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Old school money saving, forage for your food and eat for free!

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  • lostinrates
    lostinrates Posts: 55,283 Forumite
    I've been Money Tipped!
    meg72 wrote: »
    Is it me or is there a shortage of dandilions this year, I normally curse as my front lawn in full of them but this year hardly any, have also noticed this in the lane and open spaces behing
    d my bungalow. Just wondering?

    Plenty here!

    This might be because despite being in our thirties DH and I still blow dandelion clocks. :o
  • Gigervamp
    Gigervamp Posts: 6,583 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    edited 14 April 2014 at 7:17PM
    Plenty of dandelions here too. And at 50, I too still blow the clocks! I like to keep my inner child amused. :)
  • Nargleblast
    Nargleblast Posts: 10,763 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Debt-free and Proud!
    Dandelions are the ideal foraging bounty - use the flowers in dandelion wine, use the leaves in a salad, and the roots, apparently, can be roasted and ground to make a coffee substitute (haven't tried that one myself, but read about it being used during the Second World War for what they called ersatz coffee).
    One life - your life - live it!
  • Seakay
    Seakay Posts: 4,269 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    dandelion roots do take a bit of prep for coffee substitute, so maybe try some from a health food shop first to check that you will enjoy the results.

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=dandelion+coffee&!!!!!googhydr-21&index=aps&hvadid=25716943976&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15471249674179610897&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_3gmw01pp5k_e

    If you don't like chicory in your coffee then you may well not enjoy the dandelion root version either.

    Dandelion leaves are best eaten very young or after a frost. Alternatively they can be blanched in a couple of changes of water or before being picked by putting a flower pot over the plant for a week or so if the dandelion is in your own garden

    http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/Plants.Folder/Dandelion.html
  • skogar
    skogar Posts: 605 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    edited 9 May 2014 at 10:38PM
    Well have started the nettle cordial. It smells promising, nothing like what I imagined it would smell like. Smells almost fruity. Need to stir for a week then will be ready to bottle. 3 days in and I'm starting to get the red colour. In case anyone's interested recipe is the one from this website. http://www.eatweeds.co.uk/nettle-cordial-recipe
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  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 17,413 Forumite
    10,000 Posts I've been Money Tipped!
    skogar wrote: »
    Well have started the nettle cordial. It smells promising, nothing like what I imagined it would smell like. Smells almost fruity. Need to stir for a week then will be ready to bottle. 3 days in and I'm starting to get the red colour. In case anyone's interested recipe is the one from this website. http://www.eatweeds.co.uk/nettle-cordial-recipe

    my late ma-in-law used to put nettle leaves in a bucket of water for about a week then use the resulting sludgy stuff as fertiliser on her vegatable crops Her pumpkins and marrow loved it especially and grew enormously,I must admit the sludgy stuff didn't smell great :( but it was free:rotfl:
  • thriftwizard
    thriftwizard Posts: 4,862 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Another dedicated forager here, but not always for the humans in the community - I've been gathering armsful of goosegrass & dandelion leaves from the riverbank lately to feed to our hens & our neighbour's hens & ducks, who we've been looking after whilst they grab a well-earned holiday. Both sets live in "straw runs" most of the time, and love a bit of fresh stuff now & then; you really see the difference in the colour of their egg yolks and in their general condition, though they're all happy & healthy enough anyway. Our cockatiels are also appreciative of a handful of fresh greenery. There are some huge benefits to our council not having any money left for spraying or strimming "weeds"...

    I believe we could eat the goosegrass too, lightly steamed, but haven't tried it yet. Maybe with tea tonight... We've actually left a patch of nettles that sprang up in our tiny "forest garden" out front, for culinary purposes. and when they get too tall & tough I'm going to cut them down, strip & "ret" the stems (thus producing some nettle tea for other plants) and see if I can cutch, hackle & spin any resulting fibre.

    I'm lucky enough to live in a small town on the edge of a big conurbation. So I can walk for a couple of minutes & be in open countryside, with all its freebies lying around, but also have all the facilities you could need more or less on my doorstep. This includes other people's garden produce, mostly fruit - every autumn, people dump boxes & boxes of apples & pears at our local household recycling centre. The lads there are dedicated recyclers and don't just tip it into the compost skips, but offer it to anyone interested. There are also often surplus lettuces, cabbages etc. when ground is being cleared for the next crop. I'm down there quite a lot in connection with my business so dip in quite often! There are plenty of households around us with fruit trees they are too busy to deal with; we knock on doors & ask politely, and more often than not are told, "Please, help yourself! It's attracting wasps!" And alarmingly often, people are under the impression that it's not edible; only stuff you buy in supermarkets is safe to eat, apparently. I'll always drop a jar or bottle of the result back to the owners, and am usually invited to come back again the next year.

    There's lots of comfrey at the riverbank too; I made a mental note yesterday to investigate uses for it, and was told of one last night; comfrey ointment for arthritic pain. But I have a mental image of eating & loving comfrey fritters as a child, so might see if I can hunt up a recipe for those.
    Angie - GC Jul 25: £225.85/£500 : 2025 Fashion on the Ration Challenge: 26/68: (Money's just a substitute for time & talent...)
  • Seakay
    Seakay Posts: 4,269 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    would love to hear how you get on spinning nettle fibres Thriftwizard!

    I dry comfrey and use it for tea, either alone or in with ordinary tea.
    Comfrey is also a great compost accelerator or can be left in a bucket of water to rot down and make liquid plant food.
  • Living_proof
    Living_proof Posts: 1,923 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Nettle suspended with sheep poo in a sack of water and left for a few weeks makes wonderful tomato fertiliser. Would win no prizes for fragrance, however.
    Solar Suntellite 250 x16 4kW Afore 3600TL dual 2KW E 2KW W no shade, DN15 March 14
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  • skogar
    skogar Posts: 605 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Well the nettle cordial tastes nice. I am quite releaved as when I had all the nettles in my largest pan for a week stiring it every day a fertilizer type of thing seemed a much more likely product than cordial. :rotfl:
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