Tag Archives: traditions

Foraging Skills – how to get ahead!

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I’ve been thinking about foraging recently.  There’s very little quite as special as a lovely – and free! – treat garnered from a hedge.  I’m thinking about a wild mushroom risotto, pots of crab apple jelly, a steaming blackberry crumble or a bubbling demijohn of rosehip wine.  Foraging is really an autumn sport, though, borne from the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, so why am I writing about it now?

The thing that makes a really good forager isn’t being able to spot a laden crab apple tree at three hundred paces  – it’s knowing where that tree is in the first place.  Being a successful forager depends on keeping your eyes open all year round – if you notice things now, and remember them, you’re well on target for a bumper summer and autumn foraging season.

So just now, keep your eyes open for these, and make a mental note –

Hazel catkins in hedge

They’re hazel catkins, and where they’re hanging in profusion from the naked branches of hedges and shrubby trees now, there should be some lovely cob nuts in the autumn – they’ll be much harder to see then, when there are leaves on the tree, and hazels growing in mixed planting aren’t especially distinctive looking.  Watch like a hawk though, come autumn, and pick them slightly green and sweet – because the mice will want them too!

A little note on the legality of foraging – if the item is being grown as a crop, then it’s not foraging, it’s scrumping (or stealing!).  It’s very unlikely that cob nuts or blackberries growing in a field hedge are intended as a food crop, but the nuts and sloes in my garden hedge definitely are!  So if it looks like someone’s caring for a tree or a hedge, it’s in an orchard or garden or looks intentionally planted, tread with care!  That said, there at lots of edible crops grown incidentally on trees planted ornamentally, on streets and in council amenity spaces, particularly in urban areas – foraging doesn’t have to be just a country pursuit! – look out for apples, plums and cherries, too!

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That Wedding Bunting – now well underway!

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The quick and simple Christmas Bunting was only ever a dry-run for the big task – I’d promised my sister bunting to decorate the village hall for her wedding reception.    Time is ticking on, so I’ve been getting on over the last few weeks.

Wedding bunting, complete

My plan was eventually to make 6 strings of 10m length each, in pursuit of which I’ve begged, borrowed and not *exactly* stolen all manner of fabric scraps, old clothes and bits and pieces.  I also bought a 72 yard bolt of yellow double-fold bias tape from the US via the marvel that is ebay.  This time I’ve chosen a bigger pennant, 8″ long by 6″ across.  I’ve also tightened the spacing so there is 6″ between flags.

Bunting pennants, laid outIt’s a great selection of colours and patterns, garnered from friends, family, work colleagues, the back of my wardrobe, and freecycle.  The fabrics come from three sets of curtains, three blouses, a pair of jeans and a pair of cords, one pair of jim-jams, two offcuts of woollen suit fabric, some polyester scarf material, and one tea towel.

Bunting pennants, cut and ironedA bit of back-of-envelope calculation and I worked out I needed 29 flags per string.  I drew a new template on cardboard from a packing box.  Words cannot express what a slow boring job cutting out 180 triangles is, but with perseverance, and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the telly evening after evening, we got there in the end.

Bunting pennants, sorted into groupsAfter ironing and sorting into piles, time to assemble the bunting.  Bias tape has quite a lot of ‘give’ in it, so peel a load off the roll and give it all a good stretch, this will also help it lie flat.  I measured 10m lengths and then found the middle of each.  Then starting in the middle, pin the pennants one at a time into the fold of the bias tape, measuring the gap between them approximately.  After that, it’s just a matter of running the whole length through your sewing machine using appropriate complimentary – or if you like, contrasting – thread.  Try to avoid skewering your fingers on the pins too often.

Completed bunting

There it is – I hope she likes it!  Only four more strings to assemble before it’s all done!

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Happy New Year!

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Here’s wishing all of you a very happy 2012, and hoping your new year’s celebrations went with a bang!  I should have written this yesterday, of course, but timeliness has never been one of my more natural talents (as people still waiting on Christmas cards from me will attest)!

Fireworks

I’m ambitious to do experiment with even more creative, country skills and crafts next year, and write about them too!  On my list is more brewing (cider, beer, and of course country wines), more curing and smoking, and experiments with sewing, crafting, recycling and thrift.  More food and recipes, of course, as well as some fruit & veg growing as the season starts to get warmer.  I also plan to write a little about my hens and poultry keeping, and to try some new crafts – at the moment I’m reading about candle and soap making, so watch this space.  Perhaps this year my Advent candle might even be homemade!

Thank you to all of you who have been reading the blog since it started back in October 2011 – both here on WordPress and in the syndicated feeds – your comments and feedback mean a lot to me and are very helpful, so please keep them coming!  I’d love to hear of any suggestions you might have for things I should be looking into and trying, too!

Last Minute Christmas – perfect giblet stock

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If you’ve bought a bird for roasting today, there’s a good chance it’s come with a little plastic packet of ‘bits’.  Whatever you do, don’t throw them away!

These bits are the giblets – the offal – usually the neck (in one or two pieces), the heart, the liver, and the gizzard.  The gizzard is thick, muscular structure with two hard abrasive grinding plates that the bird uses to crush up corn and other food items to make them digestible.  Giblet stock is quick, simple, and makes the most wonderful Christmas gravy.

I have a goose this year, but the following applies just as well if you have a chicken or turkey.  Personally, I use the goose heart and liver in one of my stuffings, so only the neck and gizzard are available for the stock.

In addition to the giblets, you need the following:

  • Stock vegetables.  I use one onion (red or white) and a couple of carrots, I don’t like celery so I don’t use it, even though it’s the often-quoted third member of the stock vegetable trinity.
  • A bouquet garni.  This is just a posh culinary term for some herbs. I use some bay leaves, rosemary, thyme and sage, along with some whole pepercorns and a few juniper berries.  Dried is fine.
  • Water.  Glug of white wine (optional).
  • A splash of olive oil.

Prepare your gizzard by cutting away and discarding the hard plates (use a small sharp knife inserted below and parallel to the plates) and chopping the rest of the meat roughly

Put the splash of olive oil into a nice big saucepan, and brown the neck and gizzard meat, and then add the roughly chopped onion and carrots and sautee for a couple of minutes.  Now add about a litre of water (and the splash of white wine if you want) and the bouquet garni, bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour.  Strain, discard the solids, and return the stock to the pot and boil again until reduced in volume by half.  That’s it.  Set aside in the refrigerator until you make your gravy later. You won’t regret it!

In Fermentation We Trust – apple juice turns into cider

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On a lovely bright November weekend, I pressed a load of apples for cider-making.

For the next part of the process, you need to put together the following bits and bobs:

  • Your apple juice (which is already in a fermenting bucket with any luck – you’ll need the lid, if it’s one with a hole for an airlock, so much the better – if so, you’ll also need an airlock)
  • Wine or cider yeast, and yeast nutrient
  • A nice warm location at about 18 – 21 degrees celsius
  • Enough demijohns (plus stoppers and airlocks) to contain the volume of apple juice you’ve collected.  All my demijohns have come from Freecycle, so it’s worth keeping your eyes open.  For recommendations of UK homebewing equipment suppliers, see the suppliers list.
  • A syphon
  • Homebrewing steriliser solution

Now, time to turn your wonderful juice into cider (for any Americans who might be reading, we mean hard cider – the traditional alcoholic sort).  Traditional ‘real cider’ makers would do nothing with it at this stage, and wait for the natural yeasts which you hope are already present on the apples to do their job and get fermenting.  There is an alternative approach which involves using campden (sulphite) tablets to kill off the wild yeasts and then adding some wine or cider yeast of your own, which with any luck should guaranteed a ‘clean’ culture of your chosen yeast strain.  I decided to go a third route, didn’t use any campden, but did add wine yeast and yeast nutrient to give the process a ‘kick-start’ and make sure that an appropriate culture was at least in there with a fighting chance!

Apple juice before fermentation

You should probably take the specific gravity of your apple juice before you start fermenting, as this will tell you something quite important – with a bit of arithmetic (or there are online SG to ABV calculators out there you could avail yourself of) you should be able to work out how alcoholic your cider ends up.  This is relevant both for keeping your driving licence, and for making sure your cider contains enough sugar, and therefore after fermentation, enough alcohol, to keep well.  You’re aiming for a minimum of about 3.5% ABV, real ciders can easily get up to about 8%.

I didn’t test my juice (do as I say not as I do, right?), but it tasted nice and sweet so I think it’s likely my cider is about the 6% mark. Invest in a glass hydrometer (they’re cheap, easy to use with a bit of practice, and ever such pretty bits of old-fashioned looking laboratory glassware), you won’t regret it!

Fermenting by the fireThere is lots of advice that you should ferment your cider under lock.  I didn’t have an airlock capable bucket available so just kept the lid loosely on.  My experience from beer brewing is that the CO2 produced during fermentation will give a good blanket over the brewing liquor, being heavier than air, and oxidation shouldn’t be a problem at this stage as long as you don’t disturb the fermenting juice.  If your bucket does have an airlock, after adding the yeast and nutrient close the lid tightly and set up the airlock.  If it doesn’t, just fit the lid loosely so that the gas produced during fermentation will be able to escape without blowing the lid off!  Put your bucket in a nice warm place and try to avoid peeping.  Mine went by the fire in the living room for the first few days, as we were having a bit of a cold-snap.

Ready for rackingYou’ll be able to tell fermentation has started when you see bubbles through your airlock, or when a nice loose foam starts to form on top of your apple juice (because you’re not peeping, right?).  During fermentation, the dead yeast and quite a bit of the solids from the apple juice will settle out in the bottom of the bucket, and the colour of the juice changes from brown to a yellow-orange.  In general, the cider will not clear completely, but it will be brighter than it was before.

Top fermenting yeastOnce fermentation seems to have stopped (I gave mine a generous month), you’ll have a nice thick layer of debris on the bottom of the bucket with cider above it.  Now it’s time to ‘rack’ the cider into demijohns for bulk conditioning.  When I opened the bucket, I found rather an alarming-looking layer of yeast floating on the surface of the cider.  I can only assume that this was a wild, top-fermenting yeast strain, as it seems to have done nothing awful to the cider so far!

Clean and sterilise your equipment (demijohns, syphon, stoppers & airlocks) carefully this time, following the directions on your steriliser.  Now the cider has fermented you risk accidentally making cider vinegar if acetobacter bacteria were to get in.  It’s also important to avoid introducing oxygen into the cider at this stage – acetobacter need oxygen to make vinegar from alcohol, so even if there’s some contamination they’ll struggle to get going if the cider stays free of air.  Syphon carefully, keeping the outlet of the syphon below the level of the liquid and avoiding introducing bubbles.  Then fit your stoppers and airlocks and put the cider in a cool dark place to mature for a few months before bottling. Keep an occasional eye on your airlocks to make sure they’re not drying out.  I expect to leave mine in the demijohns until spring, and will then bottle into champagne bottles with a bit of priming sugar to make sparkling cider.

Filled demijohnsWe had a couple of pints more cider than fitted in the demijohns, and it would have been inconceivable to waste it – I can report that it is, already at this stage, definitely cider.  It’s a bit rough around the edges with quite a hard tannin that hopefully will mellow a bit with maturation, but has a lovely fresh apple aroma and definitely shows promise!

If you’re going to try it, I would recommend having a bit more of a read about the process before you start.  Some of my favourite books on home-brewing are listed in the library.

And if all that seems a bit complicated and labour-intensive, I’ll give you my directions for the quickest and easiest (and remarkably tasty!) home-brewed cider in the world very soon!

‘Tis the season… Happy Advent, everyone!

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Advent candle

We lit our advent candle this evening, which marks the real start of the Christmas season for me.  And this morning I had a chocolate Euro out of the ‘1’ pouch on the fabric advent calendar.  So, Happy Advent, everyone, and I hope your homemade Christmas plans are all coming along well!