be cooked quite thoroughly, here's another beautiful example, usually they have speckles on the top which helps ID it as well, but the main feature, I don't know if you can see on the camera, is that these have gone slightly red, now as I said I'm not going to do a full ID, but I know that this is a blusher, and if it isn't then this is the last video I'll do, if someone finds this you now know how I died, so I'm just going to slice this blusher in half, just like that, just like that, in it goes, try not to take any woodland floor with you, and very finely add my blusher, so these are cooking nicely in there now, just need to make sure they're cooked very thoroughly, so I'm just going to give them a little bit longer, the smell of mushroom and butter is divine, I'm going to put this charcoal burner, definitely a charcoal burner which is nice, and then after that it's just going to be a nice selection of chanterelle and the like, okay and into the mix, I'm going to just finally, or roughly slice my brittle gill there, I'll just get rid of the muddy bit, nice, oh nice chunky stems there, and you see, in that goes, yeah, and then into that mix I'm going to put these, this is a bay belete, that's going to go in, what else have I got belete wise, quite a nice looking larch belete, now larch belete can get a bit slimy, but I find them to be fairly palatable, I will chop this one in half though just so it's got a nice surface area for it to cook, I've sort of made a hash of that, no mind, and then slightly dinkier version there, this was my brown birch belete, so that's going to just add a bit, that goes quite sloppy as well, it's just going to add a bit of texture as well, and there's its body which we will finally slice, another bay belete there, that can just get lumped in, be really delicious, another little cap, beautiful, beautiful cap, and then the slightly wonky chanterelle I'm going to chop in half and dunk in as well, they should hold their shape nicely, the ones that are pretty and small like these ones I'm going to save for my workshop tomorrow, that's a good opportunity to shamelessly plug the workshops that I do, well we do, we run through foragebox, there's a selection of us now, and you can browse all those workshops at foragebox.co.uk, there's a workshops tab, click on that, have a browse, mainly in the northwest but we do bespoke stuff, lots of mushroomy things as well, this time of year especially, we do do some cooking sessions but they're going to probably take a back seat come spring, unless people really want them, in which case we'll see, go ahead with that, right, now look at that for a little selection, we've not even put the porcini in yet, getting it moving around nicely, to add some seasoning I'm going to add this interesting looking thing, now this is seaweed, so it's seaweed boiled up, whizzed up, with some dryad saddle I think was in there, some larch belit again, some onions, garlic, a few other bits and bobs, and that's going to go in, it'll add a nice salty texture, it's actually quite sweet, having reduced down fairly well, how's that? I lost you there for a second, sorry my memory card ran out, so I was just saying the seaweed is in now, and the seaweed was inspired by someone who I met on the association of foragers, I'll put a link to his Instagram below, the seaweed stock was a bit of a revelation for me and so I, well I'm crediting him so I'm not nicking it, but it's a really really great great thing, so that's in there to add a little bit of umami and a bit of sweetness as well, right now some of these porcini have sort of disintegrated so I'm just gonna slice the cap in two there and get them in, as I said you can eat porcini raw if you've eaten it before raw, raw before whatever, and again nice big chunks, some of these slightly dinkier ones I'm just gonna slice perfectly in half as so, and they'll be the final chunk, they're lovely and chunky you see, just like that, oh the smell is sublime, wowzers trousers, what a smell, I mean look at that hey, oh that is lovely mushroomy goodness, with a bit of seaweed, bit of butter and bit of bit of butter, bit of butter, bit of onions, absolutely delicious, all right then, I think we're good, I think we're ready, so the last thing I'd like to do, get that out the way, the last thing I'd like to do is rip this sorrel up, so I'm just gonna shred it roughly, don't need the stalks, and then mix that in, I've got a nice little lemony zing I'll get in there, and that is ready, I don't know if you can see, absolutely delicious, so I'm having a bit of a nightmare with my memory cards because I didn't clear them from last time, never mind, but here you go, here is my beautiful mushroom stew, the smell is superb, absolutely fantastic, considering I only bought some butter, onions and a little bit of stock with me, that's a pretty decent hearty meal, just from my short walk from near here, and the woods, so I'm gonna do some hearty shots with me sitting down here eating it, and then I'll eat it, amazing Well guys, that was exquisite, absolutely delicious, yeah, one of the best meals I've ever had, I think, especially considering where I am, out here in the woods, let's leave my tarp here for a bit, don't know if I'm gonna get any stargazing done this evening, but I don't mind, I think that's probably about it, I'll see you in the morning, okay, nice spot to sleep, no wind, no midges, good night's sleep really, so the plan is to get up and make some coffee, then probably go for a dip to blow away the cobwebs, I'll work out the details of that later, leaving no trace, bit chilly, bit fresh, feeling refreshed, oh that was bliss, gonna walk back to the van and head over to Grisedale for today's workshop, you'll probably see a short clip or montage of me setting up, hey guys, so I was gonna do some filming in the rain, but I couldn't be bothered, so I've been running a workshop at Grisedale, a nice cookery one, there's Grisedale in case you don't believe me, nice cookery class, cooked up some mushrooms, and this is very boring, so I'm just going to say thanks for watching the video, please like and subscribe, all that jazz, head over to the website foragebox.co.uk, in particular check out our workshops and Christmas hampers, they're going to get launched very soon, and yeah, thanks again, bye!