As the woodpecker pecked around us, we woke up our sense of taste. First with leek and potato soup, to line our stomach.
We recalled a particular taste in our past which encapsulated a memory. Kally gave the example of marmalade which she ate on toast immediately after the birth of her daughter, so marmalde even time, contains that memory.
Treacle tart – reminds me of my father (no he didn’t make it)
Coconut mum would make as a tray bake for the cricket team
Sardines on toast and Steak and Kidney pudding
Mashed banana and cream – comfort food
Lemon curd tart – reminds me of my mother
Sussex sorrel – reminds me of school days, eating wild sorrel on edges of playing fields when wed break off form playing tennis
Fish soup with carp or cat fish with noodles, paprika and onion
Sweet cigarettes in a sweet shop
Ice cream mixed with soda on family holidays
Grandmothers roast potatoes
Smoked fish
Samphire from Morston beach
Bread with either marg or Golden Syrup – both not allowed
My father was a vegetarian and I remember going into one of those early vegetarian shops with a wonderful wholsome scent
Theo was on Ramadam, so not eating until sunset, so today was challenging for him! His memory food was pasta with pesto
Rachels was Dr Jains family paratha, coming from a kitchen of all women, including his 5 daughters.
We walked to the southern side of the wood, where we found primroses and violets, picked these delicate petals and ate them. The primrose had little flavour but the violet more, a purple perfume.
Some of us had no taste, some of us diminishing taste, some preferred sweet, some salty.
Back at camp, suppressing our sight with blindfolds we all bought in, (some ingenious – fast masks and neck warmers) we taste 4-5 different foods, some mixed some on their own.
0. Honey – from Gabrielle
1, A humus with tacco chips –
Pleasent / creamy / peppery / salt but not much / cool in temperature / lemon?
2. Orange and cranberry
Orange/tangerine/manderine / was it a sultana or raisson / Muslie without the oats!
3. Melon with lemon juice
Like pineapple / sweet / juicy
4. Fig and Dolcelatte cheese
Seedy and soft / creamy / is it processed cheese
5. Seaweed with x
Not liking / Tasty / Salty / melt in the mouth
Blindfolds off – how did that feel? The lack of sight made the process so much bigger!
Our mouth cleansed with nettle tea, we ended with our traditional scones and raspberry jam.
All best wishes to Nicky, Jo, and Lesley, who were not with us this day of taste, but thanks to Lynn (Kally’s mother) and Theo who were with us.
After all had left, we opened the jar of transparent liquid that Ester had left us to try. Definitely a syrup, we thought, but what was underneath? A taste of the earth somewhere. It was birch sap which Ester turned into syrup by boiling!
Kinda Forest School 