Foraged Food Friday: Honeysuckle

This was my third home-brew beer experiment, and I was getting a bit cocky by this time. Although I didn't explicitly recall it at the time, I think I must have read Atomic Shrimp's sweet gale beer recipe, as I had the idea of using treacle to make a dark beer. It probably would have been better if I had remembered where I got the idea from, and checked just how little treacle he used. Not only did I use treacle, I also added molasses. I saw some for sale and bought it out of curiosity, just to see whether it is the same as treacle (no, it's not. It tastes like muscavado sugar, whereas treacle has a more caramelly, burnt sugar sort of flavour. Similar, but not quite the same.) Since I then had a jar full, I decided to use in beer.

Having found dandelion leaves too bitter to eat as a vegetable, I wondered if they might serve well as a bittering agent in ale. They're not very aromatic, so I then wondered what I might use to complement them. This lead me (via flowers in general) to honeysuckle. The flowers smell so wonderful, and I've heard that children pick them to suck the nectar out, so they seemed like a good bet for a flowery, aromatic flavour that might stand up to both treacle and dandelion leaves.

Honeysuckle flowers (Lonicera periclymenum)
These are my neighbour's flowers. I did not pick these ones.

Here are the notes I wrote on this recipe at the time:-

• Two large handfuls of dandelion leaves
• about 20 honeysuckle flower heads, picked on a warm evening
  (NB see Jade's notes on honeysuckle: Wild Pickings: Honeysuckle Not seen before using flowers. Probably best to use them in beer!)
• 370g malt extract
• 370g molasses
• 454g treacle

Bearing in mind that the berry is poisonous, I pulled the flowers off the green centre. I wondered about removing the green base of each flower - I didn't, but seeing Jade's notes, wonder whether I should have done. For a bitter ale, perhaps it'll be OK.

Flowers filled the larger basin, covered in hot water and steeped for... half an hour? An hour?
Leaves put in saucepan and boiled for 20min-half hour; strain off liquid and repeat.
Pour hot liquids onto sugars in bucket, fill, wait to cool (got down to 38deg. It was a hot evening) then add yeast - last used for blackcurrant wine, so a hint of blackcurrant in this, too.
Bottled after one week in bucket (probably a bit too long). Smells very treacly!

Dandelion and honeysuckle ale

Frankly, this ale is a bit peculiar. Firstly, it's not smooth at all. I'm not sure what the opposite is - rough means something else - but the bubbles, such as they are, are fairly large, which is not the effect you want in this kind of beer. It didn't taste good at all to start with, but after a few months it's mellowed to something quite drinkable. It's still rather odd, though. The flavour is dominated by the molasses and treacle, so I can't really tell what contribution the honeysuckle's making, if any. There's a certain bitter depth to it, which balances the treacliness, so the dandelion is doing its job, but I can't pick out the floral notes. This probably has more to do with the unfamiliar taste from the sugars than anything else.

I can't really call this beer a success, though I'm happy enough to drink it. It leaves me with no verdict at all on honeysuckle flowers - they might be a good flavouring for beer, I just can't tell from this. I might try again next year, or I might have a go with other flavourings. Either way, I'll skip the molasses next time!

Also harvesting this week
Parsnips
Evening primrose roots
Leeks

Also eating
Birch bolete mushroom (from dried)
Green laver (from dried)
Courgette puree (from frozen)
Potatoes
Sloe and elderberry puree (from making wine)
Hogweed seed

Also drinking
Bay herb ale (the last bottle, that I told you about a few weeks ago but didn't actually drink)
Blackcurrant cordial
Blackberry wine
Sloe wine

Foraged food challenge summary page here.

2013: A year of foraging and pondering

If you look back over this blog for the last year, it seems to have been a year of foraging and thinking about things. That's probably a pretty accurate reflection; it doesn't feel like it's been a very productive year. That statement betrays my continuing attachment to notions of productivity as an important part of what's valuable or successful, and that statement tells you that I am moving away from that way of thinking.

To start with the lack of productivity: I haven't made and fitted solar panels; I have half-replaced conservatory roofing that needs fixing (again); further projects await the old panels; the house is only partially insulated; its decorative state is much the same as it was a year ago. On the positive side, I've learnt a great deal about wild food, and I've spent a fair bit of time pondering the question of how to live well. I think this has been valuable and I expect to continue in this vein.

For now, I give you some completely unrelated pretty pictures from 2013, some of which have appeared in this blog, but others are new. The people in the bottom photo are my sister and her children.

The time is now

The first part of this post was written on Tue 31st Dec.

Susie has found herself making a 40 Before 40 list. Being the same age, I'm tempted to hop aboard the bandwagon, but I won't because I find lists oppressive. All the same, there are a few things that I've long wanted or intended to do and that occur at a point in the future called "one day". My fortieth year strikes me as a time to ask, If not now, then when?

Some of these are lifestyle changes. I believe that my life would be improved if I took up yoga or meditation, or preferably both. I've wanted to learn hang gliding, or paragliding, for as long as I can remember. Other things are (probably) one-off events. I would love to see both a total eclipse of the sun (I did try, on 11 August 1999, but Cornwall was cloudy that day) and the Aurora Borealis.

This may look like a bucket list or new year's resolutions, but it lacks that sense of obligation. This is me looking at things I want and asking myself, quite straightforwardly, Why not? What's stopping me? If the answer is money, I'll ask further, Is there a cheaper way of doing it? Could I save up for it? The answer may still be no, but I'd at least like to think it through.

As I type, I am sitting in a holiday cottage in the north of Scotland. The weather is cold and miserable and there isn't much daylight. The last of those is part of the reason we're here. Other factors include the new moon, sunspots, and the fact that Scotland is cheaper to get to than Norway or Iceland (both places I'd love to visit). Yes, we've come here for a chance to see the northern lights.

It really is only a chance, as it's necessary for the right solar weather (stormy) to occur shortly before the right terrestrial weather (clear), and both are fairly unpredictable, certainly on the sort of timescale involved in booking a holiday. For the first few days of our stay we've had some clear weather, but solar activity has been low. However, it's forecast to increase later in the week and the local weather forecast is for 'partial' cloud on Thursday. It may not be a very good chance, but it's a chance. We shall pack a thermos of soup, put on our thickest socks, head out somewhere with a clear view of the northern horizon, and wait.

By the time I next have internet connection to post this, I may be able to tell you whether the gamble paid off.

---

Well, here I am, back in Wales, with internet connection. So did we see them? Were we treated to one of the most spectacular cosmic displays visible from Earth? Yes and no. Yes, we saw them... no, they weren't spectacular.

We'd headed north from our cottage to Dunnet Head, the most northerly point on the UK mainland. We figured that if the chance of seeing the lights was slim, we'd better make sure we had the best possible view of the northern horizon, so that's where we went. We got there at about 4:30 pm due to a petrol panic. That is, we had only just enough petrol to get to Thurso (town near Dunnet Head) - probably - and on a bank holiday we didn't reckon on finding a petrol station open in the rural area closer to the cottage. We gambled on finding one open in Thurso, but thought we'd better not leave it too late. If there hadn't been, we'd have been stranded there for the night and probably not made it to the headland, but there was, just one, luckily.

So... petrol panic over, we parked up at the top of Dunnet Head and settled down to wait, though it wasn't even fully dark when we arrived. We weren't the only ones with this idea. The first couple who arrived thought that the lights were pretty much constant when active, and would be visible as soon as it got dark enough. They were disappointed, and left after a couple of hours. The next couple arrived in a smart looking Audi, but got out to watch the sky. It was way too cold for that kind of behaviour. They didn't stay long. The third couple arrived at around 10 pm, with a tent. This was their third trip to see the lights, the previous two having been unsuccessful. Shielding our eyes from their bright torchlight as they erected their tent, settled themselves down, checked the tent, added more guy ropes, we began to see why. They never turned the torch off for long enough to let their eyes adjust to the darkness.

At 10:20 pm, nearly six hours after we'd arrived, we saw something. It wasn't much, but it was definitely light in the northern sky that hadn't been there a moment earlier. We got out of the car and watched for about ten minutes, until we got too cold and retreated. Hmm, definitely northern lights, but not exactly the dancing sprites we've seen photos of. About an hour later, they came again, this time a bit bigger. Although it was too windy to use a tripod outdoors, Ian managed to get some photos through the car windscreen.

The car belongs to the couple with the tent

To the bottom left you can see the lighthouse. Dunnet Head isn't completely without ambient light

If I'm quite honest, this looks better in the photo than it did in real life.

So there we are. We made the effort, we took the chance, and we saw the northern lights. I had the sense that there was one heck of a light display going on somewhere to the north of us, and we were seeing the very edge of it. I'd still like to see the lights properly, but I'm glad I've seen them at all. There's also a sense of satisfaction that the effort paid off. It took a bit of research and a lot of waiting to see this. If we hadn't done it right, we wouldn't have seen the lights. We might not have seen them as it was, but when there's only a small chance, it's worth making an effort to maximise that chance.

As for cosmic spectacles, there'd been a fabulous sunset while we were driving north, which we didn't stop to photograph because stopping and starting uses extra fuel. The moon was also stunning that evening.

This one looked better in real life.

Perhaps this should be a reminder to appreciate the more common spectacles, and not get too distracted by chasing the exotic.

Foraged Food Friday: Elderberries

The elder tree is most wonderful generous to the home-brewer. Not only do the flowers make the delightful, summery, elderflower champagne, but the berries are excellent in wine, both on their own and with other fruit.

Elderberries (Sambucus nigra) spied from afar

Somewhat closer view of elderberries

I read on the 'ish forum (currently slightly creaky due to recent relocation) that elderberries are almost identical to grapes, apart from the sugar content. I've heard that it's possible to make an excellent wine from them, though I've yet to achieve this myself, partly due to lack of elderberries, partly due to impatience. I have some on the go at the moment, but as it needs at least a year, it won't be ready in time to include in this series of foraging posts. However, grape juice concentrate appears in various wine recipes, and elderberries are the perfect wild substitute. The extra sugar required is less wild, but never mind. I have some elderberry and blackberry wine on the go, but what I'm going to tell you about today is my favourite home-brew: sloe and elderberry wine.

This is possibly my most successful experiment to date, first tried a couple of years ago. From my notes, the recipe I used this year was:

• 1 lb 9 oz sloes
• same of sugar, initially
• kettle full of water, then cold to ?3.5-4l
• mash lots
• remove floating dead grubs
• 2 tsp yeast from beer
• 4? days later (15 Oct), add 1 lb elderberries and the same of sugar, and about a pint of water.

Note that the sloes were picked before the frost softened the flavour. Since then, I've added a tablespoonful of sugar whenever I've thought of it, which could be every day for quite long periods, and stirred frequently to see whether bubbles are still forming. The first time I made this, it stopped fermenting in about six weeks, but this one was still going at Christmas, which is well over two months. I can think of two possible explanations for this; either it's much colder this year than two years ago, and it's going more slowly, or the yeast I have this time is tolerating higher alcohol concentrations, and surviving longer. Considering how much sugar I've added, it would be ridiculously sweet if the yeast wasn't doing its thing, and it's not, so I think the latter explanation is more likely. This could be quite a strong drink.

I managed to keep one small bottle of last year's, to see how it matures.

Sloe and elderberry wine, 2013 and 2012 vintages.

A year's maturing makes no discernible difference to the flavour but as you can see, the sediment does settle out, leaving a beautiful clear wine. This is a sweet, strong, after-dinner sort of a drink. I shall continue making it so long as I can find the ingredients, which should be quite a long time.

Also harvesting this week
Parsnips
Leeks (strictly speaking, these two were harvested the week before, to take on holiday with us
Sorrel

Also eating
Pickled samphire

Also drinking
Blackcurrant cordial

Foraged food challenge summary page here.

Foraged Food Friday: Oak leaves

Now edited, with corrected recipe and photos!

Some people use brown, fallen oak leaves to make wine but I don't fancy that. Trees put toxins they've built up into their leaves in the autumn before dropping them. Fallen leaves are tree poo. I'd much rather use vibrant, young leaves that have just burst forth in spring.

Fresh, young oak leaves (Quercus petraea)

There are plenty of oak trees around where we live, including three in our garden. I do pick from those but by far the easiest trees to pick from are the ones growing horizontally nearby.

This tree may have blown over, but it's still growing

Pebble helped with harvesting from the more vertical trees

As usual, I ignored any recipes and kept it simple. I picked six pints of leaves, boiled them for an hour or so, put them in a bucket with two kilos of sugar and topped up to two gallons of water then added yeast and left the whole lot for four or five days before straining into demijohns.

Although it's not really ready yet - I spent ages defizzing it - I wanted to drink oak leaf wine on Christmas day so decanted a bottle. The first time I tried this, I thought it tasted quite a lot like grape wine, but now I'm not so sure. I guess it's a matter of context. Either way, it's a crisp, pleasant wine that could probably do with maturing rather longer than the seven months I gave it. I'll try to keep some long enough to find out!

Also harvesting this week:
Sorrel
Parsnips
Leeks

Also eating
Blackberry and bilberry jam
Rowan jelly
Tomatoes (Gill was right about still eating them at Christmas)

Also drinking
Blackberry wine
Dandelion flower tea

Foraged food challenge summary page here.

How to de-fizz homebrew

Some drinks are meant to be fizzy - beer, or elderflower champagne, for example - but if I make red wine, I don't usually want it fizzy. You'd think not-fizzy wine would be easy enough to achieve, but I find that mine often ends up with a slight sparkle. This is because some of the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation remains dissolved in the wine.

Happily, I've found a solution to this problem. I have a simple vacuum pump that is used for preserving half-bottles of wine. It came with a couple of rubber stoppers that include valves, so air can be pumped out of the bottle and won't get back in. Reducing the air pressure inside the bottle reduces how much oxygen will react with the wine and so reduces souring. However, if you use this on a fizzy drink, it also has another effect.

With reduced air pressure on the surface, the carbon dioxide comes out of solution and evaporates, effectively de-fizzing the wine. I've shown less than thirty seconds of this in the video, but it takes a lot longer than that to remove all the fizz. It's more effective if the bottle's less full, so there's a greater surface area to work on, and swirling the wine around helps bring more fizzy wine to the surface. I do this repeatedly until... I get fed up. The wine is generally a good deal smoother by this stage.

Foraged Food Friday: Rosebay willowherb leaves

My foraging post got a bit derailed this (last) week. On Friday, whilst gathering dead bracken to feed the terrace, a piece of bracken hit back. It splintered off the stalk and hit back so hard that it went right through my thumb. Ian was out at the time, so I went next door and asked my friend Gill for help. She was wonderfully calm, sat me down, asked if I had any great attachment to my gloves (no, luckily) and cut the glove thumb off to inspect the damage. We agreed that this was not a first aid job, and she took to me to A&E, where they have anaesthetic. Several hours later we returned, my splinter replaced with a couple of stitches and a large bandage. I was in no state to cook dinner, so Ian and I ate at the pub that evening. On Saturday I went to a party (having replaced the large bandage with a rather smaller dressing) and on Sunday we went to another neighbour's for dinner, and I drank far too much wine.

So, here we are on Monday and I have no desire at all to drink the beer I was planning to tell you about. I'm going to cheat and tell you about it anyway, even though I didn't drink it in the relevant week.

Bay herb ale

Following my success with the heather ale, I wanted to experiment with other flavourings. When I ate rosebay willowherb stalks, I found it necessary to discard the growing tips as their flavour is far too strong for me to enjoy as a salad. I wondered whether they might be just the things for bittering ale. Having learnt that ale needs both bitter and aromatic flavours, I cast around for something to complement the taste, and settled on bay leaves, and not just because they also have bay in the name.

Following a similar recipe to the heather ale, I used two 370g jars of malt extract and 350g white sugar to make two (imperial) gallons of ale. I gathered about a saucepanful of rosebay willowherb tips (young leaves with some stalk) and supplemented these with a handful of bay leaves from a tree I've had since I was a teenager. Since neither herb has delicate flavours that might be ruined with excessive boiling, I put them all in a pan together, covered with water and boiled for half an hour or so. The liquid was strained onto the sugars, topped up to two gallons with cooler water, and yeast (probably from oak leaf wine) added. As usual, I left it to ferment in the bucket for 4-5 days (it might have been a week - my note-taking isn't very good) before bottling with a little more sugar in each bottle.

The resulting ale has a nice reddish colour (well, it does in good light) and is surprisingly frothy. It tastes pretty good, too, though not as much like beer as the heather one. One friend said it was more like cider - I'd say it's distinctly herbal. I suppose it's fairly acidic, and a refreshing sort of a drink. I'll definitely make this again, even if it isn't really beer.

Also harvesting this week
Parsnips
Leek
Rosemary
Speedwell

Also eating
Pumpkin, including roasted seeds (not mine)
Mint sauce
Rowan jelly

Also drinking
Blackberry wine

Foraged food challenge summary page here.

Christmas sweets

Christmas means different things to different people - personally I'm celebrating the return of daylight - but apart from the deeper meaning, it does seem to consist largely of traditions. Sometimes the value of tradition outweighs all other considerations - I don't care if none of us like sprouts, it's Christmas! Mostly, I'm not a fan of tradition (no sprouts in this house), but there is one Christmas tradition that I keep, and it would upset me not to do it. Even if I don't send a single card or don't put up one strand of tinsel, I will make Christmas sweets.

My mum started this tradition. Every year for as long as I can remember, the weeks before Christmas were filled with melting chocolate, marzipan and icing sugar. Tasks were carefully selected so that little girls could join in (rolling marzipan to stuff dates, not cutting dates with a sharp knife) and as my sister and I got older, we shared the sweet-making as equals. Then, after Mum died, we carried on the tradition, through our teens and as we grew up, left home, and started families of our own (my sister taking on this latter task more wholeheartedly than I).

I wasn't sure whether to write about Christmas sweets here - perhaps it would be nice to keep them our, Secret family recipe. I talked to my sister about this and she pointed out that most of the sweets are made to well-known recipes. The only ones that are unique to our family (as far as we know) are the peppermint mice. Even those are made from a standard recipe; it's the construction that might be considered a secret and that probably has more to do with our years of practice than any secret tips I could share online. We agreed that I could share our family tradition, with just a few hints about how to make mice. If that's enough for you to make them too, good for you!

Mum varied the repertoire a bit from year to year, but four types were constant: Chocolate truffles, brandy cherries, stuffed dates, and peppermint mice. Since I'm married to someone who doesn't like dried fruit, alcohol, or peppermint (It tastes like toothpaste - it's just wrong!), I've added chocolate caramels (for which I am indebted to Susie for inspiration - see link for how to make these).

Chocolate truffles
The standard recipe for chocolate truffles consists of heating cream gently and melting dark chocolate into it, then (optionally) beating a little alcohol into the mixture after it's cooled. Ratios of chocolate:cream vary from 2:1 to 1:1, so it's not terribly critical. Mum always padded the mixture out with crumbled stale sponge cake. Stale cake? I hear you ask. Well, no, not in this house either. I make a very plain cake specially, just for the crumbs. Not only does it make more truffles, but I prefer the firmer texture, too.

Brandy cherries
Buy glace cherries, soak in brandy, drain (keep the boozy syrup!), coat in dark chocolate. Simple.

Stuffed dates
Buy dates, remove stones, replace with marzipan, roll in sugar. Also pretty simple. Mum used to add food colouring to some of the marzipan, so we had a selection of colours. I don't find food colouring so appealing these days, though I do still buy yellow marzipan as opposed to white, which I presume is uncoloured.

Peppermint mice
Mix egg white and icing sugar and a little peppermint essence (I have an ancient bottle of pure peppermint oil, so very little is required) to make peppermint cream mixture. Add a little glycerin, which stops it setting hard, then add more icing sugar. More than that. No... more still. You're aiming for the consistency of modelling clay. When you think you've added enough sugar, add a little more. In the unlikely even that you've added too much and the mixture cracks when you mould it, a drop more glycerin will solve the problem.

Some of these take quite a bit of forward planning, and there's some sense in doing some things before others. Cherries need soaking in brandy - a few days is probably enough, but we often give them weeks - and a cake needs crumbling for the truffles. If the cherries are coated before the truffle mixture is made, extra chocolate can be melted, which makes dunking cherries easier, and then leftover chocolate can go into the truffles. It's just as well the ratio for truffles is a bit vague. Currently I have...

Cake crumbs

Chocolate-coated cherries

Leftover chocolate and syrup

... and what else is that in the second picture? Oh, yes. Mouse ears. You have to make the ears first and leave them to dry for a few days before making the rest of the mice. Do not be tempted to put them in a warm place to speed this process, as they tend to go yellow.

By Christmas - hopefully by the end of this week - I should have:

Christmas sweet selection.
I still haven't figured out a way of stopping the colour running on the mouse faces.

Foraged Food Friday: Blackberries

I was going to tell you about my next beer experiment this week, but I have a cold and fruit-based drinks are more appealing.

Blackberries (Rubus fruticosus)

I don't have to go very far to find blackberries, as there are plenty of brambles in my garden. Indeed, there's a part of my garden that's inaccessible for this reason. The one pictured above grows on the boundary between my garden and my neighbours' and feeds off my compost heap. The fruit are luscious indeed.

This late summer* bounty has many uses, but the first thing I do with blackberries is to make wine. I also tried Atomic Shrimp's recipe for balsamic-like blackberry vinegar, which is pretty good, but right now I'm drinking blackberry wine.

The recipe I used was:-

• 4 lb blackberries
• 1 kg sugar
• Add water up to 1 gallon
• Sprinkle with yeast from sachet (remaining half from kit lager)**

The first kettleful of water onto the berries was boiling, to kill off whatever moulds were living there (blackberries always go mouldy very quickly. If you pick a batch and leave them at room temperature until the next day, they will be mouldy). I then mashed the berries with a potato masher before adding sugar, the rest of the water (cold, to bring the temperature down), and the yeast. I let this ferment in a bucket for a week, then transferred to a demijohn (using a jug to scoop and pour - I find this method easiest), leaving the yeasty sediment behind for use in the next brew.

My note-taking seems to have fallen down when it came to dates, but I think that was the end of August. As wines go, this one's pretty quick, so not much more than three months later it's ready to drink.

Blackberry wine

I'm not sure whether you can tell from that picture, but it's a nice clear, ruby colour. It's still slightly fizzy but I have a trick for dealing with that (separate post - remind me if I don't get round to it) but once flattened, it's a very pleasant, light red wine. The thing with these country wines is not to expect them to taste the same as grape wines. Mostly, you can tell what fruit they come from. This is not a bad thing, but if you're not expecting it, your first reaction may be, This doesn't taste like wine. I'm rather partial to blackberry wine, myself. In fact, I think I may have another glass. Cheers!

Also harvesting this week
Celery (this is pathetically small this year but better to have tiny celery than none at all. It doesn't add much bulk to stews, but it still adds plenty of flavour, especially if I use the leaves as well as the stalks)
Nettles, bittercress and sorrel (there's not much of any of these, but I folded a little of each into pastry. They failed to disguise the fact that the lard I used was past its best.)
Leeks
Parsnip
Evening primrose roots

Also eating
Potatoes
Pumpkins, including roasted seeds (not mine)
Birch bolete (from dried)
Knotweed chutney
Green laver
Rowan jelly

Aso drinking
Blackcurrant wine
Honeysuckle and dandelion ale
Sloe and elderberry wine (this year's, though it's not quite ready yet)

Foraged food challenge summary page here.

---

* Late August, early September
** I had been keeping yeast going from one brew to the next for several months, but the live yeast got infected after the previous brew - dandelion and honeysuckle ale - so I started again with a half-sachet of yeast I'd kept back from the kit lager.

Foraged Food Friday: Heather

This was my first attempt at making non-kit beer and the hardest part about writing this post has been keeping the beer this long. I wrote about the recipe when I made it, back in April, so I won't go over it all again. After that I left it in the bucket for about a week, then bottled with a small teaspoonful of sugar to each bottle, and it was ready to drink a couple of weeks after that. I could have written about it sooner, but it made sense to save anything that could be saved for the last months of the challenge, and then I thought it might be fun to finish the foraging challenge with a run of alcoholic drinks so here goes - booze for the next two months!

Ale flavoured with heather (Calluna vulgaris). It did clear in the bottles and I usually manage to pour it clear, but not this time.

For a first attempt, this was remarkably successful. The only commercial heather ale I know of also includes bogmyrtle (otherwise known as sweet gale), but as I didn't have any of that, I just used heather on its own. The result wasn't even, "Well, it's pretty good if you don't expect it to taste like beer." It actually does taste like beer, and a pretty good one at that. It's light - not exactly lager but a nice summery sort of a beer. Well, it was.

Sadly, the flavour started to deteriorate after about about three months. It's still fine, but a bit sharper and not quite as good as it was before. I believe that the popularity of hops is partly due to their preservative qualities, so I shouldn't really be surprised if heather ale doesn't keep quite so well. Never mind - excellent for a few months and OK after that is quite good enough for me. I made two batches (two gallons each) this year, and I'll definitely be making more next year.

Also harvesting this week
Hairy bittercress
Mustard leaves
Oyster mushrooms
Evening primrose roots

Also eating
Potatoes
Tomatoes (it's only small ones left now, still ripening in their bowl in the kitchen. I just pick at them in passing)
Pickled samphire
Rowan jelly
Pumpkin (not mine)
Green laver (toasted, crumbled and sprinkled on pumpkin stew)

Also drinking
Hopped ale

Foraged food challenge summary page here.