Rising food prices are enough to turn anyone into a discount-conscious tightwad.
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 was possible” to eat only wild foods after becoming disillusioned with the rising costs.
And he claims that for 12 months he did not spend a single cent on groceries, but instead used nature’s pantry to feed himself.
The 61-year-old mother of three found all her meals in her local area and took long walks every week over a five-mile radius picking berries, mushrooms and salad leaves.
She obtained game venison in exchange for her herbalist skills and was given animals that had been slaughtered on farms to protect crops.
Her seasonings consisted mainly of powdered seaweed, which she says is salty, and friends who ferment vegetables gave her some sea salt.
The collector estimates having consumed around 300 varieties of vegetables in the 12-month period.
Monica Wilde explains the difference between cow parsley and poison hemlock
Homemade smoked salmon with wild spring salad
Oatmeal pancakes with seaweed and Monica’s mushrooms
But she insists her diet was far from boring – with dishes such as venison fillet with grated burdock root, wild pea and ox tongue leaf salad on the menu.
Other delights included home-smoked salmon on oak twigs with wild primrose salad, pea tendrils, chickweed, gorse flowers, cuckoo flowers, dog violets and ground elderberry.
With January just around the corner, a time when money is often tight, she has shared tips on how others can save money by purchasing their own ingredients.
Ms Wilde told the Need To Know podcast: “There would be at least one day at the weekend when I would go for a long walk and pick up a lot of things.”
‘I got all the vegetables I needed for the week, mushrooms and things like that, and I would take them out and maybe freeze some to preserve or put them in the fridge. ‘It was about an hour and a half each day, either preparing or cooking the food or doing something with the food for every meal.
‘The weaknesses of what I was able to get were covered by the community, which is how we lived in the past.
‘It was an experiment to see what is available and what is possible while still living a modern life.
“I still used a car, a freezer and an oven.”
Blueberries, wild apple and myrtle leaves for a festive sauce
Walnut milk and carragheen panna cotta
She said she had always been interested in foraging as her family spent a lot of time outdoors when she was growing up.
As a young adult raising her children alone, she admitted that money was always tight, so she supplemented her pantry by searching for food.
She said of her year-long experiment: “I spent absolutely no money on food.”
However, Ms Wilde admits she was in a particularly good position to eat wild because she knew a lot about plants to begin with. But she believes anyone can learn this quickly. She said: ‘It’s not difficult to know how to prepare a meal.
‘Wild food and store-bought food are prepared in virtually the same way.
‘You have to know what to choose.
‘But that’s not difficult either because, as human beings, we are very good at noticing the small differences between things.
«Most people could identify, for example, a dandelion leaf or a nettle.
‘It’s just a matter of building on that.
“Looking out the window at the small paved patio, I already see three things to eat.”
Ms Wilde said nature has something to offer practically all year round, with oyster mushrooms and hog nuts at this time of year.
However, he remembered that to remove the roots you need the owner’s permission.
He first started wild eating full-time in 2020, when he did his year-long challenge.
But now, from time to time, he treats himself to a box of organic vegetables and the occasional item from the store while eating the bulk of his diet, depending on the time of year.
This expert forager, who moved to Edinburgh in 1995 and lives in a self-built wooden house, has even written a book on the subject, titled “The Wilderness Cure.”
Ms Wilde claims her year eating wild foods had a positive effect on her health and improved her blood and gut microbiome results.
He added: “A lot of people think foraging is a niche, but it’s actually related to food security.”
“We live in less secure times, you know, with prospects of civil unrest due to politics, war, climate change and adverse events.”