You can read the original article here: https://theoutdoorguide.co.uk/blogs/tog-blog/foraging-rewilding-christmas-jelly-ear-petit-fours/

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It is my job to reconnect people with their natural surroundings and the ever-changing seasons, including the microseasons that come and go in as little as a day in some cases. Noticing the seasons ticking over is something I no longer have a choice in, with my brain both actively and subconsciously sensing that some species are just getting going or that others have hidden themselves away until next year – this ongoing cycle makes me feel incredibly privileged that I can extract joy and food from my time spent outside, knowing that every day may be different from the previous.

However, being more in tune with the seasons than most, I do find the commercial fetishising of autumn and the ‘Winter equals Christmas’ messaging at this time of the year annoying, patronising and discomforting. I am not the first to comment on the over-commercialisation of traditional religious occasions, but having just seen the back of the festival of tat that is Halloween (just six days later we have my favourite night of the year, which to my mind is so much more wholesome and pure) it wouldn’t be unreasonable to want a break from the relentless retailer advertising, online promotions and grotesque capitalism.

Let’s be completely clear at this point: I too have a company that relies on Christmas sales of our vouchers, products and tickets. It might make me slightly hypocritical to moan about sales drives, but I try to minimise our spam marketing, I resist kowtowing to the pressure to drop our prices for Black Friday and I ensure that what we offer supports small, independent businesses with little to no wastage. At this juncture, I would earnestly ask you to buy your gifts from local, independent and artisan producers as much as possible – every sale you give them will matter so much more. Whatever you do, please don’t send another billionaire into space.

So how can we rewild Christmas then? I am not an outlier by admitting that I am partial to spending the day eating and drinking to excess with family. A box of chocolates will do the rounds, we will inexplicably consume mountains of cheese after the biggest meal of the year, and I do quite like that this main meal is essentially a classic Sunday roast but with everything wrapped in pork. Christmas dinner must be an absolute nightmare for vegans.

These festivities are part of the day for many, but in our house we try to think about how we can liven up the blander elements of the meal and reduce our dependency on the major supermarkets (not to mention reducing our food waste – more on that shortly) through what we might be able to grow and forage for ourselves. We hosted Christmas last year and I made a point to source what vegetables we couldn’t grow ourselves from our local farm shop and I thought it might be a nice opportunity to use wild ingredients in place of our shop-bought ones.

For example, I served roasted greylag goose with all the trimmings, including deep-fried confit canada goose bonbons which were particularly delicious. Wild goose gets a bad reputation for being tough but I find that to only be the case with older birds and a younger one is tastier and more succulent than anything you can buy.

When trying to talk about the merits of eating wild meat, a few elements have to be considered first. Religious reasons aside, if you have chosen to not have meat in your diet, it is probable that you have done so on either environmental grounds or for animal welfare reasons. Both perfectly understandable and I’m not here to change your mind. However, both of these concerns are dealt with when it comes to wild game, especially when compared to farmed livestock. Sourcing your meat from the wild means that there are no intensive farming practices, there are no welfare issues (when done responsibly, I should add) and in most instances you are not creating a demand but instead solving a wastage problem.

What do I mean by that, exactly? Well, wild animals are shot for a number of reasons – they might be considered a pest, there might be some sport involved or there might be a cull requirement (with no apex predators for deer or larger game in this country, we would soon be overrun with them and that would be a major problem for agriculture). Whatever the reason, I hate the idea that a creature would be killed and then the meat go to waste. Millions of non-native game birds are released every year with the sole intention of then being shot out of the sky, and whilst that’s not really my bag, it is a huge industry and sadly so many pheasants,
grouse and partridge will be killed and then not eaten. My solution to that, therefore, is to get hold of as much surplus from local shoots as I can and ensure my family has free, healthy and guilt-free meat for the entire year. I do not ask for creatures to be shot on my behalf, I simply make sure that the ones that are do not go to waste. By learning how to properly prepare birds in feather or animals in fur, I now source almost all of our household’s meat intake through this means and my kids are regularly blessed with venison spaghetti bolognese or pheasant ramen.

Oh, and did I mention it is always free? UK law means that wild game meat cannot be sold without a licence so no money ever changes hands. This means that my freezer is chocked full of free, healthy, sustainable, guilt-free meat. For those of you interested in also doing this, please do reach out to me and I can help you source your own and I might even point you in the direction of our Wild Butchery classes!

Maybe you aren’t quite ready to go fully in with butchering your own meat – understandable, given our society’s disconnect from where it gets its food from – but there are still several ways to introduce wilder elements into your Christmas dinner. Here are just a handful of suggestions:

• Wild garlic roast potatoes. Shred up the first baby shoots of wild garlic and toss them into the tray of cooked roasties once they come out of the oven. The residual heat will cook it enough and you will benefit from all that lovely vitamin C and fresh green flavour.
• Cranberry sauce. You can find cranberries and even lingonberries in certain parts of the country, but never in such abundance that you might be able to fill a jar with sauce. Instead, consider throwing in some hawthorn or guelder rose berries (toxic raw but
  perfectly safe and delicious when cooked) and you will add a depth and dimension that goes particularly well with richer game.
• Stuffing. Where to start! There is nothing sadder than a packet of dehydrated sage and onion stuffing, so treat yourself to something homemade! Local sweet chestnuts, foraged mushrooms, or even a handful of wild winter herbs can transform a simple recipe into something special.
• A wild tipple. There are many ways to add a wild twist to whatever it is you plan on drinking on the day. For those who avoid alcohol, mulled wild apple juice with wild spices is a favourite in our house. For something a bit more grown up, you can’t go wrong with a Sea Bucks Fizz – a classic forager’s take replacing orange juice with lively sea buckthorn juice, which has a nearly-grapefruit-and-not-quite passionfruit citrus zing to it.

Finally, a word on food waste. Foraging by its nature reduces food demand and subsequent wastage, which is just one of the many reasons why I advocate it so much. However, at this time of year there is such a spike in food waste and it breaks my heart. The bigger corporations tend to be the problem, but as a consumer you also should think carefully about how much you load into your fridge in the run up to the big day. Away from a domestic setting, there are many charities and organisations that do their best to tackle this. It would be remiss of me to not mention a charity local to me called Waste Into Wellbeing based in Kendal, Cumbria. These wonderful people take donations of food from local companies and even allotments that would otherwise be going to waste and turn it into cheap, hearty food for everyone to benefit from.