Thursday 29 September 2011

Recent foraging

August to October are our busiest times for foraging for fruit and nuts. I spent a couple of hours this afternoon picking sloes and will be making a batch of sloe gin and then some sloe jelly over the next couple of days. Yesterday I picked a bucketful of hazel nuts and will be returning for more shortly. And of course there are blackberries, lots and lots of them. I've made bramble jelly (using some crab apples I also picked wild) and bramble butter.

I get the impression that there has been new growth of nettles, dandelions and dock recently. They are what I would normally associate with food foraging in spring. I may do some wild leaf salads soon.

Also due to be picked soon are hawberries. I'll be using them to make jelly. It looks like a bumper crop and the berries are quite fat so they may be good for making ketchup as well.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why have you stopped updating your political blog? are you ashamed of something?

Jonathan Wallace said...

Lack of time is the reason. Answer to 2nd question: no.

However, it seems quite a few of you can't get enough of my comments on political matters so I may relaunch the political blog sometime soon if I have enough time.

karen said...

Having made sloe gin for years I tried sloe vodka.
There is no way I will be making gin ever again.
I now realise the flavours in the gin interfear with the sloe flavours in an unsympathetic way. With vodka it is just sloe all the way.
Damson Vodka is EVEN better'