Showing posts with label Foraging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foraging. Show all posts

Monday, April 14, 2014

Today I did some Scavacise

Yes I did. That is scavenging which is also exercise. A very good way to make your exercise enjoyable. There is nothing better than free stuff. I was trying to think of an american version of my word as they would say I was dumpster diving. So it would be dumcise, dumpercise....
dumpster diving, finding free stuff
So this is what my boot looked like at the end of half my exercise. 67 more bricks for the garden edging that I am going to try and mortar myself (we will see how that ends up!). These were in the work hard fill skip (dumpster) and it was getting picked up tomorrow so I had to be all action stations. 
Some of the new garden, though not quite as it will be. We were making last minute tweeks on the design over the weekend and now there will be a little less path. This is a long journey for us. Pottering on doing a bit here and there.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

A Foraging Walk

My walk with Morris today had great foraging results. I found, what I hope to be, the beginnings of the mushroom season and Morris found a cricket ball.

I swear that Morris should be hired to a tennis or cricket club, that dog is so OCD about balls that he can find anyone you have lost. At Margo and Warwick's once he found 7 balls in the first half hour!!! Meisha could not find a one.

So happy me and happy dog.


foraging for food
Lovely little mushrooms
A stick and a ball - what more could an OCD dog want!

Monday, January 7, 2013

Urban Foraging - Christchurch

The finished cake delivered that night
On Sunday it was clean up day. Duncan, Debs and Jack left on Saturday and Robin and Sophia were leaving by plane late in the afternoon. So beds stripped, cleaning done.

First we made a cake for Aaron's new work colleague. He has moved his whole family down to Christchurch to work at RACE. Quite an upheaval. So a banana cake was made in the morning to cool down while we went out.

Then I took all the kids urban foraging. I needed lemons so we headed out to the old house at Aarnst Place in Christchurch. Lots of the houses have now been demolished so you can wander around the sections. We picked lemons from three different trees, got a pile of plums, some broad beans, a tiny amount of potatoes, lots of lovely roses and some bay leaves. We also found some HUGE walnut trees to go back to in the autumn as well as heaps of apple trees and a couple of pear trees. But sigh... only one feijoa tree and it was not flowering much. I forgot to take photos of us exploring. We had a fantastic time. Though it was hot and dusty. Next time take gumboots as the weeds are sometimes waist high. Also some secateurs as the roses were awful to cut without something.

But we filled all our bags, we were happy and on the way home we had the last real fruit ice cream for the holidays.

The results of our foraging

I link to parties here

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Still on holiday food

Yes - back to that very wet and windy, snow (I kid you not) and hail, thunderstorms and yucky weather holiday.

After experiencing all the above over 7 days we retreated to Dunedin to my sister Ruths house. Within an hour of being there I had checked out her entire edible garden. I found lots and lots and lots of potatoes. But also a plethora of strawberries, redcurrants and whitecurrants. Knowing that she loves a baked cheesecake and was due to arrive back that day, I made this......
                                                     
While the  boys did this.....they loved climbing into a tree.
What I learnt - Aaron will pick currants because they are his favourite fruit. When on holiday making a cheesecake of the top of your head can be ok but not perfect. Baked cheesecake is better the day after when it has had a bit of time to sit and set. Currants look fantastic on top and tasted great in the middle but the contrast was too much with them totally raw and the cheesecake smooth.
To make the cake:
use your favourite baked cheesecake recipe. Lightly poach the fruit in a sugar syrup. When assembling put a layer of filling into the base, add a layer of fruit, then top with remaining cheesecake mix. Cook. once cool put fruit on top and glaze (Ruth had redcurrant jelly in her pantry from previous years. It was a fantastic glaze and kept the one taste throughout).

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Foraging on holiday

What is it with holidays and food? My sister Ruth thought that I was quite bizarre as I made 18 jars of preserved apricots whilst I stayed in Cromwell over the New Year (2010) and if that was not enough I also made Elderflower cordial.

The apricots just had to be done. We went down the gorge to where the old apricot trees from the orchards were and spent a day swimming and picking slightly unripe apricots. The trees were looking pretty mangy this year. It is now about 18 years since the dam was flooded and it is starting to show that they have not been pruned or cared for. But some of the trees closer to the water had been resprouting from the base and produced masses of tiny little apricots that could just pop in your mouth. YUM. Unbenown to us this was to be the only true day of summer that we had.

The next two nights were cold, so what better to do than to preserve apricots. Which I did. I left some at my sisters place and took some with me on the rest of the holiday (yes our apricots are well travelled). The little ones were not worth  preserving or jamming so I put butter and brown sugar in a frypan and caramelised the apricots then , added cream and simmered to a thick sauce and we had them on ice cream for the next two days. (I even sneaked some for breakfast).

Thinking it would be warmer in the shelter of Arrowtown, as we were standing in the old mining town of Bendigo, being blown around. We headed there. Then decided to get back to Cromwell via the Crown Range. Well at the top of the zig zag by the lookout there were elderberries in flower. As Aaron took photos and the boys mucked around I picked elderflowers.
When I got back I trolled the internet for recipes, asked my sister Anna and made something up that was a comglomeration. It worked OK but not perfect and the bottle I opened today was just a little fizzy. But in reading this months NZ Gardener a lot of letters refer to elderflower cordial recipe in the December magazine. So I will go back to that and next year I will try again.
The funniest of all this is Ruth, who thought I was peculiar preserving on holiday, also spent two days preserving nectarines etc with Anna and drove home with cartons of fruit to preserve. I think if the days had been hot and spent at the beach and swimming then this industrious activity may not have occured!!!!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Kids cooking and foraging day

The day started at 7.30am with Jorja arriving. Normally I had headed of for a walk with Morris but not today - I slept in!! So a quick dash out of bed to open the door and the day had begun.

While I am not working I have restarted cooking lessons with Jorja and Jakob. Last year I decided that 6year olds should be getting their way around the kitchen. As they can read they should be able to follow instructions. So today it was Pavlova day. The only thing was what to do with all the egg yolks. I did not want to do lemon honey again. By the time I got organised enough for breakfast it was 8.50am so we decided to make french toast. Jakob and Jorja now have two more recipies for their books and we had a lovely breakfast and gorgeous dessert tonight.



Recipes

French Toast

6 egg yolks
3/4 cup whole milk
Knob of butter
Your choice of topping.

Put the egg yolks and milk into a flat bottom dish or container (it needs to be large enough for a standard slice of bread to fit flat). Mix well with a fork so there are no egg lumps.

Heat the frying pan so that a bit of butter sizzles but does not burn.
Put one slice of bread into the egg mixture, push it in and turn it over to get a good coverage of egg. Put into frying pan. Cook approx 1-2 minutes and then turn over and cook the other side for 1-2 minutes. Take out and repeat until all egg is used up. It should make about 4-5 slices of bread.

Put on a plate and drizzle with maple syrup. Or grind salt and pepper. Or get extravagant and chop up banana and cooked bacon.

Alternative If you are not making pavlova then make French toast with 3 whole eggs instead.



Pavlova

6 egg whites from my chickens
2 cups castor sugar (but half the time I don’t have that and use normal and I have not noticed a difference)
1 Tablespoon cornflour
1 Tablespoon vinegar (either white or malt)

Beat the egg whites until stiff, keep beating and add the sugar continuously using a teaspoon to put it in the bowl. It should take about 7 minutes. Sometimes I get fed up and just dump the last ½ cup in and beat and it always seems ok. Add cornflour and vinegar and beat it in. Put it on a tray lined with baking paper. Any size or sizes you want.

You can make one big pavlova but I tend to make person sized pav’s. As this mixture makes about 12 individual person sizes we can have it for dessert with guests and keep the rest in an airtight container for another night later in the week.

Bake 110c for 1 hour. You can leave in the oven to cool but you don’t have to.


Foraging

Out and about with the three kids to keep them entertained, we came upon a rugby field full of mushrooms. A lot of the fungus we stomped on as it had bugs etc but there were two sections of the field where the mushrooms were gorgeous. As we had been out for lunch and a play in the park we did not have a spare bag with us. But thanks to George Weston Foods, we had two Big Ben cowboy hats that the boys had been wearing as sunhats. So we upturned them and filled them with mushrooms. There were enormous amounts of screaming as they all found mushrooms, lots of running around and exclaiming. It all took over an hour and everyone came home tired and happy. Jakob and Jorja insisted that they were going to make money from them. Here I had been thinking that we could give some away. But no - we came home and Jorja organised me. Bags, stapler, cloth scissors and then we spent 20mins bagging them up. Jorja then rang everyone she could think of trying to sell the mushrooms at $1 a bag. We sold four of the nine and she had aunties etc lined up for the rest. (I think she needs to get a sales job cold calling - no fear or trepidation there!!!).


A gorgeous break in Rarotonga

Woo hoo, A holiday with no kids for 11 days. Bliss, relaxing and warm! BTW it was an early 20th wedding anniversary present to ourselves....