Leek Planting and Water Butt Dipping

 Such a glorious day for shrimping and planting!

A chance discovery of Pond Shrimps, in the communal water supply at the allotment, provided an afternoon of enthusiastic water butt dipping for the girls. As we have refused to purchase fish for the pond they have been creating the shrimps provided them with alternative pond occupants.

Hopefully the rather bumpy ride, from butt to pond, in a wheelbarrow won't have been too traumatic for the troupe of shrimp and they will thrive in their new habitat.
It would be an awful shame if the "lobsters" that we have acquired, were to die of shock before they were big enough to eat!

While the girls busied themselves with their pond project Marcus and I planted out the leeks. We employed the same technique that we used last weekend for the shallots.

The seedlings are so tightly packed together (like a clump of grass) that they need to be completely saturated with water to separate the dense network of fragile roots. 

First we popped the seed pot into a shallow tub and filled it with water. After allowing it to soak for few minutes we gently agitated the water around the roots so that the compost came away without snapping them.

Next we used a dibber (pointy tree stake) to make holes about 5 inches apart and 3 inches deep and popped a leek seedling into each. 

Each hole was then filled with water; this makes the hole fill itself in and wraps the leek in lovely wet soil. 

Hey presto, the leeks are planted! 

It's great to see our crops beginning to take hold. The beetroot, parsnips, broad beans and chard are all looking good as are the onions and garlic. The shallots still look like straggly blades of lying, limp on the mud but Marcus assures me that they will stand up soon. 

We have masses of red and white currants and gooseberries so definitely need to get them netted before the blackbirds spot them!  

Many Hands make light scones!

Having successfully reduced our sugar consumption during the week our weekend consumption has started to gain an almost ceremonial status. We look forward to Saturday's and Sunday's with a sense of family camaraderie; planning the bakes and puddings that we might indulge ourselves in and setting time aside to enjoy them. This has resulted in a rather pleasing and well received family pact:

We, the family of Cross-Broome, will endeavour to sit down together for a cup of tea and cake on Sunday afternoons.

The girls completely embraced this new addition to our family agenda and threw themselves into scone and jam production with huge enthusiasm. The saying, "too many cooks spoil the broth", initially sprang to mind but turned out to be unfounded.

We used my Mum's scone recipe that requires sour milk, of which we had none, so had to make! 

Souring the milk provided a bit of intrigue and some exclamations of "yuuuuck, that's gross" as the curdled liquid came into being.  

The many hands, well the six hands, worked together like one big baking machine to produce some yummy scones, whipped cream, jam,

 

lots of laughter and a big, floury, smiley mess! 

Foraging in our Garden

As we carefully nurture our seedlings and tend our allotment; guarding against late frosts, regularly potting on, watering and weeding, it always amuses me how bountifully our weeds grow! Left to fend for themselves they are already lush, green and prolific. A few weeks ago I was rejoicing in the availability of nettles, well now it is the turn of Ground Elder.

On the whole, this is considered a pervasive and troublesome garden weed that aggressively out competes most other plants. It is pretty tricky to get rid of once it has established itself and will spread either by seed or by its rhizomes (long, horizontal underground stems). These can spread by as much as a metre a year and are rather brittle. If broken they will easily regrow and generate an even wider spread of ground cover. As it is so tricky to get rid of I reckon that the best solution is to embrace its abundance and eat it!

Flavour wise ground elder is rather tasty and nutritious ( a good source of iron, manganese and vitamin C). Like so much 'wild' vegetation, it works well when used as a spinach substitute, the youngest leaves are also good eaten raw in salad. It has a slight tang and a more aromatic flavour than spinach. Our Monday evening meal this week was 'pie'. We had a fair amount of leftover chicken and plenty of gravy from our roast as well as a couple of pork burgers left from a barbecue on Saturday. With just a couple of leeks and a few handfuls of ground elder these ingredients became a mighty fine pie.

Rough puff pastry is a big favourite with the girls so I tend to opt for this as my pastry of choice for pies. I can usually smuggle all manner of ingredients under the pie lid without too many complaints!

Having lined the pie dish with pastry I use the scraps to make an extra rim around the edge of the dish. This helps to raise the pie lid and gives the pastry more of a puff.

Chicken and Ground Elder pie 

(Clean Plates 4/5 - two of the tasters were hesitant about 

the ground elder but only when I brought attention to it!)

Filling

Leftover Cooked Chicken (we usually have a leg and some breast)

2 pork burgers/any uneaten stuffing (a sausage meat one would be ideal)

2 Leeks

25g Butter

1 Tbsp Fresh Tarragon

Nutmeg

400ml – 500ml Gravy (or chicken stock)

1 Tbsp Flour (only if using stock rather than gravy)

150ml White wine

50ml Double Cream

Salt and Pepper

2 Handfuls of Ground Elder

Rough puff pastry

300g Plain Flour

150g Cold Butter

150ml – 180ml Cold water

Chop the butter into cubes around 6 mm squared.

Add the cubed butter to the bowl of flour and toss until all the pieces are coated with flour.

Gradually add the water to bring the mixture together into a firm dough.

Tip onto a well floured work surface, shape into a rectangle and roll in one direction until you have a rectangle about 2 cm thick.

Fold the far third towards you and the nearest third over that to create three layers.

Give the pastry a quarter turn and then repeat the rolling, folding and turning process 5 more times.

Wrap the pastry in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Finely chop the leeks and tarragon and then melt the butter in a saucepan. Keeping the heat low, gently sweat the leeks until soft.

Strip the meat from the chicken carcass and break the stuffing into bite size pieces. Add to the pan with the leeks and a grating of nutmeg.

If you are using stock rather than leftover gravy add a tablespoon of flour to the leeks and meat and cook for 2 minutes.

Pour in the wine and gravy or stock and allow to simmer for 15 – 20 minutes.

Add the cream, boil for another couple of minutes then taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper and maybe a bit more nutmeg.

Remove from the heat and roughly chop the spinach or seasonal greens. Stir them into the pie mix and set aside while you roll out the pastry.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Divide and roll out the pastry in 2/3 and 1/3 sized pieces to line and top a pie dish. Fill the lined dish with the filling, top with pastry and crimp the edges all round. Brush with beaten egg, make three knife slashes in the pastry top to allow the steam to escape.

Bake for 35 – 40 minutes until golden brown on top.

A Week of Grubby Knees

It has been a glorious week of sun, see....dlings and pollinating!

On Monday afternoon we received the call to say that our neighbours' pear tree's were in blossom.
This is a call that we await every year and immediate action is called for. Marcus rounded up the troops and took the girls over the road so that they could gather the necessary blossom samples. As is probably apparent from the photograph, we have one small espalier pear tree in our garden. This was given to us five years ago when our friends moved to France. For the first three years it flowered but didn't produce a single fruit. Ideally pear trees should be planted in pairs!
Two years ago Marcus had the bright idea that we should attempt to pollinate the flowers manually. We asked around to find out if there were any pear trees local to us and found a match. The first year produced 6, the second 12 and, if we are going to follow a pattern here, this year, we are hoping for 18 fabulous comice pears!
The girls wafted their blossom samples under the flowers on our tree; flitting backwards and forwards like bees or butterflies (buzzing was optional!) and now we wait.

With all the warmth and sunshine that we have been enjoying our Garden Room (just a posh name for the Lean To) is beginning to look like a tropical rain forest. We desperately  need to pot things up or get them into the ground at the allotment.

Our tomato sowing in early March resulted in just the one cherry tomato plant (we are still waiting for the rest to pop up in the lawn!) and about a hundred beef steak tomato plants. We have already potted up and given away some of these. Yet, still we have a seed tray, a good three quarters full, with a dense forest of tomato seedlings that we need to find homes for.

A family trip to the allotment this weekend offered up the opportunity to test  the new drain pipe and water butt system on our shed. It works (at least it does if you carry a watering can of water from the water trough and pour it into the drain pipe!). Unfortunately a design flaw, that was not spotted in the original plans, meant that the water butt could not be raised off the ground to enable tap access in the usual manner. Instead, we have had to dig down and now have a 2 ft deep hole, directly in front of the tap! It works though!

Date with Chocolate!

So here we are, several days into our new reduced sugar plan and it is going pretty well. I would like to stress the "reduced" at this point. As a mother of 3 girls, now aged 8 and 11 years old (yikes!), it would be near impossible and (dare I agree?) "unfair" for me to believe that we could eradicate sugar completely. Instead, we are aiming for a 5:2 ratio of good to bad.
For my part, I am busily creating healthy, low sugar treats for weekday snacks and deserts to fulfil the '5' bit. They then contribute to the '2' bit, by tucking into chocolate, cake and ice cream at the weekend!

Despite the controversy surrounding the use of fructose (largely instigated by the findings of Dr Robert Lustig and the food industries use of high fructose corn syrup) I  favour the use of  whole, blended fruit (both fresh and dried) as my alternative sweetener. Unlike fructose syrup, the fibre and vitamins in fruit are definitely beneficial to the body and I like the extra flavour that they impart.

My Chocolate Date Squares were created with Marcus in mind and were a resounding success. To date (nice play on words there!) he has been pretty tricky to win over to the low sugar camp but these were consumed with surprising enthusiasm and earned an easy  5/5 Clean Plates score 

They have a rich chocolate flavour and a satisfyingly soft, dense texture. I hesitate to call them brownies as that creates an expectation that they may not meet but as a chocolate square they certainly stand proud.

I ended up making these twice this week and they were even well received by all the children that came round to play after school.

Chocolate Date Squares (Clean Plates 5/5 - they even pass the Marcus Test!)

2 Apples
60g Dates
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 Tsp Vanilla extract
1 Tsp Espresso Coffee
1/4 Tsp Salt
5 Tsp Agave Nectar
120g Plain Flour
40g Ground Almonds
1 Tsp Baking Powder
50g Cocoa Powder
2 Eggs

Pre-heat the oven to 170C/Gas 3 and line small baking tin (20cm x 20cm) with parchment.
Pop the dates into a cup or small bowl and cover with boiling water to soften. 
Peel, core and slice the apples. Place in a small sauce pan, cover with water, bring to a gentle simmer and stew until soft.
In a food processor blend together the dates and apple with 6 teaspoons of the water that the dates have been soaking in.
Once smooth add the vanilla extract, coffee, olive oil, salt and Agave Nectar and continue to blend until you have a fairly loose puree. If the puree seems rather thick add a little more of the date water.
In a mixing bowl whisk the eggs before adding the apple and date puree. Stir until everything is well combined.
Fold in the flour, almonds, cocoa and baking powder until you have a thick, chocolatey paste.
Scrape it into the tin and bake for 15 - 20 minutes until firm.
Cut into squares and enjoy!  

Naked Wine Drinking!

It is official - I am an Angel!  

A few weeks ago; just as we were embarking on our £80 feeds 5 Challenge, my friend Abby introduced me to a rather fabulous excuse to drink wine. Not that I really needed another one but "safety in numbers" as the saying goes!
She invited me to try a case of wine from the Norwich based company Naked Wines and to become a Wine Angel.
What can I say?
Firstly and of vital importance, the wines were delicious and of a much higher quality than I am usually drawn towards or able to afford. I have, in the past, tended more towards quantity rather than quality! Except of course with our Home Brew (quality all the away there folks!)
Secondly, by investing £20 a month into my wine account, I am contributing to what can best be described as, crowd funding, for independent wine producers. Just brilliant! Every glass of wine that I now drink is helping someone! Below is a lovely little flow diagram from the Naked Wines website showing how it works.

Naked Wines is a customer-funded wine business

Our customers, called Angels, fund talented, independent winemakers and get rewarded with delicious wines at wholesale prices in return.

What better way to spend the money that I have saved reducing our weekly food budget, than to invest it in wine? It may not be quite as commendable a spend as my friend Katherine, who donated the savings that she made to Comic Relief but it is still, ever so slightly, angelic.

Looking forward to that Friday feeling tonight when I can select a bottle from my well stocked wine rack - I believe a certain maturity has finally been achieved!

Easter Aftermath ..........Sugar Reduction!

A more wholesome brown than chocolate
It is astounding how resilient children can be to chocolate induced sickness. Despite a restless Monday night in the Cross-Broome household and late night vows to not eat any more for a few days; my hardcore chocoholics bounced back within hours.
As early as 9.30 the next morning I had a request to "try a little bit of the posh ones" (apparently, the Harrods Chocolate Chicken and Bear that they had received for their birthday were calling to them from the sideboard).
Fortunately for the Chicken and Bear (they are currently still in possession of their heads and other limbs). I spent much of the night plotting a sugar reducing plan for the whole family. Brown week will now herald the start of, once again (we have been here before, last year!), reducing our refined sugar intake.



I created this recipe last year, it is a big favourite with the girls, particularly for breakfast, as the bars are both filling and tasty. Fab grab and run fuel for busy mornings. Like the Banana Ice lollies this is a great way of using up brown/black bananas.

A majority of the sweetness comes from the dates and bananas but the cinnamon and vanilla extract lend themselves to being useful sweetness enhancers, as well as being complimentary flavours.

I think that this actually tastes pretty good raw so a bit of bowl licking might be in order! You do need to be careful not to over cook it as dry edges and crispy top bits are not so tasty. I always smooth the top off so that it colours more evenly and try not to cook it for too long so that it remains moist.

Banana Bar Recipe (Clean Plates 4.5/5 - Still can't completely convince Marcus!)

2 Ripe Bananas

180g Dates

80ml Olive Oil

0.25 Tsp salt

0.5 Tsp Ground Cinnamon

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

50g Dessicated Coconut

50g Ground Almonds

180g Oats

50g Chopped Apricots

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and line an 8 inch square cake tin.

In a food processor blend together bananas, dates, salt, cinnamon, vanilla and olive oil until smooth.

Add the coconut, almonds and oats to the mixture and blitz for a couple more minutes.

Stir in the chopped apricots and then scrape the mixture into the lined cake tin, smooth over the top and bake for 25 – 30 minutes until just browning on the top and edges.

Use a sharp knife to cut into 18 bars whilst still warm.

These are best eaten cold so we keep ours in the fridge.

With Easter well and truly out of the way I will be concentrating my efforts on reducing our refined sugar intake. I suspect that this will not fit very well with our £80 a week budget as both fresh and dried fruit is more expensive than sugar. With this in mind I am keeping my budget a little more open ended for next week and will reassess at the end of the week.     

Junk Sculpting and the start of 'Brown' Week?

A Dragon and a Dragon Slaying Machine! 

That was the brief given to our party guests on Saturday. The results were pretty impressive for a group of seven and eight year old's, a couple of hours work and a pile of rubbish.
The days leading up to the party were particularly satisfying for my 'skip diving' tendencies and torture for Marcus. The girls were given permission (by me) to seek and gather all that they could in the way of street debris (hub caps, bolts, washing machine drums, bits of pipe and unidentifiable metal or plastic objects) to build into our own 'back garden dump'.    

As I look out onto the garden, I do wonder whether, 'mobility veichle' and 'armoured horse' might be more fitting descriptions for these completed works of art! There is, however, definitely something quirky and fun about their form that brings a smile to my face, especially when they are being ridden in or on! Who would have thought that some seed trays, bike wheels, mops and pipes could be so easily transformed?

 

The party and party treats, preceded the arrival of the 'Easter Bunny' on Sunday. He arrived heavily laden with yet more chocolate to add to the hoard that the girls have been building over the last few days. Despite massive chocolate consumption from all, both yesterday and today, we still seem to have more than enough to cover breakfast, lunch and dinner for the forthcoming week. As I start dreaming up recipes for chocolate soup and casserole, it looks like 'brown' week is definitely a possibility! Unless, that is, the groans from upstairs, about feeling 'a bit sick' become a reality and I spend the night providing comfort and sick bowls to the three of them.
I can almost hear them begging me for some purple sprouting or creamed suede!

Worms! and Giant Beetroot

With April just a matter of hours away we discovered that there was rather a lot to be done on the allotment. Much as we try to keep on top of everything; work and a constant stream of social commitments (the latter more for the girls than ourselves!) invariably tends to get in the way. Before we know it seed packets are claiming that they should have been sown yesterday and our ground preparation is far from complete.  

With heavy rain predicted for the whole day, the weather forecast was far from ideal for a day at the allotment but needs must. It actually turned out just to be heavy showers and with 'the smallest shed on the allotment' to shelter in we managed to make pretty good headway with our digging, weeding and sowing. Some of us got plenty of rest as well!

We have finally relocated our old wormery to the allotment and are hoping that we can kick start it again, without the cost of purchasing speciality worms. Apparently Tiger worms are the best species for the job but they are fairly costly (£20 for 1/2 a kilo from worms direct). Unfortunately our history of worm survival is rather poor. Over the last couple of years we have invested three times in this particular species of worms and only succeeded in killing them.
We are convinced that this is partly owing to the poor design of the wormery. The worms are able to wriggle through the holes in the bottom and then drown in the sump of liquid worm juice/fertiliser that is stored underneath.

Our alternative to this rather costly (and cruel) method is to collect our own. The girls have become our designated worm collectors. The bigger and juicier the better and with a bit of luck they will be too fat to wriggle to their deaths. 

At best our wonderful peelings will become fabulous worm juice (rather than soup!) and help us to grow enviable vegetables. At worst, the peelings will just compost away in a bin and we won't have killed half a kilo of worms and wasted another £20.

On the subject of enviable vegetables, it turns out that, what I had thought last year, was chard, and merrily cropped the leaves accordingly, was in actual fact a beetroot. A beetroot of enormous dimensions!

The girls enlisted their knowledge of 'The Enormous Turnip' story and pulled and pulled and pulled! Until...........

Just like the story, we roasted it to eat with our dinner and whilst it was definitely rather woody in places, that one enormous beetroot was big enough to share between 8 of us. A far cry from our dismal attempt at cauliflower growing!!

Yummy! Nettle and Bacon Flan

My bike is in need of repair at the moment (something to do with a cotter pin needing replacing ). It is just about holding out for short trips to and from school but I doubt if it would make it to the market and back in one piece. This has put a bit of a strain on my shopping habits and forced me to shop and forage closer to home. Luckily nettles are a little more abundant than a couple of weeks ago so I have been arming myself with my trusty, yellow, rubber gloves, to take the girls to and from school, and gathering fresh nettles daily!

The smell of nettles is really rather wonderful - all, sort of, green and peppery, much like their taste. Texturally they worked brilliantly in the flan that I made yesterday. I have made similar ones using either Kale or watercress but I think that the nettles actually worked better than either of  those.

Unlike when you use them in soup, you do need to blanch the stingers before hand. Simply plunge them into a pan of  boiling water, for all of two minutes, and then quickly refresh under the cold tap. This should ensure that they keep their fabulous, vibrant green colour.

Because the nettles are so young at the moment they are nearly all just 'nettle tip' anyway so I haven't had to throw much in the way if stalk away or even do much chopping. For the flan, I gave the blanched nettles a few quick slices with the knife before adding them but it probably wasn't necessary.

The actual flavour of the nettles was rather overpowered by the cheese and bacon but the texture that they provided was absolutely fabulous. Watercress can be stringy, unless finely chopped, and kale might be considered a bit tough. The nettles, however, were soft yet had some fibre to them and worked just perfectly with the smooth cheesy custard and the crisp salty bacon.
 

We ate this warm with baked potatoes and salad but I actually think that it was even nicer the next day when it was cold! I have only given it a score of 4/5 Clean Plates because two of the tasters are not so keen on flans in general. They did however agree that using nettles was infinitely better than my kale version and both made a good effort at eating it!

Nettle and Bacon Flan (4/5 Clean Plates)

220g Plain Flour

30g Polenta

140g Cold Butter

50g Parmesan

1 Egg

2 Eggs

300ml Double Cream

150g Smoked Streaky Bacon

2 Garlic Cloves

1 Red Onion

80g Nettles (blanched)

100g Mature Cheddar

Nutmeg

1. Place the flour, polenta and butter into a food processor and whizz until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.

2. Add the Parmesan and the egg and pulse until the pastry comes together. Add a small amount of cold water if needed.

3. Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 minutes.

1. On a lightly floured surface roll out the pastry so that it is about the thickness of a pound coin and big enough to line a 26cm tart case.

2. Line the tart case, leaving some overhang to allow for shrinkage and chill for another 30 minutes.

3. Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC/Gas 6 and blind bake for 15 minutes, continue to bake for another 5 – 10 minutes until the pastry is golden.

4. Remove from the oven and reduce the temperature to 170C/Gas 4. Trim off the overhanging pastry.

5. In a large jug whisk together the eggs, yolk and the cream and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

6. Remove the rind from the bacon and chop into 2cm pieces, dry fry until lightly browned and set aside. Chop the onion and crush the garlic. Add a splash of oil to the frying pan that you have just cooked the bacon in and soften the onion and garlic.

7. Arrange the bacon, onion, garlic and blanched nettles in the tart case and sprinkle over the grated cheese. Pour in the egg mixture and cook for 30 -40 minutes until the egg has set and the top is golden.

 

The Cost of Green

Rather sad that our 'green' food week has cost us more than our 'white' one but at least the nettle, tagiltelle dreds suited Fred!

Despite making use of some early Spring foraged ingredients (nettles); this week has been our most expensive. By the time we reached Saturday I ended up having to withdraw the money for next week and then swiftly spent £22.35 on food for the weekend. Except for some leftover roast chicken for tomorrow nights risotto, we have managed to eat everything and I very much doubt we will be able to make it through next week on just £57.65!

The situation has not been helped by the girls taking it upon themselves to generously feed their guinea pig handfuls of the salad that I had kept to one side to accompany tomorrow nights meal. I now wish that I hadn't pointed out, that he would be dead by now, if I hadn't been feeding him!

Seeing our lovely salad leaves strewn across the grass in the run was quite traumatic. Particularly, as Marcus had only agreed to them having him on the assumption that a guinea pigs grass consumption would save him having to mow the lawn!

I can't really blame the guinea pig though as a good two thirds of the over spend was actually spent at the Butchers. The girls had a friend over for a sleepover so I went wild and bought sausages for their tea, a couple of chicken legs for Marcus and myself, to eat later in the evening and a small chicken to roast for Sunday; spending £15.90 in total. Pretty much the amount that we have allocated to meat for an entire week covered just two days and it was ridiculously easy to do as well!

Having now completed four weeks of trying to feed five for £80 (with varying degrees of success!) these are some of my my top tips.

Buy really strong flavoured cheese to use in sauces and for general cooking. You will need to use less!

A surprising number of meal leftovers make fantastic soups when blended with stock and perhaps an extra onion or leek. A word of warning though - unless you are particularly keen on cabbage soup I reccomend not including leftover sprouts or cabbage as their flavour can mask all others. Having said that, finely shredded greens are good in an 'un-blended' soup

Any mince based dishes, such as bolognaise, chilli, shepherds pie, mousaka etc. don't suffer from the addition of lentils. Where I would previously have used 500g of mince I now use 300g with 100g of lentils.

Lamb has a particularly strong flavour and whilst it may be one of the more expensive meats to use as a joint, a small quantity will impart big lamb flavour on a casserole or a curry.  A large shank or some shoulder cooked in a slowcooker with plenty of vegetables, lentils and pulses will stretch the meat to feed 5 or 6 easily. 

Blitz up stale bread into breadcrumbs and freeze. I have a bag in the freezer that I top up continuously. They can be used straight from the freezer to add to meatballs and burgers.
Dipping chunks of chicken or fish into flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs and baking them in the oven bulks them out far more than I expected - it works for Captain Birdseye, it can work for you!. A few chopped herbs, lemon zest or some spices mixed with the breadcrumbs makes it taste more interesting too.

Sour milk is great for making scones.

Check out the over ripe fruit at the market - it will be going cheap and can be whizzed up into fab smoothies, coulis and fruit leather. Bananas are particularly handy as they are great for sweetening cakes and ices. The older they get, the sweeter they taste and the less refined sugar you need. 

Foraging for Purest Green (Nettles)

Percy: "Oh, Edmund! Can it be true? That I hold here, in my mortal hands, a nugget of purest green!"
Edmund: "Yes, well, it's more of a splat, isn't it?"
Blackadder Series 2

In my quest for 'green' and our eagerness to enjoy our first bowl of nettle soup of the Spring, we were actually rather premature in our foraging. Over the last few days I have spotted a promising number of young nettles on the edges of pathways  but when we arrived at the Orchard on Mothering Sunday (armed with gloves and carrier bags) they were in surprisingly short array.

The girls were as keen as I to be tucking into nettle soup on 'soup night', so I set them the task of scouring the ground for signs of green. Positive sightings led to a bit of a 'whoop' and me running in from the side in my yellow marigolds (necessary nettling attire) armed with a carrier bag to fill. 

It was fun, and despite my initial misgivings, we did manage to collect a fair amount. Although, as the nettles were very young and the tip so close to the root, they tended to come up 'root and all' so there was a fair amoubt of sorting needed. After washing and sorting we have ended up with around 300g. Just enough for soup but another foraging trip will be required if we are to make the nettle gnocchi and nettle bread that we also have planned for our 'green week'

And so to the soup! Once the nettles were washed and sorted they were kept to the side until the last minute (adding them too early can render your, 'green', a more murky brown). The carrot, onion, garlic, potato and celery were left to sweat in (an un-healthy amount of) butter and then simmered in stock until soft. 

The soup base was blended until smooth before piling in the nettles.
NB.Either use tongs or pop your 'marigolds' back on! This may sound obvious but in the midst of all this culinary excitement, it is actually quite east to forget that, stinging nettles, sting

Turn off the heat and blend again, until the wonderful, buttery, yellow soup base, becomes, 'green'! A generous grating of nutmeg and perhaps, some salt and pepper and you are done.

Stinging nettles are incredibly high in vitamins C, D, iron, potassium, manganese, and calcium. They are also unusually high in protein for a green plant. As we were eating this as our main meal of the day (and I hadn't snuck any lentils or pulses in anywhere!) I topped it off with a poached egg for an extra protein boost.

Nettle Soup (clean plates 5/5)

250g Prepared Nettles (tops or young leaves)

55g Butter

2 Onions

1 Carrot

2 Celery Sticks

1 Garlic clove

1 Medium Potato

1.5 Litres Chicken/Vegetable Stock

Nutmeg

Finely chop the onions, garlic and celery. Grate the carrot and potato. 

Gently melt the butter in a large saucepan, tip in the vegetables and gently sweat for around ten minutes.

Add the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and allow to simmer until the vegetables are completely soft (about 20 minutes). Blend the soup base until smooth.

Pile in the nettles, simmer for another 2 minutes, until the nettles are tender and then blend the soup until smooth.

Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg and enjoy! 

To make it more of a meal, serve with a poached egg floating on top.