Bamble Butter or Cheese! (by sarah)

Autumn is here as is harvest time and so when ever possible I have been out foraging! I have already made two batches of chutney, crumbles and cakes and sauces with the various fruit and veg so I thought I would try something different this year before heading down the jam and wine making path again.

I found some old recipes for butters/cheeses and thought I'd give it a go - there is no dairy in these but they either spread like a curd or you can cut them like cheeses and the names pre-date the modern terms which have a narrower meaning.

Basically it is just a butt load of blackberries and crab apples cooked until mushy, pushed through a sieve, the puree is then put in a pan with lots of sugar and reheated and stirred like making fudge - I was aiming for a cheese but my arm started to spasm so I had to give up but I'd already gone paste the butter consistency. I was really pleased it kept it's shape when removed from the mould!

Interestingly I discovered that depending on the age of the book there is a huge variance on how long such a thing will keep - 2 or 3 months in the newest book, 2 years in ones from before 1985 and indefinatly but will become more crystalline the older it gets in my older early last century and victorian cook books. We plan to just see what happens with it as it is going to take some time to get through!

Next step with this stuff I think is going to be a) seeing if adding some condenced milk turns it into a lovely fruit fudge and b) if I get even more fruit to reduce down can I make it without adding sugar? Lastly c) make it with lots of other fruits 🙂

One Week of Freedom! (by sarah)

The chickens have been with us a week now and have so far delivered unto us 14 good eggs and one soft shelled mess. The kids are grumpy with us for imposing an egg limit in their diet of 2 eggs each plus what ever is baked into cakes, pastries and other sundries they might get down their gullets in a week. They both love collecting eggs and then eating them 🙂

Mary gets incensed if I go out to the chickens without her - to the point that when I was bedding them down for the night on Friday she got her welly's and coat on whilst I was out and cried when I came in and said I'd already dealt with them - I then had to explain that I had tucked them in as it was their sleepy tired time!

I also found her in the garden naked bar welly's talking to them - it was no nappy time. We can distinguish Doggy and Felix but Mario and Lilly are still interchangable unless we watch their behaviour for a while first! They are starting to grow feathers back and I have spent even more money on them getting supplements as I was concerned about the soft shell. Alaric is now writing a fun little application that we can use to track money spent verses eggs for academic interest as it were!

Yep I've taken to videoing them now 🙂

I found it interesting that they are perfectly happy to put themselves back in the run! Though we are still planning on building the bigger encloser as I just don't think this one is really big enough to be honest but should be ok for now - they seem happy and winter is coming so they will need each others warmth etc..

So far looking after them has not been that hard as though the cold is starting to hurt my joints and stuff again I can do the morning egg check quiet quickly and have the kettle boiling ready for tea when I come in. It is all on one level with the kitchen so no stairs or anything involved (something that used to do me in were we lived before for the veg plots). I do the proper inspection and food later on with the girls helping with carrying water, food and grit! I have to say they are a lot tamer and passive compared to other chickens I have known - I would say they are smaller too but I think that is just because I have grown!

So one week in and we are really chuffed 🙂 We are taking egg presents around to the neighbours today as they can be nosey etc.. some cake baking may also lurk in the future 🙂

Chasing Allotments and Organising Sheds (by sarah)

That horrible sinking feeling when you realise you now have a kitchen full of animal feed sacks and there is no room left in the cupboard under the stairs and you've been thinking this stuff should all be in the shed for a while for ages and it needs to be sorted so the table you bought for a fiver from the school for potting up and mushroom growing can be put in said shed (sounds far more exciting and illegal than what I actually mean!).

So we turfed things and sorted them and took some camping bits out to put in the cupboard under the stairs which were also sorting at the same time and some animal cage bits which are going in the eves of the house with the fish tank etc... and we put hooks in the sheds beams to hang the camping chairs, strimmer and jet washer etc... Found the grate of wine bottles I''ve been looking for to bottle my nettle wine and dandiion wine up in and a couple more demijohns to go on the shelves we built for the purpose in the kitchen etc...

Mary thought it was great - it was her house apparently!

Then we headed off to the Allotments Country Show in the hope of nabbing someone about the fact that I am now not even receiving email responses from the council about how long it is going to take to get one - I go blackberrying along there I can see the empty plots! I found a lady who said she would pass my details on after a long talk about making chutney and pickled things with me and Alaric so fingers crossed.

The weather was a bit pants by this point but Jean and Mary had a great time even though they didn't get to go on any rides - Jean went in her roller blades she picked up last year in a charity shop for like £2! She only fell over once and had her shoes in her rucksack which she changed into after seeing the zumba but by then it was too late to join in!

Mary was most pleased with her balloon dog - in pink as always - it is currently her favourite colour! I worry that people think I am one of those parents that makes their little girls wear pink!

And then I resisted adopting another bunny from the Windmill rescue people - the girls spent ages stroking a lovely little grey thing - Jean was concerned it wasn't walking and was informed that it is disabled with a twisted back paw - at the collected 'awww' from me and Jean Alaric took us by the arms and lead us away!

Apart from all that I cleared out and sorted the top shelf of the 'treats' cupboard (where all the cake making etc supplies are) and placed the chutneys and jams I've been making on there - so yeah guess what everyones getting for christmas! Something home made/grown anyway 😉

Egg-cited! (by sarah)

So we settled the chickens in by virtual of basically leaving them alone then this morning I rushed down to have a look at them, we weren't egg-specting any eggs due to the stress they had been through due to the relocation yesterday etc... But there they where two eggs!

Which I boiled for the girls breakfast - I did soft boiled for Jeany ie three minute dunk in boiling water and then opened straight away where as Mary got a hard boiled egg ie I just took longer about getting it out and knocking the top off!

They both seemed to love the breakfast which is a relief as we find it hard to get Mary to eat much at all 🙂

Jean is now obsessed with the chickens laying eggs - she reckons she can hear when they have done it :/ I think she is just after more egg! Alaric pointed out to her that these eggs will be from the food and stuff they were fed as battery hens and that later ones will be more tasty 🙂

Alaric said the whole thing has been worth it just for the look of glee on my face when I opened the nest box and found the eggs! I am afraid that I am washing them - I know many people say you shouldn't but really just nooooo!

We checked them again around lunch time (due to Jean's pleas that another egg had been laid), there was one more egg 🙂 But no more when I went to check them in the evening and make sure they were all in the hen house for the night. This time the stupid one had worked it out themselves so there was no chicken to have to lift up the ramp - I did however have an escaped chicken when I took the water feeder for a clean and refill. The conversation:

Jean: Mummy you let a chicken out

Me: I know trying to sneak up and catch it

Jean: Mummy that's the wrong way the chicken run is over there

Me: I know

Jean: Oh I thought chickens couldn't fly but they can!

Me: ducking from said chicken I know

Jean: Mu...meee you really aren't very good at this are you

Me: Not helping Jean! chicken walks back into the run

They are supposed to be getting used to the run for a couple of days before being shown the outside world - the others are all scared of the outside - not this one! It is the same on that thinks it is a boy and bosses the others around and it was the only one to escape from the lidless boxes when we were treating them for red mite and it was the first one up the ramp when we introduced them to the run - I think we have Chicken Genius here - it is the one called Felix! Though we have been calling it The Bossy One if I am honest!

First full day with chickens = success, I even tied a lettuce up for them to peak at - they don't seem to have noticed it yet though 🙁

The Best of Berries (by sarah)

That awkward moment when someone takes a photo of you picking berries along the foot path to town and you realise OMG! I've turned into a hippy! I'm not even just picking black berries but ones people give you funny looks over as they think they are poisonous (which they are if you don't cook them!). My top was not quiet tie dye but near enough and my baby had no trousers on whilst my eldest skipped about in a hand painted t-shirt - yep I'm one of those mums - also urban blackberrying - BEWARE THE CYCLISTS!

This was a post I put on facebook and some interesting things came out of it - for a start I had to qualify that I meant the Rowan berries as toxic unless cooked. But they are not very toxic as in it is something that builds up over time and can sometimes lead to liver (or maybe kidney failure) from what I've read. Anyway the chemical is broken down by temperature extremes so that is freezing and cooking. Which is why the old country lore is that you don't pick until after the first frost.

And the classic argument over elder berries and weather they are poisonous. Main issue being that ripe berries aren't but they have to be really ripe and that they just aren't very toxic again though the leaves and stems are. Again cooking brakes down the cyanid within (it is also in apple pips and various other things) - some people have developed a tolerance from eating them as a kid etc...

Then I was asked what I thought of berrying along busy roads - which is an interesting one - this was my response.

Ok when the petrol was all lead based it was a big problem but now it should be ok - some of the ones (berries I'd picked) today were from road sides - it helps that my friends did the soil surveys a few years back - only thing I would say is that they shouldn't be eaten directly from the bush still if from heavy roadsides as there will be dust on them but a quick wash should sort that out. (However be aware this is my opinion and I haven't seen any data for years).

Also unless you have a map of the UK with metal ions on it etc... you are going to struggle to know what is safe where anyway - there are areas of Wales for a start where heavy metals weather out of the soil and plants there should be avoided for human consumption - add in illegal human refuse dumps and so on... Somewhere may seem nice a pleasant - even have farm crops growing on it and really not be good at all.

But the risks are minimal anyway as it is build up that's the issue wand everyone eats from a wide variety of places these days.

Having said all this people swapped recipes for things, and then I found out that haw stones contain cyanid - but again the cooking will brake this down - but this lead me to think about the confusing wealth of info out there on edible plants etc... I have not found an actually study of this specifically to tell the public the exact risks of things - for a start a table of how much cyanid is on average in various foods and compares say free food to stuff like apples and almonds etc... Also people seem confused by cyanid groups verses cyanid itself which react very differently - if we cut everything with the groups in out of our diet we would quickly starve (if I remember my A'level chemistry correctly).

Also I have been freely dispensing information about blackberries to people who enquire whilst I am out and about and often on of a group will be really taken with the idea whilst another will have apoplexy about them being dirty etc... There is very little in the way of public knowledge about this stuff - have any tests actually ever been done I wonder? How dirty is a blackberry straight from the briar and what do the soil test etc... mean around the road sides.

In the wake of Jamie Olivers comments about food and poverty and people being silly for not knowing - it would make sense to have an education program, healthy eating reduces costs to the NHS and benefits etc... it is a long term thing. People are scared of food they haven't grown up with or don't want to squander tight budgets on culinary experiments that might go wrong or really just can't get the fresh fruit and veg from the shops but also do not feel safe or confident in going out and finding their own in case they poison their family - these are reasonable fears and so easily addressed.

Jamie has always had a big head but he's also got a big heart and has done a hell of a lot with the school dinners and stuff (I think he just needs to stop and have a little think again over what he is saying and step into others shoes for a bit), but you know he really shouldn't have too - we should have a Ministry of Food anyway :/

So if I was in charge what would I do?

Well I would have all school children out on wilderness trails learning identification of edibles or more importantly poisonous plants. I would have fruit trees planted along verges and in parks - I would get tests done to see exactly what impact traffic fumes etc have and if the levels of harmful things are too high I would look at traffic regulations and find ways to reduce those. I would have cook-ups at community centres and places so that people can come along and learn to cook for free etc...

I would have a government leaflet/website that told you all about were it legal to forage (in clear terms) and the risks set out (this is the risks not just the hazards) but I would include the same for processed and main stream farming foods. I would initiate more allotments and community orchards and let the public know the things exist!

Schools are starting to grow veg and stuff thanks to the super markets and there has been an upsurge in general homestedding activities but they are being seen as a very middle class thing as they tend to be the ones with the time and spare resources to plough into learning about these things. I am finding it very frustrating trying to get hold of an allotment and to be frank most of our shopping bill is fruit and veg and that is just wrong! It is stupid that processed foods cost more than fruit and veg fresh from the field/vine.

As one of my friends posted on FB recently - growing your own food has become a middle class want rather than a working class need - but the problem there is that it is really still a need for EVERYBODY regardless of income or age. I've been reading up on things like depression, stress, learning difficulties etc... all being helped by... well nature - yes I know it all sounds hippy but these are medical studies etc... I think it would need a lot of work though - most of those being pushed into poverty at the moment are households were both parents work (I know surprising isn't it?) and therefore they are not going to want the extra stress/time restraint on already tiring lives - but maybe allotment sharing could come into place or something like that.

You also need to make sure people know they can join these things and that they are not exclusive schemes - I remember some of the allotments near were we grew up were very particular about who they let on to the site etc...

I hear that high end offices in London are now installing gardens on their roofs were people can grown veg and even keep bees. I have hope and I am enjoying my blackberrying - I've received one jar of jam from a friend and the neighbour nabbed me yesterday to shyly ask if I would like some of her 'bramble' jam once it was cool.