Wild Garlic Treasure Hunt

As you are probably aware, in the UK, the wild garlic season is now fully upon us. And you should be aware, for in the immortal words of Harry Nilsson, everybody's talkin'. Bloggers, chefs, cooks, food writers, foragers, dogs, cats, my Nan and a whole cross-section of society that I can't be bothered to list right now. If you didn't know, then I would suggest that you have been living under a rock or have perhaps been hiding your cranium up your posterior. But no matter, word on the street is that the humble allium ursinum is out. Definitely out out and out and about. I know this because around this time of year, I do tend to get a lot of enquiries about the stuff and everyone starts talkin' at me, in oh so slightly desperate ways. 

"Hey man, like, I heard you've got a stash of green growing in your garden and well, you know, its been such a hard winter man and like, I just want a couple of leaves man, you know, to stick in some soup or something like that and jesus man, its just been so long, I just want to taste some of that pungent chive man, please, I know you got some, oh God, just give me some please, oh pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease....."

As such, in the past, a lot of dodgy meetings on street corners have been arranged where I have swapped some wild garlic for a token slice of cake or some of last night's dinner. Which is absolutely fine by me. I am only too happy to give wild garlic away, as it does indeed grow rampantly around our cherry tree at home and I am always at odds as to what to do with it. I even stuck some on toast and grilled it with manchego the other day, just by way of trying to make a dent. Then I had an idea.

Given the level of interest at the moment in ramsons, would people be up for a little bit of a challenge, a bit of fun in order to get their hands on their very own wild garlic to plant at home? Would people be up for a wild garlic treasure hunt around London taaaan? I put this notion across on Twitter yesterday and quite a few seemed up for the task, so after mulling the idea over some more, I have decided to go for it.

So the premise is this. Next Thursday, on May 2nd, I am going to head up to London with five lush and full wild garlic plants; leaves, flowers, bulbs, soil and all. I will head to my first location at 10AM and then tweet a clue as to where I am, using the hashtag #wildgarlictreasurehunt. I will then wait for 30 minutes or until someone finds me and then I will move onto the next location and then tweet a new clue. The area I propose to move around in will be central in town, with the occasional hop over the river. And the thinking is to go on and on until hopefully, I have been found five times and all five garlic plants are given away and everyone is all smiles and laughter.

There is of course, an inherent danger that my tweets will be totally ignored and I will spend the whole day traipsing the streets, going from one place to another, carrying a bag of heady stink and the whole endeavour will be pointless. If that does happen, I will simply head to a pub, cry into several pints of beer before going home at midnight on the vomit comet back to Essex and throw clumps of wild garlic at everyone on my carriage. I will probably get arrested but I still believe this little project is worth a go.

You might be asking yourself "Why?" at this point in proceedings and my answer would be "Why not?" I haven't indulged in anything nonsensical lately with regards to the blog and I do like to embark on some social meeja experimentation from time to time. Using Twitter will be interesting, as lately it has become a rather self-serving platform, a fog horn to promote one's profile and of course, I am as guilty as any with regards to that. Christ, this whole idea is one big fist of 'look at me!' But once upon a time, there was a strong sense of humour and community on there, of people getting together for the simple love of food and larks. And I just wonder with this little project if we could scrape some of that back.

So what say ye fud people of Twitter, are you with me? Do you want some bloody wild garlic or wot?

  

Oh and please do spread the word......