Almond croissants

Yesterday I made almond croissants! Yes the kitchen smelled delicious and I do love the whole anticipation of cooking, especially when it is a bit of an unplanned adventure.

I popped out to the supermarket at 8pm, and found lots of lovely reduced items, including croissants for 40p. Croissants always remind me of holidays in France, though these would be but a pale comparison of the freshly baked croissants from the boulangerie.

This summer my cousin had told me how delicious almond croissants were - they are truly divine. To use up leftover croissants, they are filled with frangipane and baked again to make more of a sweet Danish.

I used a simple frangipane recipe shown below, but it used vanilla essence, whereas I will be using almond essence in future for a stronger almond flavour. This is my first attempt, but next time I will also spread more mixture on top to stop the croissants getting too dark. And maybe a sprinkle of sliced almonds to top them off.

100g ground almonds

100g butter

80g golden caster sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or almond)

Mix all the ingredients together. Stuff and spread your croissants, then bake them for 18 mins at around 180 deg C. This made enough mixture to generously stuff 4 croissants and would have stretched to 6.

I also bought 3 packets of dill reduced to 10p each. I have hung them in the kitchen to dry out, so that I can chop and store them for sprinkling on salmon. It is nice to feel that I have got a bargain and saved some food from being wasted.

I should probably mention that I have started a new job and I am back working the 9 to 5 again. 2015 was so busy for my little consultancy, that I had been working days and nights to try and keep up. Now that I am starting to get my evenings back I can enjoy cooking and blogging again.

I am not sure how things will work out with my allotment. Spring is fast approaching and I have barely started the gardening jobs that were due back in the Autumn! I am not ready to give up on it yet though. I just love that I still have a supply of my home grown potatoes and squash in the garage, and raspberries and runner beans in the freezer. It is so nice to announce at each meal that I have grown the cabbage, or the tomatoes in the sauce.

What began as a journey to be more green, by eating organic, locally grown food and reducing waste, seemed like hard work from the outset. Yet it has turned out to be rather enjoyable. Food makes me happy. I enjoy growing it, shopping for it, cooking it and sharing the end result with family and friends. I love that I substituted a handful of weeds for parsley in my stuffing at Christmas and no one was the wiser. But most of all I love..... almond Croissants ;-)

What do you love about food?

Feels like Autumn

It has been very quiet at Ration The Future for 2 months! Sorry to my regular readers. I would love to be disciplined enough to commit to a weekly blog, but that isn't how my life is right now. I have worked long hours on a large project all summer - it feels like I have skipped straight to Autumn. The mornings are cold, evenings are shorter and the bounty of courgettes, cucumbers and beans is tailing off now.

Produce from my garden, including chickpeas.

This week I went to the car boot sale with my eldest daughter, who has just returned from finishing Uni. She was delighted to find several nearly new tops, a dress and a skirt all with labels from her favorite shops. Her little sister liked the dress too and has commandeered it!

In addition we bought some unopened gift sets with body lotions and shower gels, some from the body shop, which were all small travel size bottles, so very handy.

I only bought 2 items for me, but I love them both. One was an egg run, that I had seen for £17 in the Organic Gardening Catalogue and had decided it was too expensive for me to buy when a cardboard egg box does the trick for nothing. But when I spotted it at the car boot and the lady only wanted £1....well it seemed like fate.

I have always kept my eggs in the fridge, but as my fridge is in need of replacing and I am hoping to downsize it, to save money and energy, it is time to keep the eggs out. And don't you love my multi-coloured eggs too? I buy them from a friend each week and love that they are green and white as well as brown :-)

Then I spotted a purse. Not just any purse, but a Ness purse and it was brand new, complete with label for £24.95. Aren't the materials gorgeous? It was mine for just £2.50, so how could I pass that up?

When my husband and I visited the Isle of Skye for his birthday many years ago, I found a lovely little Ness shop and bought myself a purse. You may think that the lovely tartan material might not be as hard wearing as leather, but it lasted me 5 years! I like that the company is based in Scotland, aims to source materials from the UK where it can, and centers its designs on traditional Scottish tartan. Buying local twice over, so no consumer guilt about this purchase. I haven't decided whether to keep it, as it is a larger design than I normally go for, but it would make a lovely gift if not.

As well as all the goodies already mentioned, I bought some books and toys for my cousin's children. We spent a total of £15 and made it home with no packaging, not even a carrier bag! Ethical shopping is bliss :-)

But as Jo at All the blue day has pointed out, a 'one in, one out' policy is required, as buying is only one side of the story.

We had already had a big clearout of clothes. I gave some to friends, sold some at the car boot sale, donated some to charity and took less sale-able clothes to the '£5 a bag' shop. I felt like I had cleared out so much stuff.......but then my daughter arrived home from Uni with all her cooking utensils, clothes and furnishings and we had to have an even bigger sort out to make some space. this time it was the shoe drawers, coat rack, teddies, craft stuff and kitchen equipment that was under the spotlight.

It is a great idea to have a clear out and get rid of all the items that are not used regularly, but on the other hand there is an element of being prepared that seems to oppose this idea. For instance I have a stock of old woollen blankets. Some of them get used when we go camping, but most haven't been touched for years. Yet a few years before we moved to Loughborough there was a cold snowy winter where they had a powercut, and many homes had no alternative heating source. So in the interest of preparedness, the blankets are staying.

It is funny how many things about living lightly on the planet clash. Such as being frugal and supporting local organic producers. Or being prepared for the climate change future we face and living a minimalist lifestyle. Or even just storing all your home-grown produce and trying to reduce disposable plastic bags and containers. How else can I store my fresh lettuce or frozen blackberries? It is all a choice between what means the most to you.

Lovely homegrown veg stored for winter....in PLASTIC!!!!

Well, we have 4 bags for selling at the carboot sale and a couple of boxes of kitchen equipment to donate to refugees. I am just loving how organised and clutter free the house is starting to feel, lets see if I can keep it up :-)

Tastier Than Bear's 6: Meat on the Menu

A lot has been happening the last few weeks, and I have a so much to blog about, yet very little time. I left you all on a cliff-hanger over 2 weeks ago with my quest to kill a pigeon, so it seems only fair that I start with an update on my foraging antics.

Well................I still haven't killed a pigeon, though I bought Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'The River Cottage Cookbook' (at the carboot sale for 50p) which follows his early antics at River Cottage. He has a whole chapter on Hedgerow, including wild meats, and is informative on preparing pigeon, rabbit, squirrel and ......snails (Hugh and Bear would get on a treat!). So having read more on the subject, I am feeling much more prepared for the pigeon-caught-in-a-net day to arrive.

 

But all was not lost on the meat front. Driving along a country lane I spotted some road kill. It was a cock pheasant and looked in very good condition, considering it had been hit by a car. I quickly jumped out and having some compost sacks in the boot, I stuffed the pheasant inside one and drove off full of excitement. This was it - true foraging with my first road kill dinner!

I was heading to collect horse manure from Suella, who is always very generous at sharing her horses' produce and there was quite a gathering. So I consulted with the wise Suella, Janet and Martha on my road kill and the first question was 'Is it still warm?' Why did that not occur to me? I had managed to bag the carcass without touching it, so I tentatively reached inside and yes it was warm, so very fresh. It was a bit smelly, but as they pointed out 'All living creatures are smelly'. Here it is.

Note to self: Don't stuff it in a bag next time, lay it flat! Nice how David Cameron is thoughtfully positioned to be consulting with my dead pheasant ;-)

Hugh doesn't mention pheasant, so I checked out some simple techniques on YouTube for removing feathers and gutting, but they all had shot birds whereas mine was already a bit damaged with guts spilling out. I was quickly losing my nerve, as a pre-packaged chicken doesn't come with the same smell, feathers, feet and undigested corn falling out. So I just dived in and cut out the breasts and quickly discarded the rest. I know it was such a waste, but I was overcome with squeamishness. Bear just rips off the head, feet and wings and skewers it for the fire, but I am not up to that yet (if ever).

I calmed down once faced with just the 2 pieces of breast and chopped them up for a stir-fry. I then dashed out to the woods (not shops) for some accompaniments - more wild garlic, hogweed shoots and stinging nettles.

I decided to break the rules and use some olive oil for frying as it is much easier than to keep adding dribbles of water. The hogweed shoots are absolutely delicious fried and were the best tasting part of the meal still. I may have forgotten to mention that I ate them last week on a bed of dandelion leaf salad, and they are so much more delicious fried than steamed.

The pheasant wasn't gamey (probably because it was too fresh), but rather plain and overcooked. I had thought to cook the breasts whole, so that I could leave them pink in the middle, but this was road kill and overcooked seemed a far safer option, if somewhat less appetising.

So I have eaten foraged meat and I survived ;-) There may be more meat menus to follow, if I can catch one of those darn pigeons.

Tastier than Bear's 4: Allotment weeds

I am getting a little behind on my foraging challenge, partly because the weather has improved and I have spent more time at the allotment, throwing a ball for the dog, rather than taking her on walks. I have fixed the shed door, spread my remaining manure, planted fruit trees and bushes, and dug up buckets and buckets of couch grass, mixed in with the threads of old carpet.

 

There has also been Transition meetings, including a lovely seed sowing workshop last weekend, led by a very patient and knowledgeable Andy. My youngest daughter said, "How can you do a workshop on sowing seeds - you just get some soil and put them in!" How little she knew! I picked up lots of tips, such as what compost to use and mixing in a little sharp sand for moisture retention. I also had a chance to ask questions about things that had gone wrong for me. And of course it was a very sociable event with home made refreshments too. If you are local you can check out the Transition Loughborough website for upcoming events.

Then this Sunday was the first car boot sale of the season. I decided to have a stall selling, the idea being that I raise funds to spend in following weeks. It turned out to be a very quiet event, so I didn't do as well as I had hoped. Still I emptied a few bags of outgrown clothes from the garage and made £21. Except that I spent £2 on a new basket, £2 on a wheely trug, 50p on a bag and....50p on something else that I can't remember.

I also attended my first ever political meeting, as Amelia Womack, deputy leader for the Green Party was speaking locally. There will be a general election in May, and for the first time we will have a member of the green party standing locally. It was an opportunity to hear their policies and ask some important questions, and Amelia was a friendly and easy to follow speaker. She certainly gave me food for thought. And talking of food.......

It turns out that Couch grass roots are edible. Wish I had known that before I dumped buckets full of them.

Actually they smell quite sweet, so they should make an interesting basis for a meal. So this weeks theme became allotment weeds. Alongside the couch I collected some red dead nettles again as they were so plentiful and pretty, a few stinging nettles as they needed to be weeded anyway, and the two new flavours of chickweed and hairy bittercress. How does this look for a bagged salad?

There was groundsel growing in and around the chickweed, so I brought some home to look up and was shocked that some websites described it as a salad plant whilst others said it was seriously toxic. I wasn't going to take a risk, but it just goes to show that it is worth double checking everything before you decide to eat it.

The chickweed had very pretty, distinctive white flowers, but they had closed up completely by the time I got my camera out. The stem has a single line of hairs down it, which help with the identification. John Wright describes the flavour of chickweed in The River Cottage Handbook No.7: Hedgerow as "...mild and pleasant, not unlike lettuce but with a bit of freshly mown cricket pitch thrown in." I had collected loads, and though it had a nice texture, the cricket pitch flavour was too much for me, so I only used a small handful.

The hairy bittercress was amazing though. It smelled and tasted just like cress and was not bitter at all. I mixed it in with the chickweed and some raw red dead nettles for the salad, but unfortunately the lovely cress flavour didn't come through. Maybe I need more next time.

It would definitely work in egg sandwiches. I will be keeping all the hairy bittercress I dig up from now on, or just nibbling it raw in between digging.

I fried the chopped couch grass roots with the nettles and some of the dead nettles, but I decided to taste them before adding them to my salad. Good job too, because they were really tough, like chewing twigs! The flavour was fine - no bitterness like the dandelion roots, but they were too tough to eat. Luckily I had picked lots of dead nettles, so I chucked the first batch with the couch grass away and fried the rest on their own.

 

The fried dead nettles really were the star of the meal and very tasty. The salad was a lovely texture, but raw dead nettles aren't as tasty as the cooked ones, and the chickweed was the overriding flavour. I won't use chickweed again, or else in very small amounts, because I am not so keen on the grassy taste. Still I finished it all off..... well apart from the couch grass. Glad I did throw bucketsful away, because you would have to be very desperate to try eating it.

 

Besides this week's meal I wanted to make another batch of dandelion coffee. The first attempt weren't roasted enough and tasted vile. The second attempt I followed guidance from River Cottage no.7 to cook them for 30minutes at 200 degrees C. They were burnt within 10 minutes, maybe because I had chopped them quite small and they were very dry to start with. Half of this batch weren't too burnt and it did make rather a lovely drink. Hopefully the next batch will be perfect again.

I also found some coltsfoot whilst I was walking round the local reservoir. It is supposed to be a good remedy for coughs, so I will pick a few more to dry next time, because it wil be good to have some remedies in for next winter. I have just dried a bunch of sweet violets on my windowsill too

Every time I am out, I have brought one or two plants back for identification and tasting, so I am gradually increasing my wild plant knowledge. Where I really think that it will save me money is with herbal teas that I drink regularly, and with herbal remedies. I am gradually increasing my store of little bottles with dried plants, so that I should have enough variety to make more remedies soon. I had better start adding labels too, as I will no doubt forget what each one is! Let me know if you do any foraging or make any wild remedies?

Tastier than Bear's

It is quite fun watching Bear Gryll's torturing teaching celebrities on an adventure in the wilderness. But really for someone so experienced in the great outdoors, the food he provides looks really disgusting! Take a look at the crunchy worm omelette he prepared for Zac Efron in his "Running Wild with Bear Grylls" series. (it is at 22 mins in)

Apart from the fact that the birds eggs could have been old and rotten, just the thought of eating wriggling worms is vile, (Remember wormy spaghetti in 'The Twits' by Roald Dahl?). Surely an adventurer with Bear's experience could provide a better meal from the wild than that?

Anyway, as I walk my dog through our little woods and muddy fields, I see all kinds of edible goodies, so I am convinced I can do much better than Bear does at eating from the wild. And so the challenge begins......

 

 

I am going to cook myself a meal each week that comes solely from food I have foraged that day and the challenge is to make it tastier than Bear's. I have a few books to guide me on what is edible or not. All I need is for you guys to be the judges and luckily for you I won't be asking you to taste mine or Bear's dishes! You can base your judgement on how appealing each meal looks and which you would rather eat...... if you had to.

Please feel free to join in with ideas, foraging tips or try the challenge too and send me descriptions of your meals to share, or post them on your own blog and I will re-blog them here.

It is tempting to use nuts foraged back in autumn or frozen fruit picked last summer, but it wouldn't be a fair comparison as Bear won't have those to hand. If I were Bear I would carry a few emergency sachets of salt with me, so I am going to allow myself salt and water to cook with, but other than that it is just what you can find on the day. Bear's wilderness probably has a lot more wild stuff available than my semi-urban locality, so I am probably at a disadvantage.

 

Being February, winter in the Northern hemisphere, this is going to be challenging. That is why this weeks challenge is up against wormy birds egg omelette. I think it would be fairly tough finding anything more disgusting than this, so I am hoping for an early win.

So yesterday I headed out into the little woods behind our house to see what I could find. Jelly Ear mushrooms was an obvious first choice because they are really abundant. They grow on the dead wood, and are very difficult to mistake looking and feeling like a human ear. I have picked them before, but never got round to cooking them. The texture is really very odd, and it is difficult to know what to cook them with. But any mushrooms should add some flavour and substance....I am hoping.
 

There were also plenty of stinging nettles starting to grow, so I carefully snipped off a few of the young heads, as a healthy spinach alternative. I was hoping to find something else, but our woods is not very old which means there is not a great variety of species. Apart from loads of poisonous Lords and Ladies springing up and seeing a few snowdrops, it was a dead loss.

The field next to it did have some dandelions around the margins, so I dug up 3 or 4 big ones, so that I could use the roots and the leaves. Even the young flowers are edible apparently. There were also daisies, their dark green rosette of leaves are edible according to my books, and looked quite tasty.

I headed down to the brook hoping for something to add some flavour growing on the embankment. I found some yarrow, which is supposed to be good for tea, some rather discouraging looking plantain, some young white deadnettles and finally some common sorrel.

Thoughts of a lovely green salad were circulating in my mind by now. But I still wanted some more substantial roots. Silverweed roots are reported to be tasty, so I checked out a few spots that are packed with them in summer, but there was no sign at all. The roots must still be there, but without the plant to guide me, I wouldn't know what I was eating.

It took a fair while to sort through my haul and wash all the mud from them. The greens looked quite delicious....... until I tasted them! Below clockwise from the left are white deadnettle, daisy, yarrow, common sorrel and young tips of cleavers.

The daisy leaves were vile and went straight in the compost bin. The dandelion leaves weren't great either, but then the leaves looked old. The common sorrel did have an interesting acidic taste, and might act like a squeeze of lemon. The young cleavers tips or sticky weed as we call it, was actually quite a nice fresh taste, and the deadnettle was a fair spinach like taste. It made me wonder why I didn't just pick the deadnettles instead of bothering with the stingers?

First I made a pot of yarrow tea. It was quite a nice flavour, although a bit weak - I need to pick more next time.

I started a soup by adding the chopped dandelion roots and jelly ears to some boiling water.

After 20 mins simmering, in went the nettles, sorrel and dead nettles for 10 mins. Then at the end I threw in the sticky weed and seasoned with salt. Ta dah!

It really didn't look too bad, and the first few tastes of nettle didn't taste too bad either. The dandelion is not a great flavour, but it did add some texture and felt filling.

But the jelly ear was definitely not the texture I was hoping for. It was still very firm and didn't seem to have softened much at all. Maybe I should have cooked it longer, but John Wright describes in the River Cottage Handbook on Mushrooms, how he boiled it for 8 hours and it still had the same texture! Ignoring the texture, it just had no taste whatsoever. So much for imparting a nice mushroomy flavour!

After all my careful washing of leaves and roots, the soup was still a bit gritty and earthy. Adding salt and more salt made no improvement to the taste. I tried to imagine it with a dash of soy sauce and some egg swirled in and managed to eat a third of the bowl, but it tasted worse with every mouthful so I gave up and had peanut butter toast instead. It was very nutritious and if I was starving I probably could have eaten more. But then maybe worms would look tasty if I was starving.

Ok...eating from the wild is not so easy, or at least not in winter. Part of me thinks this was a stupid idea, but then I am already planning how I can do better next week! What do you think?

Dandelion coffee

At the end of my first summer with half an allotment, I was lucky to be offered the other half of the plot.

Someone had taken it on about the same time I did, but soon packed it in. Shoulder high weeds took over and there were regular mutterings amongst the other plot-holders about "One year's seeds is seven year's weeds".

The allotment officer tried to find someone who wanted it, but no one lasted 3 days after that. This half is right next to the entrance gate, and a portion of it is allocated for the council's compostable waste bins, so it wasn't the most attractive plot. But now it is under my care :-)

My first job was to clear all the weeds and that job gave me my first harvest. Once the tall weeds had been cut back, I found the ground covered with Dandelions. Digging the roots up whole was quite a job, but some of the roots looked quite substantial. I don't like wasting anything, so I ended up bringing a sackful home.

Several got discarded on close inspection - half the dandelions suffered from insect damage, so what hope will my veg have! After a lot of scrubbing, they were chopped and dried and shrank down to just this......

And so they have sat on a shelf for a few months until I decided to try roasting a few for some dandelion coffee. One of my secondhand bargains over the summer was a hand-cranked coffee grinder. Of course now I had something to grind it wasn't going to work!

Undeterred I took it apart and realised it just needed tightening. So within minutes I had some freshly ground dandelion.

It did have a vague coffee-likeness, but was not so bitter and more like Barley cup. Very comforting on such a cold day. "Hedgerow Medicine" by J Bruton-Seal and M Seal suggests grinding a few pods of cardamom with it, or even cinnamon or fennel seeds. It is also good for you as it cleanses the liver and skin.

So if you are looking for a free, healthy, locally-grown, caffeine-free alternative, that you can harvest from virtually any garden, playing field or road verge..... then try dandelion :-)