The Cottage Smallholder

 
I recently received a copy of Hedgerow (River Cottage Handbook) by John Wright and I’m delighted with it. I’m a big fan of Richard Mabey’s Food For Free – I have the gem edition which can be carried easily in a pocket. Hedgerow would need a chunkier pocket but it will accompany me on foraging trips as Read More »

 
It was Danny’s turn to buy the Balsamic vinegar last weekend. Someone had put an expensive bottle of Balsamic beside the cheap ones in Tesco and he ended up paying five times more than he could have. The resulting shriek got me thinking about Balsamic vinegar in general.
The price and quality of Balsamic vinegar can Read More »

 
One of the things that I’ve always longed for is to spend time with someone who can teach me about foraging in depth. There are courses but rarely local to me. Also some of the best ones can be ridiculously expensive once you add the price of the petrol and staying overnight.
I have several foraging Read More »

 
“Those two rose bushes beside the back door are totally out of control and need cutting back.” Danny remarked back in June.
I couldn’t oblige as I was planning to make tea. The bushes got more and more flamboyant until they were given a harvesting haircut at the weekend.
There are lots of roses growing in the Read More »

I’ve had quite a few emails recently about identifying hedgerow fruit so I thought that it might be helpful to post some of the pictures that I have. Sloes, wild damsons, wild cherry plums and bullaces all came from the same family – albeit distant relations. They all have stones and the bushes have similar Read More »

I only discovered how delicious fruit cheeses are a few years ago. Until then I had rejected them out of hand – using the left over pulp from jelly making seemed skinflint behaviour to me. And anyway would this pulp have any flavour at all?
I didn’t even bother to taste the pulp when jelly making Read More »

This can also be made with damsons – cut the tamarind amount by half and add more sugar to taste.
Anyone who owns Oded Schwartz’s superb book Preserving  is very lucky indeed. Published in 1996 it is now sadly out of print. Danny found a copy on Australian Ebay for me one Christmas and I’ve used Read More »

I’m getting to the end of my third week being in bed. Finally last week my doctor discovered that I have a problem with my kidneys. I was beginning to wonder whether I’d just fade away like one of Dicken’s heroines.
So now we are waiting for more test results. Meanwhile I languish in the big Read More »

Last year I was a bit late picking walnuts for The Grand Pickled Walnut Challenge. Not wanting to waste the nuts that were clearly far too hard to pickle, I flexed my muscles and cut a few in half. I added these to some white wine vinegar, popped the experiment onto a shelf in the Read More »

Everyone seems to be talking about chillies. They are said to trigger “feel good” endorphins and are packed with vitamin A, an immune system boosting antioxidant. Chillies improve the digestive process too as they stimulate the action of the intestine and stomach.
This year I was determined to make crab apple and chilli jelly. My first Read More »