Old Style vs the USDA head-to-head challenge...

BigMummaF

I saw the last 20mins or so of "Country File" this morning, & they were talking about dandilions. A lady on there made a soup with chopped leaves & what looked like taiter & onion, plus a side salad also using leaves & the petals too.

I've just found this:-
Dandelions
Often thought of as an irritating and relentless weed, the dandelion is a plant with many uses and a fascinating history. As they pop up all over the British countryside, Ben Fogle discovers how they manage to grow so successfully, and reveals their herbal and culinary uses.

• Botanical.com – a modern herbology
• The Herb Society

here:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/countryfile/

Hope it helps.

bails

We loooove curry Weezl :T Is a teaspoon of salt really 38p, that's insane!! If I was using fresh garlic instead, how much would I use and would that up the cost/by how much? Thankyou!

I didn't get as many nettles as I'd like (my gardening gloves seem to have eloped with the trowel so I had to use massive bulders gloves, not very dexterous in them) but have a washing up bowl full so a start at least! And there are literally loads of them, so if we like them they'll soon be a staple in our diet :j
Thanks for that BigMammaF, when I was out picking the nettles this morning a couple asked me if I was picking dandelions - maybe they'd seen that programme too I've heard dandelions are nice so that might be my next step into foraging. I got far too excited at all the blackberry bushes too, even though we're months away from them yet I reckon I could pick enough for everyone on the GC!

weezl74

Ah bails, I see you spotted my deliberate mistake! :rotfl:I've changed the recipe now, twas the tomatoes which were 38p!

Dandelions eh? Well I'll have a think where there's a good crop of those...

Off to asda on a quick whoopsie, onion and toilet roll hunt. Sig must not drop by more than 3 quid when I get back or you must all rebuke me soundly!

3/4 cloves of fresh garlic should do it bails, which is about a third of a bulb, so 10p I'd estimate...

Back soon,

weezl x

bails

Ha ha, oh I see now! For a minute I was thinking I was seriously out of touch with the price of things! Good luck with the whoopsie hunt.

Sallygirl

I like dandelions as well as nettles but I haven't won with OH when it comes to dandelions. He just won't eat them at all.

A word of warning about dandelions - only pick the leaves from very young plants which have not yet flowered otherwise the leaves can be very bitter. This is the voice of experience!! The young leaves are lovely. They are good in mixed salads and can help stretch the bought lettuce etc nicely. They are good in sandwiches if made fresh. They are also good in quiche and other egg dishes instead of spinach - much as nettles are.

I like free food . I am sure the sound of the pennies jingling in my pocket instead of a supermarket cash register must add some piquancy to the food on my plate.

In_Search_Of_Me

OH MY GOODNESS!!! Weezle I'll swap marmalade for an organisational lesson!! How do you do that (youre almost out of milk btw!)!! I'm so impressed! I was seriously floundering in the shops as didnt know which was cheapest - market, mr t or lidl so need some assistance me thinks!! Got some oranges at market but still managed to spend nearly 40 at mr t but have now made soup, 4 portions of mince & pasta for the freezer and marmalade is bubbling away for sale (I sell it in work for 1.50 a jar) nicely. Also how do you work out the costings for each thing & decide where is cheapest to shop? Sorry but what is a whoopsie?!! Am i being dull?!!

ceridwen

weezl74 wrote: »

bails are you near the canal that runs from bradford on avon via trowbridge into Bath, From memory I think you'd get a good crop there! What a superb sounding recipe. Good for our veggie friends.:T

ceridwen, do nettles growing wild on unfarmed land count as organic, or would you want to only harvest from land you were surer of the provenance of?;)

Back soon, Nettles have been in the microwave for a while....

M - I'm no expert - but would have said they do - probably depends how long the land has been unfarmed for. Have an idea that land has to be left for 3 years without chemicals being used on it to then count as organic? May be wrong on that time spell.

JustKeepSwimming_2

What a fab thread! :j I'll be following it with great interest, but I'm afraid I'm a truly appalling cook, so I won't share any of my "recipies" with you all - you wouldn't thank me for it. :rolleyes:

I've been dipping in & out of the GC threads for a while, & have signed up for the £4K challengs (but not doing too well...) & had thought I'd done quite well at cutting down my grocery costs, but I see I have a loooong way to go! I'm going to try some of the recipies on here - I find it very encouraging to see a costing for a recipie & wont feel quite so bad if it all goes horribly wrong (not very MSE but It usually takes me a few trial runs before I produc eanything edible! :rotfl: )

Weezl74 - could I use a jar of artichoke hearts in oil instead of sun dried bread tomatoes in your your recipe? Been lurking in the cupboard for a while now.... Glad to hear the Wenallt is still looking beautiful - I was a Cardiff girl for a long time in my youth & go back every few years, but haven't been up there for ages.

purpleivy

weezl74 wrote: »

point noted ceridwen, and very flattered!:o:D

Veggie friends look away now :eek:.....

I've been looking at where I can get some pigs blood, for boudin noir after reading a wonderful jeffrey steingarten article, entitled, it takes a village to kill a pig. Best price so far about £1 per kg but only if I buy 50kgs!

I'll mix with nutmeg, onions and lardons (little fatty bacon cubes)and possibly garlic and chilli and bake into a fab sausage. I think this will be super thrifty and healthy.

Might investigate first if any butchers in Cardiff make their own black puddings in this way, cos 50 kg is a whole lotta dried blood if me and Mr Weezl can't stomach the stuff!

TTFN

Weezl x

p.s in search of me, how's about I make you some boudin noir and you make me some of your yummy jam?! Have you thought of a stall at riverside market?

The boudin noir ought to put a sufficient amount of hairs on Mon. Weezl's chest!

weezl74

In_Search_Of_Me wrote: »

OH MY GOODNESS!!! Weezle I'll swap marmalade for an organisational lesson!! How do you do that (youre almost out of milk btw!)!! I'm so impressed! I was seriously floundering in the shops as didnt know which was cheapest - market, mr t or lidl so need some assistance me thinks!! Got some oranges at market but still managed to spend nearly 40 at mr t but have now made soup, 4 portions of mince & pasta for the freezer and marmalade is bubbling away for sale (I sell it in work for 1.50 a jar) nicely. Also how do you work out the costings for each thing & decide where is cheapest to shop? Sorry but what is a whoopsie?!! Am i being dull?!!

well, you're on with that swap! My supermarket comparisons are about looking at mysupermarket.co.uk, and then comparing the best price on there for something I see in Lidl. (mysupermarket tells you the price per 100g or per item so you can compare like with like) I've got a little book which says asda smart price eggs are 10p each, and then when I see lidls are 86 p for 10 eggs, I know that's better value if you see what I mean? The thread on 'pricebooks' and 'how do you organise being OS' have got lots of the things I do on them.

A whoopsie, is a grocery challenge bit of jargon, it comes from the fact that at asda, when they reduce an item to clear, the yellow sticker says 'Whoops, was £1.15, now 45p" or something. So the shorthand for that has become 'I went to asda and got some great whoopsies' sounds a bit weird when you don't know why. ( DH got into an amusing misunderstanding when he read over my shoulder once that one of my old-style pals was having problems with her 'panny' he nearly choked on his tea, bless him...:rotfl:

Hope all that helps, and thanks for the reminder on the milk;)

Weezl x