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Mon, May 5, 2008 (source Winnipeg Sun)  
 
Roadkill with a side  
of chestnut porridge  
British chef leaves no stone, or dead animal,  
unturned when foraging for food  
By THANE BURNETT, Sun Media  
 
Fergus Drennan gathers wild spring mushrooms as part of his year-long challenge to forage for everything he eats.  
 
The soft and fleshy bump you feel under one tire is his supper.  
 
And the twisted weed that grows next to a favorite flower is pan fried for breakfast.  
 
The British wild man is searching for manna from heaven. While the rest of us consider our food through plastic wrap and by peering at a picture on the side of a cardboard box, Fergus Drennan has a different plan.  
 
The British wild man is searching for manna from heaven.  
 
Growing hungry as we speak by phone, Fergus makes plans for some nearby take-out. While this spring day seems to have conspired against the frugal Englishman — the chestnuts he made morning porridge out of were bland, his bicycle tire was flat as he earlier headed to a violin lesson and the acorn bread he baked for lunch was as hard as a grave stone — Fergus is sure of soon having a full and satisfied belly.  
 
But he won't go off for the always reliable fare from the Golden Lion pub, open near his home in Broad Oak, on the southeastern corner of England. Fergus, instead, will wander off in search of fresh morels — spring mushrooms — sprouting near the shore-line of the English Channel.  
 
If he's lucky, he'll combine them with sea beets — a spinach substitutes which ancients believed could cure genital tumors. Put the fixings together with the root mash he'll whip up, and lay it all out beside the pheasant he discovered dead along a nearby roadway yesterday, and you have a feast fit for any impoverished English lord.  
 
These are the eating habits of a man who's turned back his body clock a few centuries.  
 
Starting April 1, Fergus began a challenge — to forage for everything he eats. An otherwise modern man who counts on e-mails, a fridge and a cellphone, he will spend a year living from dead animals and fresh plants found within 16 kilometers of his home. Even his coffee is concocted from acorns.  
 
Fergus had been lucky with today's roadkill bird. Judging by the stiffness of its flattened self, it had been hit by a passing transport or maybe family van about three days ago. There, along the side of an English country-side lane, it had tenderized during days which never got above 10 C.  
 
"If it had been fresher, I would have had to wait — but not now," Fergus boasts.  
 
Over the next year, the British chef will use no prepackaged or bought groceries. Where once he used rice and pasta, daffodils and roadkill will now flesh out his entire diet.  
 
And by the time he's done, he hopes to have a closet of clothing, made from the hides of the dead things he's consumed.  
 
In large part, it's the chef's social experiment, to wonder about a future where cheap food supplies could vanish, and Westerners would have to become inventive by taking pages out of ancient cook book.  
 
But this strange return to the way humanity once picked up groceries, really began when Fergus was around seven years old. He'd search out food for his pet turtle in a London park, and began to wonder: "Why don't more people forage for what ever we need?"  
 
It set the standard for his life. At 36 years old, he recently splurged by buying his first new bicycle. For years, it seemed whenever he needed one, the parts or the whole would suddenly appear in a ditch he was passing by.  
 
"All my life, whenever I've needed something, it's suddenly right in front of me — I just have to recognize it," he explains, after finishing a glass of sea-buckthorn — a very ugly antioxidant super-fruit — and apple juice.  
 
Just this morning, after his beginner violin lesson — he tried to get through a bad rendition of 'The Bear Dance' — he stood in the window, looking out at his teacher's English garden. She pointed to a favorite plant, and grimaced at a weed sticking out nearby. Tomorrow, she said, the gardener would take care of that.  
 
Instead, Fergus rushed out and, like Bugs Bunny with a carrot, pulled out the unwanted greenery by the roots. He plans on boiling it up, or perhaps even frying it, down the road.  
 
He's learned to never ignore a gift of nutrition popping up in front of him.  
 
"It's not just about the food, it's about the adventure," he explains. "The most amazing things happen along the way."  
 
If animal roadkill ever becomes a crime, Fergus would be the first to be called as an expert witness. Over the years, he's learned — sifting through maggots, past flies and into the stiffness of joints — what dead things are edible, and what should remain at the side of the road.  
 
But not everyone is always thrilled with the way he satisfies his hunger. He writes about his ongoing year of living off found food in an ongoing blog posted on the Online Ecologist website. And a recent post, which included detailed instructions on how to skin a roadkill badger, brought out the fangs in some nature lovers.  
 
"What the Hell is your problem?" asked one reader.  
 
Another wondered about the lasting "psychological effects of such revolting actions on children's minds".  
 
Maybe it was the many pictures of the skinning, Fergus now reasons.  
 
But he answers back: "I never take the deaths of animals for granted.  
 
"I'm very sensitive, but I know what potential there is in the food."  
 
He recently left a pheasant too long in a slow-cooker. He thought he's just have to go hungry.  
 
"Time management becomes really important if it means the difference in eating or not," he continues. "Feeling bad about the pheasant, I turned the corner and suddenly found the best, freshest rabbit.  
 
"Just when you need it, nature offers you something else."  
 
You just have to know what you're eating. He doesn't want a repeat of his bad mushroom experience of years ago.  
 
Last Christmas, he found a goose — its head largely gone — tossed in a thorny bush on a friend's farm. When it was all cooked, he suddenly considered: "Maybe it was poisoned?"  
 
He quickly phoned the farmer, who said the bird had been killed by one of his dogs.  
 
"Come over and get it," the farmer said.  
 
"I always have...it's sitting on my plate," Fergus answered.  
 
His partner doesn't adhere to the same wild diet, but Fergus' friends and family have grown used to being fed roadkill when they come over for supper.  
 
"Once you realize the meat is just meat, it becomes easier," he says.  
 
"I'm just trying to live in more harmony with the environment."  
 
But when a man is looking at eating squirrels and daisies for a year, who could blame him for seeking out distractions?  
 
As well as the violin, Fergus is now trying to master the art of fermentation.