A Not Allottment

At Pensford Field there is a hut (the studio) and behind the hut is a bank of earth with a lot of nettles on it.

I am amazed to find that I am offered the opportunity to grow things on this bank. I am allotted, not an allottment but an aNottment.

I went there yesterday with Graham from the Alpines in Kew Gardens, you could say he knows a few things about native plants. We had a look around and got together a list of plants growing on the patch. Of course it is mostly nettles, but also Alexanders, burdock, green alkanet, horsetails, Black HoarHound, a type of wild lettuce and a mustard, some pretty grasses and a wild barley, mugwort (allegedly useful in clairvoyancy), a buddleia and some buttercups. I may well have forgotten a couple of things too.

We also have on the site a pile of breeze blocks, some rubble, a few black plastic tubes and a bird box.

With this highly promising collection of assorted plants and objects I want to intervene as a concious and conscientious agent of ecological change. I would like to foster whatever wants to grow there naturally, introduce a few new things, (mostly native) for diversity and for edibility, usefulness, and interest (eg perhaps some woad) and monitor the assortment of plants to maximise their happiness and health and also the diversity both of species but also of uses to myself, other animals, and the earth and other plants, other people etc.

People usually dominate when it comes to choosing who should a plant serve but i want to make sure I provide for as many strange creatures as possible.

In short, I want to make it a garden of natural wonders and delights for all the senses and the imagination. When you really look at little humble plants they become the most amazing extraordinary beasts of all manner of marvels.

Also I'd like to put in more bird boxes so if anyone can help please get in touch.

I tried digging up some green alkanet roots thinking they were good for dye, but it turns out its the wrong type of alkanet. But for now the alkanet stays: its pretty , and the bees and bugs seem to absolutely love it. They were thronging in.

When I clear out some of the nettles (some will stay) I can eat the tops, make fibre from the stems, use the roots for a good yellow dye (for the fleece that will be delivered at the Pensford Field Picnic 20 June) and put the rest into a mulch for a good compost.

This is totally thrilling and all are welcome to help out and learn about the amazing wonders of weeds.

Hurrah! many thanks to the lovely Diana and Pensford Field people, and Graham.

wedding day skirt with onions

i got married last week, on May 1st we went to Pensford Field for a 'picknick event' to celebrate, and i wore a cream embroidered top. i also had a white skirt but it was too white so i dyed it with teabags and onion skins.

Pickled Magnolias

Who knew? I will try this recipe and let you know how I get on. It will be tricky nicking the magnolia flowers, if mum catches me it will be her eating me for breakfast.

Ethnobotanising En Masse

At Kew Gardens on Saturday there was a fab event showcasing various kinds of ethnobotanical research that goes on here and there.

I went along and met various friends from life and internet, and discovered some really great new plants to eat from the weed-bed.

I've also got all interested in collecting english plant lore for Ethnomedica so if you have some ancient plant remedy to tell me please do.

I met some really great people with weeds to eat so I thought I would mention it and then I will go and find the weeds for myslef and report back.

One particularly cool thing was eating thistles, speficially in this case, Sow Thistle. Anna showed me how to cut away the spines and gave me the stem to try. Its crunchy and juicy and fresh tasting, vaguely in the same food bracket as celery I suppose.

A lot of the plants at the stand were things you know very well from the garden, little hairy things that grow in the grass or along the cracks in the paving.

In fact hairs and spines are a good sign something is nice to eat - otherwise why would it bother making hairs and spines to try and put you off.

I was also fascinated by wild parsnip which I'm not sure I would find as easily as cats ear or hawks bit, or of course the Ubiquitous Dandelion. So Iwill be reading up on it and hoping to discover one this year. I also will be finding out more about Fergus Drennan who is living off foraged food entirely.

Apparently Anna and her colleagues are going to run a course in Sussex on wild food foraging, but its fully booked and there arent more planned just yet. Judging by the enthusiasm of the punters I reckon they would be well advised to sort it out. And BBC TV shows like my former colleague James Wong's, about herbal medicine in the garden, and Ray Mears (whose book Wild Food was co-written by Gordon Hillman who was there with Anna Richardson), and of course the adorable Hugh F-W, will all be helping feed this apparently resurging interest in local herbalore. The famous James was also rumoured to be at the show but I didnt see him. I was probably too busy fondling bamboo fibres in the textile displays.

I just can't wait till some things start growing again and I can go and eat them.

I also watched a film about shamans in the Amazon which brought back great memories of my adventures in Ecuador all those years ago.

Many thanks to the organisers and participants of this brilliant event. It was even better that it was on my doorstep and for once, my friends were schlepping in this direction and not the other way around. It made me think what a great place Kew is to live, if only they would all come and live here too!

Back with the bees

I don't have photos this time but have been bee-servicing again. This time we were just scraping honeycomb wax from the wooden frames so they can be reused for the coming year and the new bees.

Bees are in a bad way and unlike other creatures in a similar, or worse, situation, People are notcing. This is because
a) bees are quite cute
b) people like honey
c) bees pollinate fruit crops, and the fruit crops are suffering.

I saw a little while back a Haagen Daaz campaign to help honeybees - because the bees are not there to pollinate fruits, and this is making it harder for the ice cream manufacturer to source and pay for fruits. It is a very serious problem in the US and also I have rumours from China and the Ukraine that they are losing fruit crops.

One of the main threats to British honey bees is a parasitic mite called Varroa destructor. Originally confined to Asian honey bees, it has spread across Europe and reached England in 1992. It now infests 95 percent of hives.

You can get a bee chamber for your garden to provide a home for bees here - search for bees to see bee related stuff

Read about bee conservation here

Article about bees problems in the Daily Telegraph

Reuters report on the bee problem globally

Snow and Honey

Monday was a day famous for Snow, but for me it was also about honey.

I visited Linda who has recently started keeping bees.

We processed some honey and she very kindly gave me a pot of golden sweetness at the end.

I learnt about mites, and deaths, and bee dancing and pollen and nectar and propolis (the red stuff in the pot - very sticky and it stains the hands, the bees make it from tree resin), and how the bees tenderly care for the grubs and feed them bees milk, and how the worker bees come out of the growing chambers and do housekeeping first for a few days, and then nursing, and then they guard the entrance, and then they start foraging only after all that.

The pics show how we scraped the honey out of the combs, avoiding letting pollen and nectar into the honey, and let it drip through a net to separate it from the wax - collecting the was crumbs for melting down and further separation from the honey that is left; propolis; and the honey pots that were filled. 20 in total, from about as many combs. This seems a lot but there are many hours of work to go into making this much honey and £4 a jar in the shops is an amazingly low price when you realise what is involved. Of course a lot of wax is also produced and it can be used in hand lotions, candles, furniture polish, bookbinding and all sorts of other things.

The bees had died in the frosts (before the Big Snow) and it was because there weren't enough of them to keep warm. They had been decimated by a mite earlier in the year which is the thing killing all the bees and causing mayhem for fruit crops and honey-makers worldwide.

Apparently there is a lot of extra work nowadays because of all the various diseases affecting bees. I think the snow will help to kill off some of the alien species and make things easier for bees next year - well I hope.

I am thinking of trying to make some hand cream from part of the honey Linda gave me so recipes would be welcome. I have various oils including coconut oil in the cupboard (available for incredibly low prices in large amounts from Southall by the way).

As for the snow, well I cycled to Linda's and it was rather wonderful as there was very little traffic, and people pulling kids along in sleds, and saying hello to each other, and I had to go very slow because it was very icy and I really wish that the snow would have stayed for a week or more.

Many thanks to Linda and looking forward to learning more about beekeeping -and honey- this year.

Fruitful Trees

Last Friday I went to a Kew Wassail in aid of making the apricot tree fruitful for the year. It was very exciting because I also met a woman with a sheep, and another woman who has a spinning wheel - and knows how to use it - so I think it was a very fruitful occasion already.

AND I met a woman who keeps bees there (its called Pensford Fields and its a hidden gem of a kind of naturalness, behind some houses in Kew) and she wants help looking after the bees, so one day I might know enough to have my own honey. If there are any bees left, that is.

Anyway the Wassail is meant to be around Twelfth night, when we know we are safely through the dark Solstice, and its time to get things going again so we have food for next winter.

So we all pile down to the orchard and sing a song to the tree to ask it to be fruitful - and make it a toast - and make a lot of loud noise to chase away evil spirits ("and pollution" - maybe a reference to the pending expansion of Heathrow nearby), and wear silly clothes. The Mayor was there as well as the sheep and some nice local people.

Lets hope it works and the trees are Fruitful, and the bees come back, and then I will have plenty to talk about on this blog.

Dont Collect Chestnuts

I do sometimes think "is it ok for me to collect wild food" because surely there are lots of wildlife who cant go to tesco if they dont find any nuts in the woods that day. And generally people like the guys at River Cottage and other proponents of wild food collecting give the answer more or less of "yes its fine, there is plenty to go round, so long as you always leave a bit of it ie dont dig up ALL the truffles you can find in one spot."

Now I know the deer in Richmond Park are not a "naturally occurring" species in a "natural" environment but even so I found this interesting. I was up there on an early morning to photograph the deer with a friend and saw this notice.

I hadn't seen that sign when I collected the chestnuts last time.

I have taken an interest in the past in the idea of eating invasive species so will start to investigate that as an alternative. We could act as a biological control agent, enhancing the biodiversity rather than damaging it, by making conscious choices about what we eat and using wild resources in a balancing rather than 'i eat what i am interested in' sort of a way.

And now here are some nice pictures of deer and chestnut trees:

Christmas Pudding - A Book

I have just become a publisher - with the production of a book about the English Christmas Pudding under the publishing name 'Spiderbooks'.



The book is a tasting sample of some of the stories behind the ingredients of the Christmas Pudding. it will be in some local shops in the Kew and Richmond area, and should be on Amazon soon too.

Your feedback is welcomed! Find out more at http://www.spiderbooks.co.uk

Oat Recipe

Rosehip jelly

There was a big pile of rose cuttings in the garden and they were covered in rosehips; not being one with a high tolerance of wastefulness I set about cutting them off with plans to make some delicious thing or other.

Then the little red hips sat in my fridge for a few days while i was too busy.
Eventually I got round to dealing with them but quite a lot had gone soggy and or mouldy so the initial crop was quite whittled down.

It was surprisingly difficult to find recipes for rosehips. I found several for rowan berries in my assortment of ancient recipe books, even though rowan is less spoken of generally in life, and i rather suspect, considerably less palatable than rosehip.

I did find one however, in May Byron's Pot Luck, an old favourite.

And it was very true about how awkward they are to prepare, covered in fine sharp hairs than get under your fingernails and apparently in another recipe ( which I ignored) one is expected to not only top and tail but de-seed and peel them before boiling up! This is preposterous as you will discover if you try it yourself.

Rosehips are said to be incredibly high in vitamin C content so the tiny jar of jelly that resulted from my efforts ought perhaps to be viewed as a sort of winter medicine rather than Jam. It also tastes very sharp (and delicious) and is probably best suited as an accompaniment for game rather than for bread and butter.

The method is simple as for all these jellies made of indigestible fruits: Get your rosehips, top and tail them (mind all the sharp bits) stick em in a saucepan with a minimum of water, boil up till soft, force through a sieve, add a quantity of sugar, boil down till thick and pasty and cram into a sterile jar.

Amazing how sugar can make food of almost anything.

grapejuice nut strings

figs

bread

you want pictures - here's pictures!

Cyprian Food Adventures

I recently signed up for a local food pledge (see previous post) but I had also sigend up to go the summer school at the Cyprus College of Art. So i am doing the local thing here in Cyprus, and its been tootally fantastic.

Two highlights have been the best breakfast ever in Fikardou, staying with freinds, and a supberb lunch in the weaving village of Fiti, not too far from Paphos.

Fikardou Breakfast
Sophocles is a breakfast guru and I was presented with a leaisurley mountain breakfast of fresh anari, local honey, eggs from the builder who keeps hens, fresh local sheeps yoghurt, sweet plump dark plums, Paphos mangoes, grapes from my hosts vine, figs, and what else I cant remember so will have to look at my photos to check.

Fiti Lunch
I first found Fiti last week when I am dmy travelling companions, both Irish weavers, went exploring and stumbled into it on the way to a monastery. It turned out to be a weaving village, and I hgad one the best lunches Ive ever experienced in the local restaurant. We asked what they had and the woman said ' Oh, lovely things' and it turned out to be mnore than accurate. I became an instatn fan of courgette with egg, and the irish girls said it was better then the food they had at a Michelin star restaurant in Dublin once.
Anyway that wasnt the highlight! After lnch we were shown around the local folk museum by curator Charalambous Mavrovollis (?) and we were enchanted and delighted by the weaving, the hand made looms, the they home spun wool and everything else beautifuil in this charming place. I came back a few days later on my own to buy a blanket they were selling, made of local sheeps wool and locally grown cooton, many years since. Apparently noone can spin wool any more so they now weave with imported threads. Anyway after I bought the beuatiful blanket I was invited to lunch and not wanting to miss out on an interesting experience I joined the curator and his wife the weaver for a fantastic meal on the hillside. They had grown their own marros and tomatoes, the egg was from their own hens - and best of all, not only does madame make her own loaves in a traditional oven, using sourdough, but they grow their own wheat and take it to a local mill for grinding. It was trulyu a nwonderful experience that I won ever forget.

The food here is easy to get hold of although one does have to hunt around a bit now for really good quality local produce like cheese and meat. The veg remain impeccable even a t the supermarket.

As an aside, you may know that i am quite involved in anti=plastic bag campaigns, and when I went to said local supermarket (largely cartering to an aged British expat populationm steadily taking over the hillas aroun dPaphos) I said I didnt need a plastic bag please, to weigh the fruit., I was startled to find that this caused an uproar and i found myself surrounded by hostile aging Brits glaring at me for daring to cause a meaningless fuiss, an incomprehending sri lankan fruit weighing girl who said ' If you really dont want the bags, you can take them to the checkout and throw them in the bin outside the supermarket as you leave', and a Cypriot woman who tol dmne that it was the custom in Cyprus to use plastic bags because unlike in England, where we just buy one piece of fruit, one lemon, the Cypriots buy many pieces of fruit (the implication being that we are a sad, lonely, unloved people, in contrast to the healthy family life of Cyprus) and so they need bagts to carry them in.

I had to relent, mainly because I was getting upset and didnt know how to show that I really didnt want one and there was not law insisting that I had to have one, so I took a couple and havent been back to buy veg since. I am going to make the bags into Art.

Apart from strongly flavoured and juicy, sweet fruits, (The most extraodrainarliy sweet pomegranates are growing on a tree down the road from the college) there are almnonds on a tree by the house, wonderful halloumis and olives, there is so much abundant and cheap and available local food that I have had to forego little, and perhaps only the cornflakes are what I would have eaten otherwise although they make me think of cardboard now hat I have been on this super fresh diet for a few days.

However all is not well in paradise. The drought this year has been so bad that many wheat crops have failed, and my weaving couple told me theior wheat didnt grow well this year. Many locasl have mentioned it but apparently some of the city folk think that the farmers are wasting all their water, and all food should be imported, and their have even been suggestions that they should cut down all the trees on the island to conserve water!

So perhaps there is great local food, but in the light of the fact that Cyprus is now importing water in tanks from Greece, I have not been drinking local water. ( Mind you there were some lovely srpings in the mountains)

A Mini Food Adventure You Can Take Part In

Ever wondered what you would eat if oil ran out tomorrow? Well now is your chance to find out!

Join us* for a week of eating only local organic food, free from plastic packaging to highlight to government that they need to act now to reform our food system

Between Saturday 6 and Sunday 21 September, during Organic Food Fortnight and when food is at its most abundant in the UK, we ask you, for one week, to only eat food from a selection of the following sources:

a. Organically grown UK food without plastic packaging – if it is organically grown on British soil, it qualifies, but obviously the more local the better. Plastic packaging is out.

b. Foraged food – food growing wild and abundantly all over the UK – free rich pickings!

c. Self-grown food – any food you, your friends or family ha ve grown.

Advice and support on sourcing food will be given throughout, and all participants will be encouraged to keep a diary of their experiences over the week on our website, not only to share experiences, ideas and advice, but to highlight to policy makers how difficult it is to do something which should be easy – to live off food from your own soil.

Take action!

1) Sign up to take this action at http://www.pledgebank.com/eatthechange or http://apps.facebook.com/pledgebank/eatthechange

2) Ask your friends and family to support you by also signing up!

3) Let your community, local shops, press and decision-makers know what you're doing

4) Nearer the time check out our website for advice and tips on what to eat and where to find it (we'll email the website address to you)

5) Share your experiences on our website in solidarity with others and to let decision-makers know how ha rd it is for us to eat sustainably in the absence of policy change.

*Who is 'US'?

The fortnight is being led by three of the UK's Local Food campaigners –

Fergus Drennan (aka Fergus the Forager, http://www.wildmanwildfood.co.uk/) – has already done two and a half months living solely on foraged food! He makes this seem easy.

Mark Boyle (founder of The Freeconomy Community, www.justfortheloveofit.org) – 3 months into his 'Transition Experiment', Mark eats only UK grown, organic, vegan and non-plastic wrapped food. And has vowed to put his last item in landfill – the bin itself!

Beth Tilston (http://www.betheatslocal.org/

) – a Brighton Locavore who has vowed to eat only food from 100 miles from wherever she finds herself for one whole year!

For more information, email saoirse@justfortheloveofit.org

Living Bread

You may know that we started making our own bread last year when we were on the local diet, as none of our suppliers knew where the flour was grown, that they used in their bread making. So we had little choice. But we just threw some flour, yeast and water into a bowl. slopped it a bout and baked it after rising. It was very delicious but it was on the dense and cakey side and it went hard quite quickly.

The other day though, I bought an amazing book (after spending about an hour browsing in Kew bookshop and knocking books over) called Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley (who runs Village Bakery, so admittedly he has a bias but also he knows a hell of a lot about bread), which explains both how most processed or shop bread is made (even the really sexy nice stuff is all made by the same 'Chorleywood bread process') and how yeast and lactic acid bacteria work on wholewheat to extract nutrients and flavour and reduce the presence of common allergens.

The book also shows how to make your own bread and it even has a recipe where you can fit it into a busy day. Of course breadmaking machines are the easiest way of all but we literally have no room left in the kitchen or anywhere else in the flat - so its handmade for me, and anyway thats the best way to learn about real bread. Maybe when I grow up I will have a flat big enough for a breadmaking machine, and enough money to buy one.

OK so I want to show you how I did it and also highlight the key points about real bread.

Key Points and Cool Facts about Real Bread

• Normal white flour is refined so that all the nutrients in the outer parts of the grain are milled away. This leaves nothing much but starch and gluten. This is true even for more nutritious and wholemeal flours, because they add the nutrients back individually after refining, which means not all of it can ever go back in. The only way to get a true wholegrain flour is to buy STONEGROUND. A traditional stone mill cannot refine the flour the way the industrial process does so they cant remove all the nutrition.
  
• Yeast and bacteria work on the wheat grain in the flour so as to do all sorts of amazing things to it. Mainly they make it so it lasts a long time and is very nutritious. Industrial bread process uses added enzymes to do some of these things, and the enxymes do not have to be declared on the packaging even though some are from pigs pancreas and others can trigger allergic reactions. They also add 23 times as much yeast as in traditional baking, to make the bread rise quicker, and exclude the bacteria from the process.
  
• Kneading makes the gluten come out and change structure. This is what gives the elasticity that means you get air bubbles in the bread. We didn't knead our bread when we made it before, so it came out "cakey" and crumbly - the air just went through the flour and didn't form bubbles. The thing about kneading is to 'get as much energy into the bread as possible, as quickly as possible'
  
• Wheat is not easily digestible, yeast and bacteria act to make it more digestible. In a sense, they partially digest it so humans can make more of it. Making bread is a living process and rather like the fact that milk is a living food so shouldnt be pasteurised, because that kills it dead, the industrial process also kills off the bread so its no longer a living process but a high speed imitation of the real thing.
  
• Industrial process bread consumes more energy than traditional breadmaking. This is probably because it replaces the work of the yeast and bacteria, which need time to do their thing, with a speeded up energy-intensive process.
• Bread goes hard when its older, not because it is dry, but because the starch in it crystallises. Warming the starch makes them de-crystallise, so wamring stale bread softens it up again.
  
• Living bread lasts a long time and evolves into different things as it ages. At first its warm and soft and fresh. Then it goes more chewy, then stale, but you can still warm it up and eat it or dip into soups. Eventually it is good for bread pudding or croutons, and finally you can use it for breadbrumbs in stuffing or something like that. Industrial bread cannot evolve like this because it is not real bread, so the enzymes keep it soft for ages and ages and then it just goes mouldy because it hasn't any bacteria and acid to protect it when the enzymes finally give up the ghost.

Basic bread making process

1. Make dough
2. Knead dough
3. Leave to rise
4. Shape your loaves
5. Leave to prove
6. Bake
7. Eat


Now with pictures:

1. Mix your yeast into some water, leave it for a few minutes to let it come to life - it will froth a bit.



2. Mix the living yeast-water into your flour and salt. The measurements are meant to be quite precise in the Bread matters recipe, and you can weigh your water rather than measuring it, which makes it easier and more accurate. You put your bowl on the scales and add ingredients by weight bit by bit.



3. Slub about with your hands to make dough. Get messy so a spoon doesn't have to.









4. Knead it - this an important bit and its also quite hard work. The only bit that is really difficult. You will notice the silky elasticity developing towards the end of a gruelling ten-fifteen minutes of mankering the dough. Kneading is not necessarily about leaning on it with your knuckles by the way. You just play with it, pull it apart, stretch it out, slap it down, generally abuse the dough. Stressed? Angry? Put it in the dough!



5. Leave to rise. You can put the loaf into a plastic bag and blow it full of air so it doesnt touch the plastic when it rises, seal with elastic band and leave for a while. It doesnt have to be warm, on fact you can rise or prove a loaf in the fridge overnight. This is good if you want to finish the job in the morning eg fitting around 9-5 work schedules. If it rises too fast its not always a good thing so best not on top of a radiator. I put mine in the plastic greenhouse in the garden.



6. When its risen you will see how lovely it looks, Clever yeast!


7. Butter a tin

8. Cut up your dough if you want two smaller loaves

You can also keep a bit of dough aside in the fridge to add to the next loaf, it adds a lot of flavour and yeast.




9. This is fun. You roll out a sausage of dough,


knuckle it down


till its flat


fold it in thirds

knuckle again

and thats shaping a loaf. The crease goes on the bottom. You can roll it in seeds if you like,



then pop it in the tin and leave to prove



then bake in a very hot oven.

When its ready it looks amazing - this was my first ever proper loaf and it tasted just like the best shop bread. Actually I was disappointed as I thought it would be mysteriously BETTER than shop bread.


Anyway I used my loaf - had a lovely lunch of red cabbage and scrambled egg with it.

Using old oats (not wild oats)

These are SO easy to make, last for ages,are delicious and healthy so I think a great recipe even if you aren't out seeking wild oats.

Oat cakes basically involve oats, water, a pinch of salt, and a little fat.

You warm up some water and mix in a bit of butter to melt. Then mix that warm liquid into your oats in a bowl until they are of a nice pasty, sticky consistency.

Roll them out on a board - you can use a few more oats or some flour to reduce stickiness if you like, and bake in a medium oven for about 15 min on baking parchment paper. Keep an eye on them to see when they are ready.

Rolled oats are better because they have been softened up a bit and the starch powder helps to stick them all together.

As you can see I got all romantic with them. I hardly ever get to use thes nice pastry cutters from Anna so thats another good reason to make oat cakes.

I believe the scots used to leave the oat cakes by the fire overnight to dry out so I guess a low oven is also suitable.

They are so yummy and the better the oats the yummier they will be but I used some pretty crummy old rolled oats from the cupboard and they were fab. A really satisfying snack and a great way to use up old oats.

I kept them in a tin and they lasted about a week and still tasted great.

Elderflower Bliss

I've been having fun with elderflowers last week. Making cordial, and making a film.

It is of course elderflower season. The elder grows a lot by the Thames. Its a small tree or large shrub depending on how you think about things. The Blossoms are large white foamy circular things scattered all over the tree like white pancakes.

I made elderflower cordial which it turns out is incredibly easy and is probably the most delicious thing I have made yet from foraging food.


You simply boil some water, about 4 pints or more,

Add sugar so it melts in

and pour this mix over the elderflowers in a big bowl.

The mix looks dark brown in the picture because I used dark brown sugar. I really thought this would overwhelm the elderflower flavour but it doesnt at all, quite the reverse in fact.


Leave this in the fridge for four days or so, then strain off the juice. You can add lemon peel, lemon juice, and/or oranges and juice to add flavour and acidity, either at the beginning or after you make the cordial.


I was very surprised that the flowers don't seem to smell so sweet but the cordial has the most amazing luscious fragrance.


On Saturday I took part in a film shoot with some friends who are doing art events to do with the Olympics site.
They have been collecting elderflowers and making champagne as part of a project involving a semi-real, semi-fictional company that makes food from wild plants in the Hackney/Olympics area. View pics from the shoot on Flickr

We saw not just elders but roses, which they have been using to crystallise the petals for cakes, and also crab apples, a vine, pineapple mayweed, and lots of nettles. It was a very interesting day and it brought people together and talking about history (part of the film was set in the 40s) and wild food and grandmothers.

We had a 40's picnnic and sampled the sloe gin they made last year. That was fantastic, I am going to try that one day as well. The rowan brandy I made last year was frankly a waste of good brandy.

I would like to try my hand at the elderflower champagne!
Or maybe just buy a bottle at the performance.