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Squirrel Nut Stew

Spent a weekend in the woods and collected a few mushies plus some fresh squirrel! I've also had a bumper crop of sweet chestnuts and walnuts from trees down the road. So i had a superb stew made largely from wild local food, apart from the flour (Waitrose farm in Hampshire), thyme (Dennis' allottment), salt (Maldon's, Essex), oil (olive but local rapeseed would be perfectly good substitute. I just happen to have a five gallon bottle of olive oil that was given so am making good use of it!) and carrots (Abel & Cole). Here is my recipe for squirrel stew, incorporating Tristram's suggestions about the first stage for the meat: Preparation stage: 1 squirrel, skiined and prepared ( see Flickr for details of how to do this) A few ounces of flour with salt and thyme mixed in Oil For the stew 1 or more penny buns (cep mushroom) A few spiny puffballs Handful of Amethyst Deceivers Handful of sweet chestnuts , peeled Handful of walnuts Water 6 medium size Chopped carrots Sp

Amethyst Deceiver!

The little purple one was the edible and rather delicious Amethyst Deceiver . The River Cottage handbook claims that they are generic, "filler" mushrooms. I don't agree. They are a bit tough and chewy but that was a good thing. I spent ages poring over these little lilac beauties thinking they might be Lilac Fibrecaps, in which case a very nasty dose of pretty much everything was in store. They are called Deceivers because they have a near relative that is edible but takes on a thousand forms, making it very tricky to recognise. Happily the story ends well with me having a nice purple treat and a full tummy. The one in the background was Charcoal buirner ( Russula cyanoxantha ) or simliar, but it turned out to be full of little mushroom grubs. All the other mushies we brought home were poisonous - or couldn't be identified but were similar to known poisonous ones.

Spot the Bugs

Sometimes bugs are spotted: I liked these ones.