I’m sorry if you are a fast reader, I am having to type very slowly due to the fact that the Devil himself has taken up residence in my right shoulder and is drilling away with a red hot poker. He has been there for almost two weeks and I was rather hoping he would be bored by now and have moved on to another victim but it would seem that he has settled in for the duration. Codeine and hot wheat packs are making a small dent in the pain. I shall pause briefly for you to say “Ahhh” and share some sympathy before moving on to the subject of the day………..
I promised recipes and those you shall have. All in good time. We have had a couple of days of sudden and heavy rain and we were rather hoping that there might be some mushrooms in the woods. There were not. Not to be defeated we picked our first rowan berries
and some pineappleweed.
It is still quite early for the rowan berries and I will pick more later in the year when they are a richer red. In the meantime they are simmering away on the stove ready to be made into rowan jelly.
The pineappleweed you will know, and quite possibly hate. It grows rampantly on driveways and similar hard stoney ground. If you crush the little yellow buds you will release a beautiful pineapple fragrance. You can dry it and make tea, but as the only teas I like are builders and apple I won’t be bothering with that. Instead I whizzed up a cup of buds with two cups of sugar. The oil in the buds makes the sugar rather wet so you have to leave it out to dry. It also makes it rather green.
But it makes delicious cakes and biscuits.
Now the salve recipes
Comfrey
- Collect and dry the comfrey leaves (I use the dehydrator)
- Crush and weigh leaves.
- Mix 1oz of leaves to 1 cup of olive oil
- Either leave to infuse for 4-6 weeks or heat gently (do not let boil) and leave to infuse for 24 hours. No prizes guessing which method I use.
- Strain through muslin.
- Add 1oz of beeswax (grated or use pellets or granules) to every cup of oil.
- Heat gently until wax fully melted.
- Pour into prepared jars to set.
Lavender
Pretty much the same method but using dried lavender flowers.
Moisturiser
I used this recipe from Quirky Cooking I don’t have the specialist cooker/mixer she uses but it worked just fine with a heavy bottomed pan and a whisk. I used 6tbsp of rosewater rather than rosewater and water, and I added a couple of drops of pure rose essential oil. Divine.
one pair of shoes at a time 
This is great. I found you upon seeing you on the blog challenge site on fb.
Thank you. I am so grateful feedback and am delighted you enjoyed my blog.
A couple of weeks ago (I think) I shared some pictures I took in my part of upstate New York of mountain ash berries, which may be the same thing as your rowan berries. Not sure I would want to pick these from landscape trees – they may have been sprayed. But, it was interesting reading about your use of them. As for pineapple weed, I had not heard of it and, in Googling it, I find it does grow throughout the U.S. It “sort of” looked like a variety of chamomile but it isn’t. I’ll be looking (and sniffing) for it now.
As far as I am aware the other name for pineapple weed is wild chamomile. It’s not the same plant as the chamomile we use as a herb but is of the same family.
One of the advantages of living in the back of beyond is that we have little risk of CO2 or similar contamination.
I think mountain ash and rowan are the same family (Sorbus)
How wonderful to be able to transform weeds into something useful!