Hunting, gathering and the origins of Ray Mears the Fatty

Preparing acorn meal

In the fifth episode of Ray Mears' Wild Food (2007, all available on YouTube) we learn what Britain's bronze-age hunter-gatherers may have eaten and how they prepared it. With gusto Mears harvests, tastes and prepares acorns, wild apples, service berries, mushrooms, hazelnuts, the roots of the black bryony and one or two others plants. Everything tastes delicious and lovely, the methods used are all wonderful, fascinating, interesting, inspiring etc, etc. And yet when at the end of the episode (the end of the series) it is time to thank all people involved with the production of the show they aren't served a delicious acorn pie with a service berry compote and a hazel porridge as desert (yummie). Oh no, out of his high hat Mears conjures a prepared wild boar to be roasted on the spit, serving it with french bread. 

With the wine (in paper cups) and the ketchup carefully kept out of sight (?) Mears celebrates the fruits of the manly hunt as the only thing fitting for a gatherers party. The foraged acorns were later fed to his two-score army of Filipino maids.          

Spitting out a wild apple after stating that is is "lovely"

In the end it is all about the meat.