Woodland Soup Mix
Picked by hand and beautifully bunched by Deanna from her own abundant and bio-diverse meadow at the woodlands edge.
You can nibble any of these items raw, whizz them up into a green super-smoothie, or make a delicious soup out of them.
Suggestions for making woodland soup:
- Finely chop one onion, two carrots and two stalks of celery (or Alexander stems if you wish) and cook over a medium heat with 1-2tbsp of olive until they begin to soften.
- Roughly chop your woodland soup mix and add to the mixture, stir well until the leaves start to wilt
- Top up with 1L of water, bring to the boil and allow to simmer for 15-20mins.
- Season to taste, blitz it in a food processor (or leave as it is) and serve. You can top with the brassica shoots included in your box to boost your nutrients.
You can also make a raw version of the soup, by blending the woodland soup mix with 2tbsp of olive oil and juice of half a lemon in a food processor with 500ml of water then add a further 500ml after processing, (add salt and freshly ground black peppercorns to taste). Warm very gently whilst stirring the soup over a low heat for 3-4mins. The soup should be warm - but not hot if you want to keep it ‘raw’.
Serve with a sprinkle of brassica shoots
Our Woodland Soup mix is made up of the following plants:
Ground Elder
Grows so abundantly in the UK that it is now considered an invasive weed! This is one of the first plants to really get going early in the spring and was very likely to have been a welcome sight to our ancestors coming out of a difficult winter.
It is very tender and has a wonderful soft texture - brought over by the Romans and used as a pot herb, that was also considered to have medicinal properties.
Ramsons
The latin name is Allium ursinum being derived from “ursus” (bear) and according to folk tales, bears would consume this plant after coming out of hibernation to remove toxins from the body and to regain strength. I believe this kind of relationship happens between us and plants too. The edible plants that spring up from under our nose, may just turn out to be exactly the thing we need to be eating!
A wild member of the onion family, this delicious and versatile leaf can be used in place of chives or leeks in any recipe. You can just use it as a salad leaf and eat it raw, or you can cook it in the same way as you would spinach.
Learn more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4352197/#CR70
Three Cornered Leek
A wonderfully versatile plant with an onion/garlic flavour.
All of this plant is edible. The young plants can be uprooted if they are spreading excessively and used in place of baby leeks or spring onion in any recipes.
This plant grows abundantly and crops repeatedly throughout the year. It is now considered to be an invasive weed because it grows quicker than people can remove it!
I find it hard to understand how anyone can call an edible plant invasive! Surely the faster it grows - the more there is to eat!