Sick of spiralling prices? Meet the woman who turned to foraging all her food from the forest
Share:
Soaring food prices are enough to turn anyone to a penny-pincher with keen eye on discounts. But one mother decided to use her shopping bills as a reason to embark on an unusual, year-long personal challenge. Monica Wilde decided to ‘see if it possible’ to eat only wild food after becoming disillusioned with the spiralling costs.
![[Home-smoked salmon with a wild spring salad]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/02/17/93683019-14244683-image-m-77_1735840534128.jpg)
And she claims she did not spent a single penny on groceries in the 12-month period - but instead used the nature’s larder to feed her. The 61-year-old, who has three children, foraged all her meals from her local area going for long walk every week through a five-mile radius picking berries, fungi and salad leaves.
![[Monica's seaweed and mushroom oatcakes]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/02/17/93682405-14244683-Monica_seaweed_and_mushroom_oatcakes-a-73_1735839998451.jpg)
She obtained hunted venison in return for her skills as a herbalist and was gifted animals that had been culled on farms to protect crops. Her condiments consisted mainly of powdered seaweed, which she said is salty, and she was given some actual sea salt from friends who ferment vegetables.
![[Cranberries, feral apple and bog myrtle leaves for a festive sauce]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/02/17/93682437-14244683-Cranberries_feral_apple_and_bog_myrtle_leaves_for_a_festive_sauc-a-72_1735839998447.jpg)
The forager estimates to have consumed around 300 varieties of vegetables in the 12-month period. Monica Wilde explains the difference between cow parsley and poison hemlock. Home-smoked salmon with a wild spring salad. Monica's seaweed and mushroom oatcakes.
![[Nut milk and carragheen panna cotta]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/02/17/93682403-14244683-Nut_milk_and_carragheen_panacotta-a-70_1735839998445.jpg)
But she insists her diet was far from boring – with dishes such as venison fillet with shredded burdock root, wild vetch and ox-tongue leaf salad on the menu. Other delicacies included salmon home-smoked over oak twigs with a wild spring salad, vetch tendrils, chickweed, gorse flowers, cuckoo flowers, dog violets and ground elder.
