Comfrey

August 29, 2016 ~ Gillie ~ 1 Comment

When the goldenrod starts to flower then summer is igoin out and autumn is icumen in. I am sure we will have lots more lovely sunny and warm days like today, in fact my birthday in early October has been a sunny day for as long as I can remember. However, now is the time to start preserving and drying to ensure the natural medicine cabinet can see us through until next summer. Today I have been out in the garden harvesting comfrey, lavender, rosehips and chamomile

Let’s start with the comfrey. Comfrey goes by many names Knitbone, Boneset, Bruise wort. You get the gist, it’s a healer. There is much discussion about the safety of comfrey due to its very high content of hepatotoxic pyrrolizideine alkaloids (PAs) wh rapich as you can guess from the name can lead to liver disease in high doses and it has been implicated in one death. Consequently I only use it topically, in a salve, tincture or fresh compress. See here to see it in action.

First collect your comfrey. This is remarkably easy around us as the Boss planted it some 10 years ago and it is very hardy! I collect both leaves and the root, there is a higher level of allantoin, which stimulates cell growth (and thus healing) and reduces inflammation in the root, but also a higher level of PAs. Again I only use comfrey products externally and would caution anyone who wishes to take it internally to seek the advice of a professional herbalist first.

I made two types of salve and a tincture.

Salve one was made using the oldest and most traditional method. Chop up your leaves and add them melted lard. I used 125g lard and four handfuls of leaves. Bring to a simmer, cover and leave to seep for a couple of hours and pour into a sterilised jar (you may need to warm it slightly to melt it sufficiently to pour into the jar.

Looks a bit poisonous doesn’t it?!

Salve two is the process I first learned when making salves. Instead of using lard I used coconut oil and cold pressed rapeseed oil. The first stage is the same as making salve one. 125ml of rapeseed oil and three tablespoons of coconut oil, four handfuls of leaves, chopped. Bring to simmer, leave to seep. What you have now is comfrey oil and you can leave it like that. It is a good massage oil for those broken bones that cannot be set (such as toes and shoulders). If you want to make a m ore solid salve you will need approximately 30g of beeswax (the amount you use will determine the solidity of your salve). Grate the wax and place with the comfrey oil in a bowl over a pan of boiling water and heat gently until the wax and oil are combined. Pour into sterilised jars.

Comfrey Tincture is the easiest recipe of all. Wash and chop 100g of comfrey root and place in a clean jar with 150ml of vodka (the highest proof you can find, I am kicking myself for not buying the 96% vodka I saw on sale in Romania for about £15/litre!) Leave it for 2-3 weeks and transfer to clean amber dropper bottles.

Finally I put the leftover root in the dehydrator and will grind it up to make tincture or salve later on in the year if we run out.

Next up rosehips.

Love Gillie x

aprons and dolmades

August 1, 2014 ~ Gillie ~ 4 Comments

Turkey was wonderful. The weather was hard, clear blue skies every day. I believe we did see one cloud, but it was small and clearly lost. One of the things I love about coming back from holiday is digging out old recipes and experimenting with recreating the foods we ate whilst we were away. One of my absolute favourites are dolmades.

In the interest of minimalist living and using up everything I cast my eye over the grape vines in our garden. Why on earth had I not thought to use them before? For somebody who can make a pretty reasonable meal out of foraged or caught food you would have thought I would have spotted that opportunity before.

The dolmades were delicious, even more so I think because they came from my own vines. Before we went away I was furiously foraging and drying flowers and leaves, soon I shall start canning and preserving. But now I am freezing vine leaves for the winter.

Like all leaves you only want the young and tender ones. The rule I found which seems to work for me is count three leaves down from the tip and pick the next three leaves. Clearly this isn’t hard and fast but it gives you an idea of the size of leaf you are looking for. In my case it is larger than my palm but smaller than my whole hand.

As our leaves have come from our own vines I know that they haven’t been sprayed but they do need washing. Then make a pile of leaves. There are five of us in our family and we eat about three each so I made piles of 15 leaves.

Then roll them up and secure with string.

Finally blanch in boiling salted water.

Leave to cool and freeze. I’ll let you know how they turn out.

In the meantime every cook needs a good apron. I made this yesterday with some leftover upholstery fabric. I feel very cool 🙂

beans

September 10, 2013September 10, 2013 ~ Gillie ~ 6 Comments

If I don’t get a grip this will turn into a recipe blog. Fear not, the usual abnormal and bonkers service will resume tomorrow but today I have been tweaking my apron strings. It is that time of year, all good downshifters are filling their larders with jars and bottles. The harvest is astonishing. One of my apple trees has fallen the weight of the fruit was so much. I think we can rescue it, but as it is only 10 years old it doesn’t have the great root base it needs for its gargantuan harvest this year. The plums and damsons are almost ready, the crab apples are starting to blush and the quinces are fantabulous. This is a super jelly year.

I collected about 6lb of brambles and made up the juice before the weekend so I had to make the jelly today. Oh the deep richness and intense flavour of bramble jelly is so exquisite. The hedgerows are still offering up more so I shall pick some tomorrow for jam.

However today I was determined to use up the last of the beans. They have been hugely successful this year. I planted them in the “three sisters” format. Beans, sweetcorn and squash and all three are thriving. I am going to expand to fill the whole raised bed next year.

Back to the beans. I don’t usually like piccalilli but the Boss loves it. We have come to a compromise. Valentine Warner’s bean chutney. It isn’t like any chutney I know, it is a delicious sweet, mustardy beany piccalilli and I love it.

What you need to get

4 medium onions
250ml malt vinegar
1kg runner beans
1 heaped tablespoon English mustard powder
1 heaped tablespoon ground turmeric
25g cornflour
250ml white wine vinegar
250g granulated sugar
2 heaped tablespoons wholegrain mustard
2 teaspoons flaked sea salt

What you need to do with it

Peel and chop the onions into a small dice. Tip into a large, heavy-based saucepan and pour over the malt vinegar. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover loosely and cook for 15 minutes until softened, stirring once or twice.
While the onions are cooking you can prepare the beans. Trim the ends, then cut down each side to remove any strings. Place each bean flat on the board and slice thinly lengthways on a long diagonal into 7 or 8 strips. How many slices you end up with will depend on the size of each bean. Ignore any that have plump little beans hiding within, as they will be the toughest. Plunge the beans into a large pan of boiling water and return to the boil. Cook for 3 minutes, then drain in a colander and refresh under cold water. Drain.
Mix the mustard powder, turmeric, cornflour and 4 tablespoons of the white wine vinegar until smooth.
When the onions are ready, stir in the sugar and remaining white wine vinegar. Bring to the boil and cook for 2 minutes. Add the beans and simmer gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir the cornflour mixture until smooth once more and then pour slowly into the onions and beans, stirring vigorously to dispel any lumps, followed by the wholegrain mustard and salt.

It will look a bit like this and smell of heaven.

Gently simmer the vegetables, mustard and spices for 20 minutes, stirring regularly so that the chutney does not stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. Pot the chutney into warm, sterilised jars and leave to cool. Cover, seal and store in cool dark place for at least a month.

If you can leave it for a month you are stronger than I!