Part 18: Free For All

Our weekend walks are usually dedicated to the twin pleasures of exercise and birdwatching. We bump into all kinds of people on our rambles and quite a lot of them are not out for the exercise. Depending on the season there is quite a lot of food to be had for free if you know where to look.

The most famous item on the free food list is the wild asparagus that grows abundantly throughout Extremadura. Whole families armed with kitchen knives while away their Sunday mornings looking for this delicious freebie. It usually finds its way into revueltos, that is to say scrambled eggs, alongside prawns, which unfortunately cannot be scavenged locally, due to the fact that we are hundreds of miles from the sea.

In March your sense of smell will usually alert you to the beginning of the wild garlic season. Eaten raw it will leave you with the breath of a hyena, but it is great for warding off colds and by all accounts it has been used medicinally since time immemorial. In April the overwhelming olfactory note is the aniseed whiff of the wild fennel that grows with incredible abundance along the sides of the roads. The dried seeds can be used as a spice and the feathery tops can be used in the same way as dill. Of course, you have to be careful where you go gathering nature`s bounty. If you take fruit from another man`s tree there is a special name for it. Round here they call it theft.

In the autumn wild mushrooms are so abundant that organised groups go on early morning jaunts to find the best of the crop before late risers have even got their boots on. The markets duly fill up with all kinds of fungi and a few people even gather enough to turn a morning`s jaunt into a valuable commercial activity. The most difficult things to find though, are the legendary criadillas de tierra (sweetbreads of the soil could be one translation, but we always call them earth bollocks), the potato-like tubers which grow around holm-oak and other trees. Only the most experienced scrumpers can detect their presence. Snails, on the other hand, are easy to spot on dry stone walls. Their preparation involves many different processes, including starving them for a number of days, before consigning them to the pot with red wine and thyme. I once had a surfeit of snails accompanied by an over abundance of red wine and have not been able to include these particular molluscs in my diet since that regrettable incident.

The rivers and lakes also contribute their share to the haul. As in the UK, the invading American signal crayfish has wrought havoc among native species, being larger and more aggressive than its European counterpart. They eat a lot of fish eggs and have done considerable damage to the stocks of some local species that were endangered even before these invaders arrived. Apparently though, these crayfish are delicious when boiled up with wine and garlic and who knows what else. Given their somewhat particular dietary habits, I have not wanted to try them, especially if that old saw about you are what you eat applies to the animal kingdom. Some of the locals tie pieces of chorizo to submerged tree stumps in order to attract these scarlet scavengers, and our little river is often busy with people gathering up the squirming red haul. Personally I would rather eat the chorizo and forget about the crustacea.

So if you ever see anybody returning from a walk in the woods laden with all sorts of fungi, fresh herbs, wild garlic and prickly pears, you can bet your bottom dollar it won`t be me. I just go to Carrefour like all the rest of the townies!

Articles in the series:

Introduction to Pete's Tale

Part 1: Village Life

Part 2: Bichos

Part 3: A Two-Bar Town

Part 4: Fruit and Veg

Part 5: Summer

Part 6: Politics

Part 7: Noise

Part 8: Our natural park

Part 9: New Year's Eve

Part 10: Timetables

Part 11: The Land Where the Pig is King

Part 12: How Not to Buy a House

Part 13: That First Winter

Part 14: The Extremeño Spring

Part 15: To be a Pilgrim

Part 16: A Change is Coming

Part 17: Wine Talk

Part 18: Free For All

Part 19: How Do You Spell Asparagus?

Part 20: Designer Peas