Promise of what's to come...

Last night Stephanie joined me to walk the dog. I took her on a route she hasn't seen before, she absolutely loved watching all the little bunnies skipping about as we walked. Very soon she spotted some blackberries- they are almost ripe. Must be due to this gorgeous weather we have been enjoying recently. Stephanie couldn't resist picking a couple- she says she likes the sourness! LOL

This prompted her to remember a local area where hundreds of blackberries grow and she announced she can not wait for the summer holidays so that we can go. 

I have also spotted a damson tree so we will be heading there later in the year as well. 

Do you have a favourite place to go foraging? What do you find there?

Forgaing makes

So the other day when we went blackberry picking Stephanie decided to make a fruit cordial with the berries she picked. Here is the cordial in the bowls;

Last night it was ready for bottling. Stephanie isn't here, but as she won't be back for another week I needed to get this in the bottles so that it doesn't spoil before she returns. So I set about separating the cordial from the fruit;

And then into sterilised bottles;

Not a bad amount of cordial for  the cost of 900g of sugar and a little tartaric acid. everything else was free. I had a taste and it is fruity very like squash, which I don't actually like but I had a little atste. Dylan had a glass and declared "it's better than Ribena, you can actually taste the fruit in it!"

High praise indeed from the boy who only eats fruit under duress! I can't wait until Stephanie gets home and has a try. I hope she likes it as much!

foraging 2014

Yesterday saw the beginnings of our foraging for 2014. We were out walking when we spotted that the blackberries are black. Already! proof of the lovely summer we are having.

Running down the hill to get to the bushes
picking the berries.

 

our little basket was full very quickly. When we got home I froze a bagful or the winter, the children ate handfuls. Then Stephanie asked if we could make squash. So I dug out a book I know has a fruit cordial recipe, we worked together to follow this. At the moment we have 2 trifle dihes looking like this;

The picture is showing the berries up as very red- they are black lol. We have followed this recipe to make elderflower cordial previously, but never made it with fruit. I will let you know in a few days how it turns out!

 

 

playing house!

Today I have spent the day sorting in the house, with the exception of a brief trip out to collect Dylan and Stephanie from their Dad's. Aside from paperwork for work and cleaning the house top to bottom I have been doing this;

Yummy vanilla cupcakes made using the Ultimate cupcake recipe from pure vanilla, a book I won in a give away over on Hannah's blog a while back. They are very tasty and super light! I love them, the book is in American measures so once I had converted them I was good to go.

 

I have also strained and bottle my damson vodka I made last year, o course whilst doing this I had to have a little taste- it's delicious. Now I need to leave it alone for several more months to enjoy at its best! I am a little upset as I broke my pretty vodka bottle I have been saving especially for this vodka.

Now I have a question for those of you who make fruit alcohols, once strained do you use the fruits to make anything else? It seems a shame to waste what look like perfectly good (although alcoholic I know!) little berries now that I have removed them from their liquid home.

Using it up!

As part of the using it up callenge set by Mrs Green I have been wading my way through the food in my fridge for the past couple of days so far I have eaten;
Chicken fried rice
egg rolls
sliced beef and duck skewers with salad, coleslaw and potato salad
turkey rolls
griddle pan waffles

All except the griddle pan waffles were made using barbecue leftovers. I have had to put some more into the freezer as the children have gone to their Dads for a few days and I am off to stay with a friend. So rather than waste the 2 boxes of cooked chicken breast and 4 packs of bread rolls I have frozen them to eat another day.

When the children and I went to the woods the other day we collected some elderflowers to make cordial with. As Stephanie has an allergy to citic acid I made 2 batches one using lemons, one without. Instead of citric acid I made it with tartaric acid which she is ok with.

Here is the citrus one;

This is them all bottled (or jarred!) up. I keep any jars I use throughout the year so that I can make jams for us all in the summer months. When the bottle of wine was emptied the other day I thought it would be useful for this recipe. Unortunately I only had one wine bottle so the rest of the cordial has gone into jars- there's an excuse to drink more wine ;-)

what a lovely holiday we had!

We have been on our holiday to France and it was fantastic. We stayed at a lovely campsite in Lower Normandy for the first week, and a much busier site in the Ile de France for the second week.

The first site was a lovely Chateau being run by a family with lots of animals and prganic veggies. It was fantastic. We all really really loved the site.

 

This is the Chateau ( or castle) which made my little princess so happy.

The second campsite we went to was very close to Disneyland Paris, so we had a 3 days in there and lots of fun. I got lots of sewing done on both sites while the children played. I sewed together lots of hexagon strips, I now need to attach the strips onto the quilt topper.

We also found some plum trees on the secind site where we managed some foraging for baby plums before we left;

I now need to decide what I am going to do with these quickly as they will go off very soon if I don't. Think I may spend some time this evening thinking about it before I go to bed.

While we were away my sister had her baby, so I now have a new baby nephew, and a real urgency to sort out the baby blanket I made before I went away. I must sort out the wonky edges so that I can give it to her, I have quite  a tight schedule to get that completed by as we are off to stay on Monday so my project for tomorrow is to finish the blanket and do something with the plums as well.

another source of foraging??

YES- that is the common brown garden snail, and yes I discovered today that they are indeed edible. According to the lovely zoo lab lady on our school trip today if you catch your snails in the garden bring them inside feed them lettuce, cucumber etc etc for a week you can then cook and eat them!

However, this is a step to far for me I cannot ber the thought of eating snails, but for those of you who are braver, and more adventurous than I am here is a recipe link!

relaxing day

Today has been an absolutely gorgeuos hot sunny day, after popping to the dump, taking Dylan swimming and stocking up on food for the next couple of weeks I sat in the garden to sew hexagons. Am very impressed with the progress I have made look;

Ok so it just looks like a strip at the moment, but I feel like I am finally making progress, patience is not a strong point for me, I want i t done now. I also have an idea for a picnic blanket made out of red and blue fabrics I want to get on with, but not until I have finished this.

Dylan and I went for an impromptu walk after dinner and collected lots of elderflowers, We now have more elderfower cordial brewing (what do you mean you don't brew elderflower cordial? well what do you call it then?). Dylan has plans for us to go and pick more flowers during the week so that we can make loads more, its his new favourite drink;

We also found a couple of damson trees looking very laden with fruit, lots of foraging to come this year as I have now found apple trees, pear trees, damson trees and I already knew where to find hundreds and hundreds of blackberries.

Tomorrow we are doing a bootfair with lots of old things we no longer use, all proceeds to go towards our summer holiday, only 5 and a half weeks to go.

First foraging of the year.........

these are some unidentified plants.

One I did identify was the elderfowers; so we made some elderflower cordial, after LOTS of googling I found that I can use ascorbic acid, rather than citric acid. Then I left out the lemons and am hoping for the best, by leaving all the citrus ingredients out then Stephanie can have a try, just hoping that the taste is not desperately impaired by the lack of citrus fruits.