Picking magic mushrooms, seeing giant pandas

I was sure that I had been chomping wild chanterelles until I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a giant panda. At that point, I began to wonder instead if I was gobbling down magic mushrooms and had already started tripping mildly.

Inspired by this month’s Men’s Health feature on free foods and armed with my SAS survival book, the missus and I were foraging to collect naturally growing food.

Having collected nettles, elderflower and rosehips to make soups and teas, we headed to where it's warm and moist for a bit of 'shrooming. And on one hillside alone, we were spoiled by an absolute embarrassment of wild, edible mushrooms to turn into double tasty soups, pasta sauces, and risotto dishes. Mushrooms taste magic, particularly when they're freshly picked and local.

With the food miles debate raging, the organic movement in full swing, and the environment reaching the top of the agenda there's never been a better time to raid nature's larder. This is nothing new, apparently. Fergus Drennan, for instance, has been foraging for years. Indeed - he's a professional who offers courses in how to find food even in city centre parkland (e.g. London's Wandsworth Common). He also supplies some of London's top restaurants, including the Ivy and Jamie Oliver's Fifteen. You can also take tips from the master himself, Richard Mabey, whose "Food for Free" book is a foraging bible.

Thinking from a professional perspective, my favourite organic food shop, Fresh and Wild could tap into the foraging buzz by starting up local foraging clubs. The Battersea branch, for instance, is ideally placed for both Clapham and Wandsworth commons. Herbal remedy brand Neal's Yard could do the same. Or local papers around the UK could start a 'free food' campaign, with seasonal guides and maps on where locals can literally 'pick their own'.

As for the panda, turns out it wasn't a hallucination, after all. It was a 'manda' - a man panda, i.e. a man in a panda suit. The fella was guiding a group of kids around the Malvern hills. I don't know why he was doing this in a panda suit, as pandas aren't native to the area. Perhaps he had gobbled his own funky funghi and thus the Malverns became a forest in Southwest China. And why not? I guess a panda suit and a pretend forest is as good it gets when the mushrooms are free, fresh and magic.

Tags: Malvern, Malverns, Malvern hills, panda, Fresh and Wild, Wandsworth Common, Clapham Common, Neal's Yard, Fifteen, Jamie Oliver's Fifteen, The Ivy, Fergus Drennan, food miles, foray, foraging, edible mushrooms, magic mushrooms, Men's Health magazine