Bountiful berries and mushrooms bring back memories of childhood

AUTUMN is a time to enjoy Nature’s bounty.

Although their berries are ripening a little later this year, hedgerows and dyke-backs are full of juicy brambles that make delicious jelly, or my favourite desserts – bramble and apple tarts and crumbles. I have fond childhood memories of a spoonful of homemade jam or jelly that was a welcome sweetener when stirred into a plate of rice pudding or semolina.

My mother had a cupboard full of jellies, jams and chutneys made from a host of fruits either grown in the garden or gathered from hedgerows. They made delicious “jelly pieces” for the tea breaks that she provided for those hoeing turnips, shearing sheep, making hay, harvesting, and all the other seasonal work that needed so many hands in those far-off days of my youth.

Mind you, I believe that foraging for wild fruit for profit is still on the statute books as theft.

Theoretically, buying a jar of bramble jelly at the local village fete could see you charged with aiding and abetting a crime. Having said that, I doubt if anyone would object to someone gathering wild fruits, fungi or hazelnuts for their own use.

If you enjoy a tipple, there are elderberries to look forward to that make fine wine, or plump, black sloes to flavour a bottle of gin.

As kids we spent hours picking rosehips and sold them at school for sixpence (2.5p) per pound to be sent on and made into rosehip syrup.

For me, the highlight of late summer and early autumn has always been picking wild mushrooms. There’s nothing to beat a breakfast of bacon, eggs and freshly picked mushrooms.

In a good autumn I regularly filled a couple of buckets every morning.

On such occasions, my wife Carmen made gallons of mushroom soup to store in the freezer. It’s simply a matter of adding the mushrooms to a pot of chicken stock along with potatoes, onions, parsley and seasoning.

Most folk only ever eat cultivated mushrooms that they buy in the shops, but there are dozens of varieties growing wild that are delicious to eat. Field mushrooms have a white cap which can become slightly brown and scaly in the centre as they mature. Underneath there are closely-spaced, pink gills that turn dark brown with age.

The best places to find field mushrooms are where cattle have trampled their dung into pasture during winter, either while sheltering at the back of a dyke, or when feeding at their troughs.

Horse mushrooms are similar to field mushrooms, but their gills are white at first, turning grey, then brown. That could lead the unwary to confuse them with deadly amanitas, which are poisonous.

For some reason we Scots aren’t very adventurous with fungi. The French love them and eat many different types.

There are many different mushrooms, toadstools and fungi in Britain and most of them are edible. Many, like chanterelles and ceps – that are found growing in woodlands in the autumn – are delicious.

The snag is that some fungi are poisonous and can give you a very sore tummy, may seriously damage internal organs and are occasionally deadly enough to kill.

So it’s vital that you know exactly what you are picking and when in any doubt, to leave them alone.

The biggest problem with most fungi is that you only have a few weeks in the year to practice identifying them.

In France people can take their basket of fungi to the local chemist who tells them what is safe to eat. We don’t have that service, but I keep the Collins Gem Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools handy in a drawer in the kitchen. Unfortunately wild mushrooms are an unpredictable harvest. Some years the fields are white with them, but more often than not there are hardly any. It’s hard to pinpoint what makes a good year for mushrooms, but in general they do best in a wet, humid autumn after a hot, dry summer.

I love my food, and must confess that throughout my life I have regularly over-indulged.

That wasn’t such a problem when I was young and actively farming, but I can tell you that extra calories soon leave their mark on me now that I am retired.

I used to eat like a horse and then burned off those calories with physically demanding work. If only I could return to the lean days of my youth. EXECUTIVE pay has gone way beyond reasonable levels while bumper bonuses have not made bosses work better, a prominent investment manager has told The Sunday Telegraph.

Saker Nusseibeh, chief executive of Hermes Investment Management told the paper: “The AngloSaxon model of giving lots of shares and a high degree of bonuses hasn’t worked and people have lost faith in business leadership.”

Recruitment giant Reed has said the labour market has boomed since the June referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union in spite of predictions the Brexit vote would be bad news for jobs, the Mail on Sunday reports.

The agency told the newspaper: “Our numbers show that UK industry is resilient. We’ve seen growth in a number of sectors including manufacturing and automotive… However, we must also be alert to the warning signs of what may be to come.”

The biggest fall in jobs was in the banking sector.

Pensions consultant Hymans Robertson told The Observer the Brexit vote is having “terrifying” effects on the pension schemes of millions of British workers.

Research by the firm based on economic assumptions that took account of the vote found only 25 per cent of employees now have a good chance of meeting the level of retirement income regarded as appropriate by the Department for Work and Pensions. Half have an extremely low chance of reaching that level.

The Sunday Times reports that private equity firms are mulling bids for the French Connection fashion chain, which has been trying to recover the popularity levels it enjoyed in the 1990s.

The paper said turnaround specialist Rutland Partners is understood to have looked in detail at a £40 million takeover of the chain.