Wild Food - The Stinging Nettle

To my Irish peasant ancestors the worst time of year was April and May, the hungry gap. Last years crops and food stores were close to running out and they were still waiting for the first harvest of early potatoes in June. The great standby food crop in this lean time of year was the stinging nettle, Urtica dioica.

The traditional Irish balled the Town of Ballybay has a verse
She had children up the stairs, she had children in the byre
And another ten or twelve sittin' rottin' by the fire.
She fed 'em on potatoes, and soup she made with nettles,
And lumps of hairy bacon that she boiled up in the kettle.

Nettles are a perennial flowering plant, a native of Europe, Asia, North Africa, and North America. Anyone who has ever been stung by it will know it well. It is a persistent and tough weed, difficult to control in the garden.

Nettles are rich in vitamins A, C, iron, potassium, manganese, and calcium. Traditionally in Ireland the growing tips were harvested at this time of year and used with potatoes and leeks (another great hungry gap crop) to make soup. Old people swore by its properties as a spring tonic. It was also used extensively in herbal medicine. The leaves when soaked in water make an excellent liquid fertiliser for the kitchen garden.

The website Edible Ireland has an excellent recipe for traditional Irish nettle soup

According to Wikipedia while the plant is widely distributed in North America it is not quite as common as it is in Europe. If any North American readers are in an area where the plant is not common and wish to propagate it as a food crop, it will sprout freely from any sliver of root. It will not however grow well in very dry soil.

The Stinging Nettle in Wikipedia.

Food Stocks

I do most of the grocery shopping in our house. Until a few years ago I would make a shopping list and buy a weeks supply of food. But I now keep a well stocked larder. When shopping I'm mainly buying stock for the larder which will be stored for several months before it's used. I'm a recent convert to this system, my mother grew up doing this and still does. The only management issue is devising a rotation system that uses the oldest stock first.

Perishable items like fruit, veg, meat, milk and eggs, I buy every weekly and use quickly. In the autumn I get most fruit and veg from the garden and I don’t buy a lot of meat at any time of year. I never buy any kind of processed food, apart from being too expensive, it does not taste as good and is not as nutritious as home cooked food. And the packaging has to be disposed of, which is an ever growing cost.

Keeping a larder means always having the ingredients to make a meal in the house. In an increasingly unstable world it's a buffer against any immediate crisis and gives a feeling of security.

The following is a list of items I always have in the larder.

Tinned Tomatoes
Tinned Tuna
Pasta
Noodles
Oatflakes
Plain Flour
Strong White Flour
Rice
Lentils
Chickpeas
Olive Oil
Butter
Pepper
Salt
Sugar
Dried Herbs
Yeast
Soy Sauce
Curry Powder
Powered Milk
Cornflour
Tea
Coffee
Custard Powder
Potatoes

A Bird in the Hand

Until a few years ago I owned two guns. I had to sell them when I was really stuck for cash as I could not afford the license fee and the gun club membership. I originally bought them to hunt game for the table, but with all the costs involved I was not making them pay.

Shot at dawn Nov 30th

Fortunately living in the countryside I have not had to give up eating game, as many of my friends and neighbors are hunters. Some of them just hunt for recreation, they never eat it and some of them shoot more than they eat. So at this time of year there is a surplus of pheasant and duck in my area. A few of my neighbors will often drop in a freshly shot pheasant or duck when they are passing. In return I give them a bottle of whiskey at Christmas.

If you live in an area where there are hunters try and cultivate this kind of relationship with them. This is the cheapest and most convenient way to get a regular supply of game.

A lot of people hang game for a few days before plucking and gutting it. I puck and gut right way and get it into the fridge. If you have never plucked and gutted a bird try YouTube, see below for some links. It is a primitive and visceral business and you may make a mess of it the first few times. But the only tool required is a sharp knife and with a little practice you soon get the hang of it. Needless to say take extreme care with sharp knifes and always cut away from yourself.

5 minutes later ready to cook

I usually cook game the next day. I parboil for 15 to 20 minutes and finish it off in a Pyrex dish in the oven covered with tin foil, this keeps it from drying out.

Unlike buying meat in a shop you never know what wild meat will taste like. The flavour will vary depending on what the animal was feeding on, its health and age. At worst the meat may be tough, but at its best there is nothing to beat wild meat for flavour. And wild meat is all lean.

I never use any kind of flavorings or sauce, just the meat served with a few spuds and veg and a little butter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmoTthxTnv8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_BVYOhCocw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0ddDzGGtiU&feature=related

Cheap Fast Food

A great favourite for dinner in our house is pasta and tuna. Everyone likes it and as the cook I really like it because it takes about ten minutes and very little work to prepare. It is also a very cheap dinner, all the prices below are current Lidl prices. To feed four I use the following

250 grams of Pasta 0.25 cents
1 tin of Tuna 0.80 cents
A few spoons of Mayonnaise 0.50 cents

Boil water, add pasta, cook for 10 minutes. Drain, add tuna and mayonnaise, stir it up. Add a little fresh parsley if you have it. Serve.

Total time ten minutes, total cost 1 euro 55 cents.

Two Cheap Dinners

I do pretty much all the cooking in our house and we never buy processed food. In late summer and early autumn we eat a lot of food from our garden and orchard and some wild food, like blackberries. But for most of the year a lot of our food comes from our local branch of the German supermarket chain Lidl.

When we have no home produced food and depend totally on bought food, feeding our household of four costs just over ten euros per day.

Here are two chicken recipes, based on a five euro pack of chicken breasts. These two recipes are a particular favourites in our house. Chicken chow mein and chicken curry, both of these recipes will provide a main meal for four people at a cost of just over five euros. Take out the chicken and you have nice vegeterian meals at a cost of about two euro fifty cents or about sixty two cents per head.

Ingredients

Chicken	€5.00
Rice	€0.40
Noodles	€0.60
Mushrooms	€0.99
Onions	€0.60
Carrots	€0.20
Garlic	€0.30
Curry	€1.00
Soy Sause	€0.20
Milk	€0.50
Flour	€0.20
Olive Oil	€0.30
	€10.29

Chicken Curry

Fry two carrots, two onions and three or four cloves of garlic on a hot stove for several minutes. Add curry powder, we like it hot and add three heaped dessert spoons of medium hot curry powder. Fry for another few minutes. Add a half litre of milk and flour to thicken. Leave to simmer.

Fry two chicken breasts and chop into small pieces. Add to curry. Chop half a punnet of mushrooms and add to curry. Bring four cups of water to the boil and add one cup of rice. Boil rice until cooked. Serve

Chicken Chow Mein

Fry two carrots, two onions, three or four cloves of garlic and a half a punnet of mushrooms on a hot stove for several minutes. Add soy sauce to taste.

In another pan fry off two chicken breasts and chop into small pieces. Add to vegetables.

Boil water, cover packet of noodles in boiling water. Wait five minutes. Serve

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

Last January we bought a Morphy Richards bread makers in Argos for 107 euros, it currently sells for 116 euros. With the bread maker it costs 1.85 euros to make a two pound loaf, we bake about one of these a day. This works out perfect for our four person household and keeps us in daily bread.

We use Odlums strong white flour which currently costs 2.69 euros for a two kilo bag, which will make 3.3 loaves. McDougalls yeast cost 2.95 euros a pack, which will make 16 loaves. The other main ingredient is Marvel powered milk at 1.98 euros for 198 grams, enough to make about 6.6 loaves. A pinch of salt, 4 spoons of oil and a spoon of sugar complete the ingredients. Total cost of ingredients 1.55 euros.

It takes about 1.5 units of electricity to mix, prove and bake the loaf, cost about 30 cents including vat. Total cost 1.85 euros per day for bread. Or 12.95 euros a week, or 56 euros a month, or 673.95 euros a year.

I love the bread maker, it takes all the skill and work out of making bread. Just throw in the ingredients, set the program and three hours later it’s ready. In some post peak oil future when I have to make bread in my solid fuel range I will think back wistfully to the age of plenty when I had a bread maker. This is one kind of modern convenience I will miss.

The Morphy Richards comes with a 2 year guarantee. Ours has now made around 300 perfect loaves and has worked flawlessly so far.


Available at Argos

Morphy Richards

The Kelly Kettle

I’m onto my third Kelly Kettle (KK). The first was a present from my mother six years ago. When we discovered how efficient it was we threw out the electric kettle and used the KK whenever we needed a small amount of hot water and it was not available from our Stanley range.

Brand new kettle with all accessories

In the winter the range is going every day and evening, so the KK gets a break. But in Spring or Autumn if the day is sunny we don’t need to light a fire till evening, so the KK provides hot water, for tea and coffee.

In the summer we use it many times everyday, not just for boiling water but for cooking. My porridge gets cooked on it every morning; it’s ideal for cooking a few spuds, or a little pasta or rice for a salad. The frying pan will fry an egg and a few sausages. If we want to cook a full dinner we still have to light the range, but some days we get by with just the KK. As we have no immersion heater we also boil water for washing dishes and bodies.

After five years of very heavy use we finally wore out our first KK last year. We bought a new one and it continues to work as hard as it predecessor. If you are a “normal” user who only uses it for leisure pursuits like fishing, you will get decades of use from a KK.

Ready to start cooking
breakfast

I’m off cycle touring with my daughter next week and for cooking and making tea and coffee I’ve just bought a new KK with all the accessories. Ideal for the job as it weights only 1.5 kg.

When ever we travel a long journey by car the KK provides tea and coffee on the road. We’ve taken it to the bog, the wood and the beach. We’ve brewed up in national parks and in urban car parks. If you use bone dry wood and manage it carefully there is no smoke.  I'm off to London in a few weeks with my son, the KK will also be coming. My cousins have even used it in a boat while fishing, they say you get a lot of looks from other anglers when a plume of smoke suddenly rises from a boat out on the lake.

For fuel we use birch wood but just about anything that will burn will do. On the KK website they talk about dried camel dung being used in the desert. No matter where you go you will find suitable fuel.

Breakfast will soon be ready

In the last six years the KK has saved us a lot of money. I have no idea how much and I don’t really care, I just love its elegant simplicity and the fact that I can cook meals and brew my coffee with a few scraps of timber. I also love the fact that I am supporting a great west of Ireland company who have been making a great product for four generations and who are now with the Internet selling it all over the world.

For more information and to order

http://www.kellykettle.com/

For even more information try Youtube and search for “Kelly Kettle”.