One can hardly have escaped the fact that many of our more interesting restaurants rely on 'foragers' to search out wild ingredients from the fields, woods and hedgerows. What has for centuries been a way of life for many, has recently spawned a small frenzy of television series, books and media attention. For the modern eater, dinner is as much about foraging as it is about shopping.
But just as we have the urban fox, who finds his supper in our dustbins, we now have urban foragers who do their shopping in the fat bins and skips of wasteful city dwellers. Urban foraging is just one of the many resourceful activities of the Freegans, who manage to survive on what most of us throw out. That carton of cottage cheese that you binned yesterday simply because it was approaching its sell-by date is probably now on a freegan's supper menu.
Freeganism is not purely a protest at mass consumerism but exists to challenge the way vital resources are wasted on a daily basis. This isn't about gnawing on the discarded bones from someone's Sunday lunch, but about making the most of the genuinely good stuff that so many of us chuck out without thinking. Much of what they find is shared with other freegans, be it clothing, books or the contents of someone's larder that has just been given a spring clean. (If they could get at my bins they might do very well from some of the endless crap I'm sent by PR companies every week.) This month OFM's intrepid Alex Renton joined up with this band of moonlight shoppers to see what goodies are actually there for the taking. He managed to knock up dinner for 12 for only 5p a head from the booty others had binned. Whether you applaud the intelligence of such a way of life as I do or find the idea of supper from someone's garbage just a bit creepy, his story of the 21st century's answer to The Borrowers is a must-read.
As someone who swears by his daily dose of phenomenally expensive Krill Oil I was fascinated by Andrew Purvis's piece on our current obsession with omega oils. Can food really make us clever or am I just being had? Was my cookery teacher right after all, does fish make you brainy, or should I just chuck my pretty red pills in the bin?
And for those who eat purely for pleasure we have page after page of summer recipes from figs with gorgonzola cream to Thai beef with lemongrass. Sadly, I can't see much of that being left for the freegans or the foxes.
