Wild Herbs

Amazing, amazing experience at the weekend... a 'Wild Herbs for Food and Medicine' walk with no less than Roger Tabor, chairman of British Naturalists Association and former chairman of the Herb Society, who just happens to live in Brightlingsea! Couldn't believe my luck when I saw a poster up in a shop window in the High Street.. the walk was across the countryside and down to the saltmarsh at the tip of Flag Creek out the back of where I live. Down at the very tip of the creek we tasted Marsh Samphire and Sea Purslane and also saw Sea Beet, Sea Aster and Sea Lavender.

Apart from scribbling down a few notes on cooking Sea Purslane, I failed spectacularly to take any notes or photographs during the walk. I just wanted to be in the moment and give it all my fullest attention.. such opportunities do not come along every day of the week!

But the very next morning I went out on my own for a little countryside ramble near home while it was all fresh in my mind to see if I could find any of the new plants I'd been introduced to..

Mugwort

Can't believe this great Anglo-Saxon favourite is just growing everywhere around and I never knew it!

Wild Carrot

Can you see the purple-ish dot in the middle of the flower-head? This is in imitation of an insect feeding, which encourages other insects to land.

It folds up into this distinctive 'birds nest' shape when it forms its seeds.

Woody Nightshade















None of these pictures would win any prizes, but you get the idea! Very inspiring and feel greatly encouraged about going out and about and learning more plants.

Squashes

So you may have noticed that its been very quiet on the vegetable front this year. Hmmmm.

All I can say is, it wasn't for lack of early effort on my part. But our slimy friends, encouraged by the immense and prolonged wet, flourished and rampaged .. and ate everything. And I mean, everything. Except for things in the onion family - my chives, leeks and spring onions have never looked better!

Even young tomato plants were eaten, albeit not as enthusiastically, but when the munchers had munched everything else they nibbled the tops out of the baby tomato plants as they hardened off. Hmmmm.

My sister has an allotment in south London/Kent border and she got about 75% of everything eaten and she used organic slug pellets AND a nemotode. And I saw an article about the weather conditions creating the perfect breeding conditions for a voracious non-native giant slug on the rampage (can't remember where ... think on Soil Association website somewhere).

So at least its not just me!

Anyhow, I tell you all this because then you will understand the great pleasure and satisfaction I have derived from my one vegetable success this year!

Its a summer squash which can be picked young to eat as a ball courgette or left to grow into large summer squashes. What can I tell you.. its tasty, its good-looking and it withstood everything that it had to contend with!

My other courgette and squash plants were just annihilated as soon as they were exposed. With a couple, I waited until they were enormous.. really big leaves and well-formed plants.. I put one out to harden off under a bell cloche and everything. But as soon as I took its lid off its fate was sealed.

This summer squash was planted in a very tall chimney type pot to give it plenty of room to get its roots in.

When I planted out I put in two garden canes at diagonal corners and then covered with a giant polythene bag which I pegged in place to the canes and the lip of the container. And left as long as I could as protection against the elements while the plant hardened off. But it was by no means slug or snail-proof! If you look at the photos carefully you can see that the stems are covered in some fairly lethal prickles .. this possibly helped!

Well, there you go. This versatile new plant has made a life-long friend in me! So I've positioned it alongside the wooden wine crates of leeks to form a discreet curtain in front of my ENTIRELY EMPTY vegetable patch(!!) and give the illusion of lushness and plenty at this harvest time of the year.

And you know what ... I'm thinking of turning that veg bed over to herbs next year (I'm out of room in the herb garden) and just sticking to containers for veg.

Hmmmm.

Minerals

Just wanted to share with everyone some wonderful words I found in this book by Paul Bergner:

'Traditional peoples all over the globe consider Earth to be our mother... we literally must nurse from the earth and nature to obtain the minerals our bodies need.'

The book describes how all the different minerals and trace elements are formed in the earth's core, magma and crust and are drawn up through the root systems of plants into sea vegetables and the plants that we eat as food. It goes on to talk about the way in which intensive farming has de-mineralised the food we eat and the impact the use of NPK fertiliser has on the balance of minerals in our food. He then explains the effects of mineral deficiencies on the body, causing dysfunction and disease, and how western medical practice does not consider the issue in relation to ill health. All the various minerals and trace elements are considered in turn, with their individual characteristics and foods which are rich in them. However, it is also shown how the minerals all act with each other, so if you become deficient in or supplement one it will put out the delicate balance with all the others. It is also stressed that too much of many of these minerals can be dangerous. And much more besides (issues of absorption, effects of sugar and refined white flour, the work of ground-breaking early 20th century travellers and researchers into the diets of indiginous peoples).. It is a fantastic book in which the science and technical issues involved are discussed clearly and without losing the reader, but which also has a clear spiritual component running through it.

For me it was extremely helpful, as I am constantly seeking ways to ensure adequate magnesium in the face of my own health issues. This book gave me a lot of useful information, suggested ways forward but also helped to explain some of the things I'd worked out for myself along the way via trial and error.

I was really struck, though, with how the description of how the elements are all formed within the earth and then rise up to the surface .. how the Earth actually does sustain us. With how the cycle is broken when we exhaust the supply and don't return the waste to the ground to renew it. As a historian and archaeologist it was fascinating to realise the different ways our ancestors used the land for a short spell then moved on, allowing nature to take over and restore the nutrients. It shows that we have much to learn from our ancestors .. much knowledge has been lost and our relationship with our planet along with it.

I ordered my copy from the inter-library loans service (its expensive on Amazon) but, if your interested in this sort of thing, Paul Bergner has done some You Tube videos on the subject of mineral depletion which contain enough information to whet your appetite and give you the outline of his research.

Chives

I've got a feeling the titles for all the posts this month are going to start with the same word! We are dealing with an abundance of chives at the moment, following the stormy weather end of last week which horizontal-ised my lovely tall vertical flowering chive clumps. So what do you do with a forest of chives? Well you may ask! I've been scratching my head all day and here's what I've come up with so far..

Chive Vinegars
I had already made a fair-sized bottle of chive vinegar using an earlier harvest end of April this year, as part of a learning assignment on the Susun Weed course I'm taking. But since I'd bottled it, I'd seen somewhere to make a vinegar with the blossoms. So I have a large bottle of blossom vinegar brewing now too. Herbal vinegar takes 6 weeks to mature, most places say, so my end of April batch was about ready and I strained and tasted it this morning. Its good! And I think we can probably use plenty because its good as a general purpose vinegar for liberal use on your fish and chips for example, rather than just for salad dressings.

Chive and Lemon Butter
Ok, so flowers taken care of. Now a good sort of the stems - young, fresh, newer ones can be preserved as herbal butter. My favourite one which I use lots of is just grated lemon zest and finely chopped chives. This is fantastic on the new potatoes we're eating at the moment, but is also really nice for a jacket potato in the autumn or for roast chicken (push the butter up underneath the skin, so it oozes out and bastes the bird while its in the oven).

All you need to do is mush the herb and lemon zest into the butter and just squidge it all about until evenly distributed. It helps if you remembered to get the butter out of the fridge a while beforehand (note to self!) and you might want to dice it to speed things along. Now you can do one of two things with your buttery mixture. Where I've followed recipes for herb butters in the past, they always tell you to place a dollop of mixture onto clingfilm or tinfoil and roll it into a sausage shape. You can then just twist up the two ends and you have a convenient parcel for storing your butter in the fridge, just slicing off segments as you need them, or in the freezer for longer term use.

Maybe its just my lack of finesse in these matters, but this method often leaves me struggling to extricate bits of tinfoil or worse clingfilm from my nice little butter rounds. Its alright for storing in the fridge, but if I'm going to freeze the butter I now always use the second method which is...

.. ice-cube trays. This is something I learned when making batches of babyfoods for the little'un when he was weaning. If you freeze things in ice-cube trays, then once they are frozen you just pop them out and into a freezer bag or container and they stay in handy little portions. You can then just take as many or as few as you need out of the freezer. I have to confess to having one little tray of heart-shaped cubes - this always goes down well if you have guests and want to put a little butter portion on the side of each plate or in a little dish on the table. But this pleasing little touch is entirely lost on my boys in everyday situations.

The more robust stalks I chopped finely and decided to just freeze in a bag - I will try adding to soups, to get that delicious onion flavour, where they will be cooked a nice long time so that they become tender. So now I'm left with bunches of stems that are somewhere between these two extremes - time to get baking! I've got a really nice recipe for savoury muffins which I'll share with you next time.

Chive and Marigold Scones

Well its June today, and officially summer! I've never really tried the edible flowers and petals thing before, but this seems as good a time as any to give it a go. And time to do something with the vast quantity of chives I have overflowing the veg patch (standby for more chive recipes to follow!).

A big thank you to Debs at Herbal Haven for this fabby Chive Flower and Marigold Petal Savoury Cheese Scone recipe which me and the little'un donned our aprons to try out this morning.

I'm a great cheese scone fan in general (hence the extra bit of grated cheese to top several of the scones!) and love the onion taste of chives, which I use to make Cheese and Chive muffins, but I've never used the actual flowers before. In previous years I've used the stems then let the plants flower and collected the seed to use in future. But since I took to digging up and dividing chive clumps I have achieved a chive forest and the flowers are everywhere, such a shame not to try and use them.

Because they are practically golf-ball sized, I pulled the petals out - this was fiddly until I got the knack of how to hold/pinch/squeeze to remove the green parts of each little floret. Still the marigold petals couldn't be easier - picked a flower straight from the plant by the back door, gave it a good shake and my assistant helped pull the petals out (nice and easy).

Here he is mixing the dough - look at him go, that spoon is just a blur!

And, voila! Savoury Scones.














Its a really good recipe: quick and virtually idiot-proof, but delicious. Although the colour of the chive petals vanished in the oven, you could really get the onion flavour coming through in every bite. We'll definitely make these again and next time use much more herb - the bright colour of the marigold petals looks really attractive, sunshine on a plate.

Share your herby recipes here ... especially chive ones, lol!

Growing

I last posted just as April was arriving, but here we are just about to bid her farewell .. what's been happening in between? A lot of rain, and some very high winds (but then you knew that, right, if you're in the UK?!!) and a lot of growing!

All the wet has really exacerbated my problems with the little munchers who have been wreaking havoc in my growhouse .. this week I finally decided to bring in the peas, beans, sunflowers and courgette plants that had been seriously gnawed and were more hole than leaf :-( They are all perking up considerably back behind glass on the sunny recovery windowsill.

To make room on said sunny windowsills for the beleagured ones, I've put out my unexpectedly enormous quantity of baby tomato plants, as the slugs and snails don't seem as interested in tomatoes. This was a little experiment of mine, because I'd (inadvertantly) left out the last of my Ildi tomatoes on their plants in the growbags on the flat roof outside bedroom window last season - and there they hung all winter come wind, snow, storm or whatever. And there they were still in March, and several people told me to squish the dried out fruits onto kitchen roll and see if I could grow them. So I did! I put differing amounts of compost beneath and above (not really knowing what I was doing) inside eggbox lids not really expecting much .. and you've never seen anything like it. Germinated all over the place and what's more, every single one I transplanted (into its own little loo roll holder of compost) has taken. I have about 60 babies in trays of 5 or 6, all over the house!

Here are some in the coldframe, which seems to have fared better in terms of the illicit munchers. Also baby dill and marigold plants. And the start of a box of salad (against all the odds!)

They are a wonderful tomato, pretty little yellow plum-shaped cherry size fruits and really heavily laden plants. You can put them in hanging baskets or grow them up canes. I hope I will be able to find them all good homes to go to. Meanwhile, my 'proper' tomatoes, which I sowed in February, are busy flowering, would you believe .. a bit of regular nettle infusion has done wonders!

Also flowering at the moment are the strawberry plants outside, and we'll soon have the lovely chive blossoms too.

I've done better with the sweetpeas this year, soaking them helped and getting them enough light quickly enough and pinching them out at the right time (thanks to my wonderful neighbour who is expert at these things and doesn't mind a bumbling novice's barrage of questions!) Previous years they've been really leggy, so I'm quite pleased that I'm starting to get the hang of it. Won't risk these outside till the weather sorts itself out condsiderably.

April showers are magical .. every year it amazes me just how much everything GROWS in just a few weeks! Usually in March I look at the herb garden and think there's lots of gaps and I'll need a few more plants to pop in here and there. Then by the end of April everything is burgeoning. And although I love to see the flowers, there is something super special in April about all that lush bright green growth, unsullied and full of promise and newness and freshness. Every day this month I've stood by the back door looking out at the garden in the rain and its kind of visibly grown in front of my eyes. Fantastic!

Gardening

It was so lovely to be out in the fresh air and working in the garden last week, such fine warm days feel like a special gift that musn't be wasted this time of the year, its almost like its your duty to drop everything and get out there!

Had a quandry, the boys had waved goodbye off to see Nanny for the morning .. no-one about, all quiet! What to do, hmmmm ... really ought to cook something lovely and warm and healthy for us all to have for lunch when they get back. But the pull towards the garden is so strong and cannot be denied.

So I stuck the remains of the roast dinner in a big saucepan - heated some oil and tossed the remains of the tray of roasted veggies in it (butternut squash, potatoes, carrot, parsnip). When that smelt all appealing I popped in the leftover gravy, the remains of the chicken and the leftover green veg (greens and leeks and peas). Topped up with water, brought it slowly up to the boil (while putting jacket on and sorting out my seeds) .. bit of salt and pepper .. reduce to v. gentle simmer .. and GARDEN!!!!

Popped in to check from time to time and an hour later, beautiful soup. Gave it a quick squash with the potato masher so's to thicken it up (and so's the little'un doesn't pick the carrots out) and there it was .. hearty fare for all and happy mummy morning in the garden! Hurray!

Dandelion Salad

I've been reading about the tradition of using bitters to stimulate digestive juices to help breakdown rich meals. As my poor old tum has been sadly in need of assistance lately, I am trying having a little dandelion salad starter before my main meal. Its just a handful of washed, chopped dandy leaves mixed in with a handful of conventional salad leaves and I chucked a tomato in for colour and dressed with olive oil and a splash of my homemade nasturtium vinegar (more on this another time!)

I have to say, I think it helped... I had a roast dinner afterwards and didn't have any problems till about 4 hours afterwards. Will definitely use again, especially as it was really rather tasty!!

Soup Magic

January has not been great... everyone is sick and/or grumpy. But there was a moment of magic today! In my constant effort to not waste food, eat more veg and cook from scratch, etc I knocked up a soup for lunch. I had a slightly wrinkled and unappetising-looking celeriac languishing in the basket of roots, so I looked up a recipe for celeriac soup. I wasn't expecting much - the list of ingredients looked so innocuous, nothing exciting. You know, an onion, a stock cube, a bit of milk.

But it totally rocked!

And so I am reminded of the power of soup to be more than the sum of its ingredients. We had it in giant mugs with crunchy slices of bread toasted under the grill with a drizzle of oil and pinch of thyme. It was full of flavour and it cheered me up and made me feel better about the world and everything in it.

And the little'un dunked his crunchy toast in the soup and scooped it up and yummed it down with great enthusiasm (before falling off his chair while attempting to imitate the washing machine which just went into spin cycle - its OK, I caught him by the ankle - no harm done!)

So there we are .. whatever the problem is, I think the answer is probably soup.

The Last Chilli

Its all about red this November ... here is my last chilli! I haven't grown them before, but a neighbour gave me a couple of cayenne pepper plants and I have so enjoyed them, and they did really well. Harvested the last one yesterday. Have used some, dried some and frozen lots so will see what works best for next year. Wanted to make a chilli infused oil, but there seems to be a big scare about botulism so decided it isn't worth the risk to myself or loved ones!

On the red theme, here is my November strawberry, too

Apples and Pears (cont)

In case you were wondering what I did with all those apples and pears .. well, firstly I made mulled spiced pears and figs for Christmas presents. This was one of those torn from a magazine recipes now creased and splattered over time. We had the bit over that wouldn't fit into the kilner jars while it was still warm with a little vanilla icecream. Remains to be seen if the other jars make it until Christmas and actually leave the building!

Mulled Spiced Pears and Figs

200ml white wine vinegar
400ml ruby port
250g soft light brown sugar
heaped tspn mixed spice
a cinnamon stick
7 pears, peeled and cored and cut into 8 wedges
250g ready to eat dried figs, cut into halves

Put the vinegar, port and 200ml water in a pan with the sugar and spices. Stir, bring to the boil, then simmer for 35mins. Add the pears, bring back to the boil and cook for 2-3mins. Transfer the pears to a bowl and stir in the figs. Boil the liquid in the pan for about 10-15mins until halved in volume. Pack the fruit tightly into sterilised jars, top up with the syrup and seal.

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And I made these apple soul cakes from a marvellous apple recipe post at Tales of a Kitchen Herbwife (thankyou, Sarah!). We had them still warm from the oven with mugs of tea while watching fireworks outside on Bonfire Night. I had been reading about soul cakes and the tradition of leaving little cakes outside the front door to appease any wandering souls on Halloween, so was really excited to stumble across this recipe.

Apples and Pears

We have been blessed this week with a rather wonderful crate brimming with apples and pears from mum-in-law's garden. Its been a bumper crop for both this year and I've been busy devising more and more schemes to make the most of them, having distributed the bounty as far and wide as possible amongst friends and neighbours. One of the things I love about this time of year and its abundance is the passing on of tips and recipes for storing, freezing, preserving and baking of produce.. I am learning so much. We eat a lot of porridge in the winter, so I have stewed and frozen plenty of fruit to put on top. We only have a small freezer, though .. already made a huge batch of chutney, so looking up new recipes. Please share yours if you know some good ones?

Have found this book from the Soil Association invaluable this year as it has good illustrations of the different varieties of fruit and vegetables and tells which are best for which sorts of thing. Also, as well as full-blown recipes, it has lots of quick and easy ideas for enjoying produce simply (which is ideal when you have a glut and aren't able to spend too many hours in the kitchen!), such as yesterday's upside down cake (recipe to follow)

Pear and Ginger Upside Down Cake

Thickly butter an 8'' sandwich tin and sprinkle liberally with light soft brown sugar.
Lay peeled, cored pear halves attractively on top (I did slices).
Beat 4oz each softened butter, light soft brown sugar, wholemeal SR flour with 2 tspns ground ginger, 1tsp baking powder and 2 eggs.
Spread over the pears.
Bake at 190degreesC(375degreesF/Gas 5) for 20 minutes until just firm.
Turn out.

Blackberries

What a wonderful morning! We went blackberrying in the sunshine yesterday and came home stained but happy.

Combined with some aged eating apples in a crumble, and have three bags stashed away in the freezer for future puddings and smoothies.

Also made a blackberry oxymel - this is a new thing for me, its from the 'A Year with James Wong' book. Have put the blackberries in a jam jar and covered with cider vinegar and in ten days' time I have to strain it and then it should keep in the fridge. Plan is to dilute it in hot water with honey for a vitamin C drink for the little'un in cold and flu season (and me too, come to that!).

Indian Summer

Glorious sunshine, not a cloud in the sky! A good chance to have a look at what's happening in the garden.

Most of the vegetable patch is long over, but it is still home to a bumper patch of rainbow chard and a thriving row of chives. I planted calendula and nasturtium seeds in the little strip of soil between the veg bed and the path and have been pleased with the colourful display.

I have had masses and masses of calendula flowers for making oils, salves and tincture and drying for teas and the more you cut it the more it comes again (everything in my part of the garden has to be useful as well as beautiful and beautiful as well as useful, if you see what I mean!)

Pumpkin

I was given an ENORMOUS pumpkin for halloween this year ... so I've been looking up recipes as I'm determined not to waste any!



This recipe is from my Abel and Cole organic box newsletter. They have lots more pumpkin recipes on their fab website, too.

Pumpkin Muffins
225g pumpkin flesh
2 eggs
tspn ginger
1/2 tspn cloves
125ml milk
50ml honey
50g brown sugar
2 tbspn butter
175g plain white flour
1 tspn baking powder
tspn cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Steam the pumpkin flesh until tender then puree and allow to cool.

Mix together the eggs, milk, honey, sugar and butter and mix with the pumpkin.

Combine flour, baking powder and spices and add to the pumpkin mixture. Stir to mix but don't overmix.

Pour into muffin pans and bake for 18 to 20 minutes (makes 12).

Chicken Out Update

Those of you who read Earth and Tree last year (with their speakers on!) will remember the cacophony of chicken noises which greeted them from the 'Chicken Out' campaign banner we had flying.. this is a campaign in the UK to get the food industry, especially the big supermarkets, to clean up their act on chicken production and welfare and to get consumers to buy free-range rather than intensively-reared birds.

Thought you might like to read this update on how the campaign is going and what is being planned for 2009...



New television programme
Watch out for Chicken, Hugh and Tesco Too which is scheduled to air on Channel 4 on Monday 26th January at 9pm. This is a follow-up film to last year’s Hugh’s Chicken Run series and documents what happened when I became a Tesco shareholder as part of my fight to improve chicken welfare.

Poultry welfare forum
The plan to create a Poultry Welfare Forum which represents all the stakeholders - the farming industry, retailers, restaurants, government, campaign groups and consumers - has come to fruition and, late last year, we managed to hold an initial meeting of key players. Six themes were identified for further discussion. They were:

1. Agreeing an acceptable standard for British poultry welfare
2. Providing clear labeling for consumers on chicken standards
3. Ensuring progress on chicken welfare is not thwarted by lower-welfare imports
4. Achieving a better understanding, both within and outside the industry, of different health and welfare standards
5. Exploring dynamics between welfare and other sustainability issues
6. Stopping price wars so that chicken is not sold at less than production cost

I hope to have an updated report on all these issues in Spring 2009.

Compassion in World Farming
Compassion in World Farming is the leading international farm animal welfare charity, with a 40 year track record of successful campaigning on issues such as battery caged hens and veal crates. Their support has already been crucial to the Chicken Out! campaign and I’m delighted to announced that they will help me take it to the next level. CIWF have been appointed by the new Poultry Welfare Forum (see above) to co-ordinate discussion on the issue of transparency and consumer information. They will also be taking over the day-to-day running of the Chicken Out! website, giving links to the latest welfare news and providing some of the educational materials that many of you have asked about. I will still be providing my regular updates and you’ll next be hearing from me again after the airing of Chicken, Hugh and Tesco Too when we have an exciting online challenge we will be launching after the programme!

Please do check out the website over the next couple of months with much more to come, as we take the campaign ever onwards and upwards. Remember, we couldn’t have achieved all that we have so far without your magnificent support, and we still need it!

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Equinox

Welcome to the Autumn!

A time to relax and draw breath .. and enjoy the fruits of the earth. Lately I've been eating wonderful crispy jacket spuds and sweet local apples. And stewing lovely Bramley apples to mix with blackberries in crumbles and pies.


You can download this beautiful September calendar here

And you can read a little bit about the Autumn Equninox here

Garden Update

Just an update on what's happening in the garden today... some purple-podded mystery peas



and a lovely bowl of heritage dwarf french beans for my tea tonight!

Produce

I am happily harvesting produce from my little vegetable garden in the sky. Granted, there is no danger of my vegetable-growing supplying anything like our total household requirements! But that was never the point of the exercise.. rather to be involved with the life-cycle and changing of the seasons. But at present, I'm finding that there's nearly always something fresh to add to each meal: a strawberry or two to slice on top of my morning cereal, a sprinkling of radish and spring onion to garnish my lunchtime salad and a handful of carrots to enjoy with my main meal in the evening. And this is just from a couple of window box containers.. which means anyone anywhere can grow their own fresh organic veg!