THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

Funnily enough, I was thinking the same back in August and again in the past few days.

Not much good having preps which are squashed under a shaken down house and your car is outside under a pile of rubble, or trapped on a street by piles of fallen masonry.

Perhaps in such circs, a big fat bank account or two, and relations or friends in another part of the country who'd be willing to host you in a crisis would be the best of a bad job.

As it recognises in the old song 'Four Loom Weaver':

We lived upon nettles when nettles were good,
And Waterloo Porridge was the best of our food,

So don't forget to stock up on oats too...

Nettles have anti inflammatory properties A tea made with them is not too bad.

pineapple wrote: »

GQ If you are talking fresh nettles, the advice is to harvest and eat nettles in the spring and before they have flowered. Fresh nettles after flowering are past their best and various sources on the net say they contain a substance which may irritate the kidneys.
That said - drying them reportedly destroys the harmful compound so old nettles should be fine if dried.
Alteernatively, if you have been eating fresh, you might just grow two heads :rotfl:

I was eating fresh nettles, they were newly spouted and only about 3 inches high. I cleared some ground when I lifted crops and several things have regenerated - these were on a spud patch (as was). They were tiddly and a lovely emerald green even after cooking for 4 mins. I feeling fabby, must be those vitamins.

Nettles are great because you can chop 'em off at ground level and get brand new nettles in any month of the year. Ain't nature wunnerful?

Was talking to a pal today who ate foraged mushrooms on Sunday before last and spent Monday and Tuesday talking to god on the great white telephone, and didn't feel normal until 6 days later. He thinks he had one wrong 'un in a batch of field mushrooms.

He found it in a book now, it's known to cause severe gastric upset. I've asked him to get me its Latin name so I can look it up, too.

Stay safe when foraging. Well, stay safe when eating anything, I get to take some of the calls for the team who handle complaints about food poisoning, and have heard things about restaurants which have left me feeling :eek::eek::eek:

silverwhistle wrote: »

And Waterloo Porridge was the best of our food ...

By gum, that's the first sighting of that term since I left Merseyside many a moon ago now! According to the old biddy across the street, Waterloo Porridge was what you'd get if you diluted a bowl of proper porridge in a bucketful of hot water ...