Today was different. The weather wasn’t different (still windy, though there was a bit of sun!), but the day’s activity was. Louise had persuaded us all to take part in a foraging day, but being sailors, this foraging had to have a different slant to it, so it was a seaweed foraging day. We all headed over to the meeting point laden with wet suits, masks, fins, snorkels (if we had them) and loads of warm gear. Once there we met up with our guide – Linnea. She was very friendly and took us through what we would be doing – essentially foraging for seaweed and then eating it.
In fact, this was all much better than we might have expected given the weather, the temperature of the water and a general uncertainty. We started looking around on shore for flowers and edible plants and then got togged up. This was not a rapid process; wetsuit, gloves, hood, fleece (to protect from the jellyfish!), mask, snorkel and then wetsuit boots – pragmatic and practical rather than elegant.
We started exploring around the bathing area and Linnea showed us various different types of seaweed – sugar kelp (saccharina latissima), oarweed (laminaria digitata), gutweed (so-called because it apparently resembles the gut and known as ulva intestinalis!), bladderwrack (fucus veisulosus), sea lettuce (ulva lactuca/fenestrata), bootlaces (chorda filum) and knotted wrack (ascophyllum nodosum). We sampled quite a few of these while looking around the bathing area, but then went into the main inlet to look around and collect various seaweeds for lunch.
Once we had had a good look round and picked appropriate seaweed we got back out and lunch was gradually prepared. This involved seaweed salad, various dressings and sauces prepared with seaweed and then gut weed coated in flour and wrapped round fish fillets, mushrooms and blocks of halloumi cheese which were then deep-fried on a primus.
This proved to be a delicious lunch – sometimes subtle flavours, but all tasty and thought-provoking. Even the accompanying drink was prepared using seaweed.
