Common chickweed and a lovely recipe

There's lots of chickweed growing at the moment! It has been said that there is no part of the world where Chickweed is not to be found. It’s one of the first greens available in winter and the tenderest of wild greens. It’s available all year round, but gets stringy around midsummer. As the name suggests, poultry love it.

Chickweed is readily distinguished from the alike plants by a line of hairs that runs up the stem on one side only, which when it reaches a pair of leaves is continued on the opposite side. As you can see on the picture.

Chickweed can be eaten raw. Most obvious is eating it as a salad. Or how about liquidized in a green smoothy? It makes a nice pesto as well. But the best recipe I've come across is chickweed pakoras...


Chickweed pakora
From: Hedgerow – John Wright

Makes 8

Don’t be too precise on quantities: it’s hard to get this one wrong…

100 gr gram (chickpea) flour
1 tbsp medium curry powder or to taste
½ tps baking powder
½ tsp salt (or more)
About 120 ml water
50 gr chickweed, washed, dried and roughly chopped
1 small onion
1 clove of garlic or a handful of wild garlic
Vegetable oil for shallow frying

- Mix flour, curry powder, baking powder and salt
- Slowly stir in enough water to form a paste with the consistency of mustard
- Mix in chickweed, onion and garlic
- Heat a thin layer of oil in a heavy-based frying pan
- When hot, spoon in heaped spoonfuls of the pakora mixture to form little cakes. Space them well apart
- Cover with a lid and cook over a medium heat for about 5 minutes until crisp and golden brown on one side.
- Turn over the cakes and brown the other side
- Drain on kitchen paper and serve

This post was shared on Wildcrafting Wednesday

Boterkoek: very Dutch and totally unhealthy

When I was a child my mother used to make Boterkoek; a Dutch treat that is best compared to shortbread with more butter. A lot more butter. She gave me the recipe when I left the nest and since then I made it hundreds of times.

Yesterday I made one for a potluck. It's an easy one because the ingredients are always at hand and it takes little time to prepare.

Shock and horror: it is full of butter and sugar. And it's very popular :)

250 gr flour
225 gr lightly salted cold butter
150 gr caster sugar
a pinch of salt

Cut the butter in pieces
Mix flour, sugar and salt
Rub the butter in the flour mixture with your fingers. Keep rubbing until it forms a ball.
Press the dough into a round cake tin (diameter 24)and spread evenly
Spread a few drops of milk over the surface (makes a nice crust)
Make a pattern with a fork (optional but very professional)
20 to 30 minutes in the oven at 160 degrees

Cut small pieces and enjoy...

Preparing a lunch and making cough syrups together

Come and connect to the abundance of the Winter season!
Craig Gibsone and Eveline Rodenburg invite you to a hands-on workshop around the theme of Winter that will renew your connection to seasonal preparations, to the land and to traditional herbal practices.

Again we will start by walking around Craig’s permaculture garden, harvesting for the lunch we will prepare and enjoy together. After that we talk about coughing and make different cough syrups. You’ll get the recipes so you can easily prepare them yourself at home!

Craig is an intuitive natural gardener and eco builder applying it in a happy intuitive way while constantly observing the interconnected nature of all things
Eveline is a naturopath and herbalist passionate about keeping the traditional knowledge of herbal medicine alive
Venue: Craig’s inspiring barrelhouse, kitchen and garden
Date and time: January 26th, 11-4pm.
Cost: £ 25 per workshop, but don’t let the money hold you back; just come and attune.
For further information and to book your place: evelinerodenburg@gmail.com, call Eveline on 07553 695 620 or drop a note in the GO. Or simply talk to us!

Rose hips in the steam extractor: an experiment

It's a gorgeous autumn day up here at Findhorn. The rose hips have been staring at me for over a week now. But they're such a hassle! I was taught to cut them and then remove their seeds, because the tiny hairs around the seeds can irritate. I did this last year, but it was just too much work. I'm all in for an experiment now!

I picked a bag full of rose hips. You want them firm, but not hard, and shiny. I use the fat ones from the Rosa rugosa. I took off their crowns, gave them a rinse and popped them in the steam extractor.

Steam extractor? Sure! It's a wonderful thing. It consists of three parts. You add water to the lower part. When you heat the water, steam will rise to the top part, where the fruit is. The steam breaks up the cells and allows the juice to come out. Through little holes - it looks like a colander - it drips in the middle part. This part has a little tube that allows you to pour the hot and sterilised juice in a clean bottle or jar or in a saucepan. It can be sweetened to make a jelly, used pure or turned into wine.

My experiment is that I want to find out if I can get rid of the little hairs by using the steam extractor. If I can, I will make a jelly out of the juice. If I don't, I'll turn it into a wine.

I'll tell you more about the result later!

Jam making: forty jars!

Just a peek into 'my' kitchen in the Findhorn Foundation: last week we made jam! We had quite a few gooseberries in the freezer and our fruit and veg supplier gave us a big box of bananas, peels blackened by the cold but still very nice inside. I had been hoarding jars for the last few months and now we filled them with a gooseberry - banana - ginger jam. The combination is delicious and the house will be able to enjoy this for at least a couple of weeks :D.

Tadaaa!

Hairy bittercress: a tasty and healthy addition to salad

This tiny weed, Hairy Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) is probably around in your garden this time of the year. It germinates when it gets colder and grows in winter! It loves disturbed soil, so it tends to pop up where you have been digging or weeding. Don't throw it on the compost heap, because it's edible and actually quite nice. It tastes a bit peppery, but not too hot and is a great and healthy addition to salads, or in couscous. Harvest before it flowers. Just lift the little rosettes, cut the roots off, rinse, chop and enjoy! This fresh energy and it's vitamine C is exactly what we need right now.

This post was shared Wildcrafting Wednesday at The Woodwife's Journal