It’s been wet, windy and cold. Not very much fun in the garden.
It’s much more conducive to staying indoors and reading.
And drying out like these mushrooms. Two or three kinds of chanterelle picked this weekend.
Archives for category: Foraging
Over the past year I have been noticing that by far the greatest number of viewers have come to this blog to find information about miso, koji and koji making. This makes me very happy and satisfied that I may be providing some useful information. However, I wonder sometimes – it might not be because the information is good, but because there is very little information on the subject on internet.
I have, therefore, fixed an email address for Timogarden, so that anyone can contact us for feedback, further information, criticism or just to chat. Please feel free to use it. I would like to make contact with all you out there that are making miso and koji at home. And that goes for all the other subjects that this blog takes up too.
Just click on the email address:
timogarden@telia.com
Or find it under Contact in the menu at the top of the blog.
The summer and fall have been very dry this year. In fact, the weather is still very summery. Forraging for mushrooms and berries in the woods is not very good now, but our neighbor has been in Finland for a couple of weeks picking lingonberries and brought us home a bucket.
They just need a bit of cleaning.
Then packaged and put into the freezer or made into presserves.
Lingon or Vaccinium vitis-idaea are very much like cranberries – they taste very much the same but are smaller, juicier and much easier to pick in large quantities. We use lots and lots throughout the year.
Nettles are an early springtime favorite, but while picking vegetables for the market, I noticed my nettles had grown bushy again.
So once again nettle soup.
Here’s what you need:
– fresh nettles
– onions
– tofu
– miso
– oil and water
Do like this:
– saute sliced onions
– add water and chopped nettles
– bring to boil
– add cubed tofu
– boil a few minutes
– turn off heat
– add miso to taste
Very good for you!
One of the customers that insisted on my bringing wild cherries to the market didn’t come to get their liter. So much the better – we made some more cherry juice out of them.
This is the easiest way to use them.
Just:
– clean away all the scrap,
– boil in a little water,
– mash with a potato masher
– pour into a cheese cloth
– we let drip all night
– bring drippings to a boil
– add sweetener and mix
– let cool
– use, or
– put into plastic bottles
– and into the freezer for later use
This makes a concentrated juice that can be used as a flavoring or a drink (diluted with water). Nice, because you don’t have to pit the cherries. This method can be used with any kind of cherry or other fruit. Wild prunes and sloe make excellent juice.
At another place on this farm, once upon a time, there was a thorp. Someone at this thorp planted a cherry tree. The thorp is now gone, but the cherry tree has spread seedlings all over the hill, and this year seems to be a good year for cherries.
Actually we call these fågelbär (birdberries). They are quite small but sweet. They also have a sour, slightly bitter cherry flavor.
One of my customers insisted on buying a couple of liters so he could make a cherry liqueur with vodka and sugar. In the drizzle this morning I picked his cherries and also pulled up three seedlings to plant into the garden. These wild cherries are so good that I have to have some close at hand.
Last week my son made the best cherry pie I’ve had since I was a kid with them.
In an old, drained bog in the swampy area of this farm, raspberries have established themselves and are in abundance this year. We picked a bucket this morning before the rain. The timely rain (it was getting a bit too dry again).
Cleaned and packaged to be put into the freezer for winter jams and such.
I have raspberries in the garden, but they are never enough, and the wild ones are more abundant and much tastier.
I had plenty of food with me, but I couldn’t help noticing edible plants along the way. Besides the common dandelion, alchemilla and plantain growing near settled areas, here are a couple of notables.
One of the most strikng is the björnloka – Heracleum sphondylium, common hogweed.
It can grow over two meters tall with spectacular balls of white flowers. It is slightly poisonous, causing skin irritation, but the natives all around the world have used the peeled stalks as food. I have one in the garden that I have to constantly cut back and not let it go to seed.
Another is the Hjortron berries – Rubus chamaemous, cloudberry. This is a much sought after delicacy among the northern peoples.
These were right beside the trail, still a bit unripe.
Then there was tätört – Pinguiculis vulgaris, butterwort. It was tradionally used to make long milk, a kind of stringy sour milk, nowdays made with a lactobacillus species completly without the butterwort. It does produce protein enzymes causing milk to coagulate, so it probably did have some activity in the old milk souring process.
There is also a story about using the leaves as a hair treatment to give ones hair an all so desirable yellow color. I should try it.
The wandering started at Låktatjåkka Station.
And progressed upward into the fog covered mountains. The weather forecast predicted rain and thunder storms.
The trail followed a rushing stream most of the way.
In the fog it was a good thing the trail was marked. I almost got lost a couple of times.
Water everywhere.
And snow.
And fog.
Now, the next day, the sun was out. Leaving the lodge in the sun, the mountain world took on a whole different perspective.
And after a trek of 9 kilometers and a 800 meter descent, the panorama veiw from the Björkliden Lodge looks grand over a warm cup of coffee.
The weeds grow dispite the dry weather. Now with a little rain they will virtually explode into existence and soon take over the garden.
The spinach is growing fine too, but the pigweed (Chenopodium album) looked so luscious, that I got busy and did some micro weeding and saved the pigweed for lunch – one of my favorite weeds.
It makes a wonderful omelette.
timogarden 