THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

Karmacat

ancientofdays wrote: »

Karmaqueen, I didn't know that you could actually buy pain au chocolat at one time, in France we used to just stick chocolate in our baguettes.

I love my new name :j:j:j

Locally I think I am possibly the only blackberry picker. I don't like them but pick a couple of handfuls for family to add to their fruit after dinner.

I'm the only local one as well - though a few years ago, I did see a young Polish woman with her toddler doing the same as me.

I only pick quite high up as the local dogs are walked past the bushes and wee on the lower branches.

My mum was so insistent about this, thats what I always do, though I never see dogs using the bushes in that way.

I'm not making jam at present as in the past I've made pounds and pounds of it and just handed it out to friends as we don't really eat it. I woukd make crab apple jelly but you have to go a long way to find a crabby tree that isn't someone's tree. My one died after 20 years.

I harvested a crab apple tree up in Lancashire with my brother, and it was right on a busy roundabout the jelly tasted lovely though Locally to me, in the south of England, there's one in the middle of the local cemetery (which I'm not eager to harvest) and lots in a couple of little nature reserve that surrounds a boggy stream. Well away from traffic, and the land has never been built upon, I feel very privileged to have access, but again, lots of the apples just rot on the ground or on the trees.

thriftwizard

I'll quite shamelessly knock on doors and ask whether the inhabitants are using their crab apples/Japonica quinces, and if not, please may I pick some? I usually return a jar of the finished product to them, and quite often they contact me the next year (and beyond) to ask whether I'd like the fruit before they dump it. Quite often I get the response, "But they're not edible!" or even "Aren't they poisonous?!" as people don't realise that not everything that's edible tastes good straight from the tree.

I haven't had a chance to go foraging lately, what with moving Mum - which is still ongoing in some respects, as my brother & SiL get the hang of their new responsibilities - but hope to get "out there" during the coming week. OH is "off" for a while so I'll try to drag him out too, but he too thinks it's only safe if it's come from a supermarket shelf; he's even quite suspicious of market fruit & veg, though it's saved us a fortune over the years. But now we have the 'lottie, I can finally get him to eat some less-than-usual varieties of stuff as he's seen the actual seed-packet! If it has a packet, it must be safe...

ivyleaf

i had no idea fuchsia berries were edible! Now, that's very interesting....a couple of my neighbours have fuchias which grow out through their fences onto the pavement, as it were. This is quite a busy road though, so perhaps not a good place to pick the berries?

ancientofdays

Karmacat I do apologise, I can only blame confusion and a very early start to the day.

We have no nearby crabby trees to forage from. When we move, I'll plant a new one.

Hollyberry

I went checking out our local blackberrying grounds yesterday, and the weather seems to have made quite an impact this year in strange ways. Up at the canal, there's a lot of fruit ready to harvest, but elsewhere we're still at the white and occasionally red stage. My nan used to bottle regularly, but I just process and freeze, same as I've done with the gooseberries. I've added some foraging bags to the car boot, as it won't be long now. As far as fellow pickers are concerned, it's unusual to see anyone doing anything other than snacking as they go. People are generally surprised to see us ready with bags...

[Deleted User]

Fuchsia berries are really nice! sort of sweet sour and like tiny cylindrical black sausages on the plants in profusion. You can even, if you can get enough, make jam from them!

jk0

I may have mentioned that my garage is stuffed with spare parts for my rental properties. Particularly for things like electric showers, this is essential. If anyone has a fault, I can just go & swap the item with my duplicate, then bring the old one home to repair.



One property has a particularly unique and clever immersion timer, which strangely has been discontinued:


https://www.pactrol.com/pdfs/Micro7.pdf


This lets you program either upper or lower immersion to come on at any time of the day.


I had an urge to buy a spare one of these last week, but of course they have been discontinued. Last Sunday, I saw one on Ebay, and bought it, and it arrived this week.


Can you believe, my tenant rang last night to tell me he thinks his immersion timer has packed up?

DawnW

Not sure if people are starting to stock up / panic buy but our Sainsburys, which is normally kept quite well stocked up, was right out of granulated sugar this morning, and there wasn't much of any other type on the shelves either. I needed some - we don't use much sugar, but my jar was empty - so I had to buy one of the few packets of Billingtons that were on the shelf. It cost £2, for less in weight than the 70p own brand would have been, had they had any :eek:

cuddlymarm

Hi guys
I’m not doing a main shop this week but needed fruit, salad and yoghurt. Also MrTs have corned beef on offer so I bought 2 cans and 2cans of tuna. I’m stocking up gradually and rotating my stocks as I go.
Our problem is that due to a greedy landlord our Tesco extra, Boots and a mobile phone store are all moving out of our small town. The trouble is is as names move out they are replaced by charity shops, or short term cheap shops so the place will look like a ghost town in winter.
Anyway enough of that for now
Cuddles

Karmacat

ancientofdays wrote: »

Karmacat I do apologise, I can only blame confusion and a very early start to the day.

Hun, I wasn't being sarcastic when I thanked you, I think it's great :j:j:j


Shopping wise, I had to go to the only pharmacy open this morning, in my local Sainsbo, and it was *very* busy - I think it was fairly normal, there were a lot of soft drinks being bought. Same with a local convenience store last night, shut today because of staffing problems - people were buying soft drinks by the case! No Brexit worries