By: Blonde Two
According to a Guardian report in 2015, a study of the faecal flora (yes that does mean poo vegetation) of Japanese women (don’t even ask how…) showed that the production of good bacteria in our guts is increased by a high seaweed intake.
You can, of course, also achieve this gut-enhancing effect with yoghurt, but where is the fun in that (although I have made my own yoghurt in the past).
Foraging the aisles of Sainsbury’s for little plastic pots is nowhere near as satisfying as waking up early on a Sunday morning, having a pleasant stroll, swimming around a clear sea, making a little (careful and friendly) harvest and stuffing seaweed down your cleavage to stop it from floating away.
Which is what I did last Sunday. I found some sea spaghetti and took it home to cook up with three cornered leek (cliff foraged) and kale (Lidl foraged) for breakfast. The best thing about this meal was that the yellowy brown sea spaghetti went bright green when it was cooked. The second best thing was the taste, it was delicious!
My guts are still saying, ‘thank you’!
The other favourites from the beach are sea beet (arrowhead shaped glossy bottle green leaves) which makes a very good spinach and rock samphire (thin grey-green branching stems) which has a flavour all of its own.
Will look out for sea beet and have already discovered how tasty rock samphire is (and located some). We swam over some pretty scary seaweed today I think it was kelp.
Sea Beet is plentiful on cliffs/beaches round here. I find the idea of swimming amongst seaweed a little alarming. One of the family got into serious difficulties swimming in the reservoir when he got his legs entangled in waterweed. I can’t remember all the details – your grandmother told me all about it many, many years ago.