Fordyce Maxwell: ‘Foraging for mushrooms is not a money-saver, more a prelude to liver failure

THEREis much money-saving advice about in these troubled times and I usually have one of two reactions to it.

One is to think – or possibly to shout, to the consternation of family or passers-by if the advice is coming from television or radio – “Of course that’s a way to save money, everyone must know that.”

In that category are obvious tips such as make and take sandwiches to work instead of buying meals every day, never buy fizzy drinks, popcorn or sweets at a cinema, save money on fares by walking when possible, don’t subscribe to anything with Sky in the title, and never play cards with anyone nicknamed after a city.

On reflection, I think the card-playing tip came from the film Teen Wolf. But it’s still something most of us know, or certainly should know. As is “Never count your money when you’re sitting at the table, there’s time enough for counting when the dealing’s done.” Well worth remembering when checking the FTSE or listening to a banker.

As for the second possible reaction to gratuitous advice, where to start as real incomes fall and pundits come thick and fast, most of them more the former than the latter? For example, a tip I saw this week: “Reduce food bills by foraging for mushrooms, nettles, wild garlic and seaweed… transform an omelette or bowl of pasta.”

I tend to think that foraging for mushrooms is not so much money-saving, more a prelude to liver failure. As for wild garlic, when trampling through it as youngsters we called the clumps “Stinking Tams”. I see no reason to change that opinion and even less reason to add it to pasta when a bulb of custom-grown garlic for a week’s meals costs about 80p.

Seaweed anyone? The stuff that pops when dry, or the type with long, slimy, strands? Or the thick-stemmed stuff that clogs beaches and attracts flies? Not that I’m cynical. Nothing wrong with a little foraging if time is not pressing and you don’t have a job to go to, or a family to look after. Some things are worth foraging for. Brambles, for instance. Elderflowers or elderberries if you’re attempting to make wine. Crab apples. Sloes. Rosehips.

All free, waiting to be collected with a little pain and effort, but all about taste and flavour and nothing to do with saving money. Nettles, on the other hand, make only the most moderate soup and only pea pods make worse wine.

Been there, tried that, you see, when as a deluded thirty-something I spent a few months trying to follow John Seymour’s self-sufficiency best-seller with its dogmatic statements such as “You can never have too many broad beans.”

Oh yes, you can. Just as you can have too much comfrey, lambs’ plantain, feverfew and other plants whose exciting names outdistance their taste. Living on roadkill would be a better bet, although I haven’t seen any suggestions about that so far. Give the Prime Minister time.