A little break before the madness

 

We are on a holiday cottage for the weekend with hb's nephew and his wife. Back home tomorrow, and then on Monday I will leave 9 o'clock in the morning to a three day seminar. And next week another four day trip. 'Suma is already miserable 😔

Food, veggies, mushrooms...

 I'm trying to get my budget on track before winter's high costs. This month (August) is usually the most expensive summer month - not only because kids go back to school, but our insurance and property tax bills are due on August. Hb's car needed repairs (and some are still coming) and it isn't cheap. My car is due MOT on October and I need to fix it before that, and I know it will be another expensive one. Our cars suffer because we live in the end of long gravel road, and no matter how slowly and carefully you drive, something WILL broke during the year. There is always a lot of bumps and potholes and sharp gravel to kill your tires if nothing else.

On the food front I have been relying heavily on my garden and forest produce. We have been eating mushrooms every day last six weeks, and I'm digging potatoes three times a week (kids don't want to eat potatoes every day). But there's berries, zucchinies, kale, beans, peas, carrots, nasturtium, garlic...

The cheapest dinner is boiled potatoes, butter-fried mushrooms and fried zucchini with garlic and honey (because I get honey from my brother). Only salt and butter are shop bought!

Some mushrooms:

Chanterelles usually yield the highest harvest - and they grow from end of July to the end of November (if there's no snow). They are easy to find - they grow in our backyard (which is a forest).

Porchini. Little piglet.  This was a good year for them, and we ate many meals with porchinies. I'm really REALLY particular about that there's no wormholes in my porchini - if I accepted some holes, we would be eating tons of porchinies. but nope, I don't want to eat worms.

I would guess porchini and chanterelles.

We did have some sunny days then.

I don't pick many white mushrooms, but sometimes I can't resist - champignons are quite rare in my woods and this one didn't have any maggots.

(and I do know the difference between amanita virosa and champignons)

And it REALLY was champignon.

Agaricus sylvicola (wood mushroom)

There's only that much one can eat mushrooms. Bilberry pie!

Of course you can't only eat forest food. You have to use garden produce also! I've made several stews or soups or sauces with a lot of veggies.

For this I'm happy I don't have a picture of the green one I made - it looked like sheep's diarrhea😂

 But everything is edible. This is beetroot and sundried tomato houmous. Very yummy! The green one was pesto with wild and garden greens (sorrel, kale, nasturtium leaves, beetroot leaves, carrot tops etc). I made about 4dl or each, but in this picture is only the remants I scooped from my blender.

I use both houmous and pesto as a spread on my bread.

For houmous I use 1 tin of chickpeas, 2dl of cooked root vegetables (carrot, parsnip, beetroot, swede; either one or all mixed), 2-3 cloves of garlic - they are my own grown and huge! olive oil, some lemon juice from bottle, roasted sesame oil (because I forgot to buy tahini and tried with sesame oil and found out it was fine), salt, chili, some leftover pickles like nasturtium seeds, pickled chili or olives or pickled radish seed pods... some pepper, some salt and jeera or garam masala or curry powder - whatever I have. This is my winter spread.

For pesto I use greens, again some leftover pickles from fridge, some lemon juice, few cloves of garlic, any nuts or seeds I have, olive oil, salt, pepper and chili. I don't use parmesan or any other cheese in my pesto - I didn't have any when I made my first ever batch and it was fine. So this is vegan, too. Pesto is my summer spread.

I don't know how they compare to shop bought or ordinary houmous and pesto, because I've never eaten one - they usually have some onion and I can't eat (or touch) any onions.

Some nettle pancakes/crepes. They are delicious and cheap. And they take forever to fry, because I use 1l milk on the batter...

These are zucchini fritters. Also very good.

And zucchinies.

This is best potato year in long time. Potatoes don't like hot or dry weather, and we had coldest and wettest July in decades.

Gooseberries have goosebumbs!

(here they are called hairy berries for obvious reasons)

Chili sin carne with one tiny tiny beetroot. Beetroot really dyes everything.

Basic soup with minced meat. All vegetables from my own garden.

Peasoup - it's like split pea soup but dried peas are whole. Some minced meat, oregano (or majoram, I have no idea which it is, for me they are the same) and salt. One of the cheapest meals you can cook if you use shop bought items (British dried peas are 0,49€/500g). And believe or not, our children eat this - os usually have seconds.

More medieval

We had quite fun time at the medieval fair few weeks ago. Ys and number one had a blast and they are eager to go next year, too. Number one actually went there on Saturday, too, but it was so crowded they couldn't see or do anything, so next year we will go on Friday again.

More pictures:

Ys told me I have to make pair of trousers for him - and most likely I have to make a hood like this to him, too. But now I know what kind of clothing is needed so it's much easier from now on. Maybe something less poor looking.

Sunset behind the castle and park with medieval camp, photo says 21:14.

Medieval times

We've had some very interesting days lately. Ys got also a part in that film, and it suited him perfectly 😊

I had only three hours to get a fabric and sew a tunic and a belt for him (and number one, too! he was also in), and after a panic call to my work friend who is also an extra in medieval fairs I managed to stich together something acceptable. Never again, I said to myself, again. Like every other time I promise to do something I have no idea how to do it and knowing I have no time to do it...

My prince of peasants!

I hope if I end up doing something else for the film, I'll get at least a week's notice.

But ys loved the experience! Filming that day took 7 hours, and after that the actors and extras and production team had a medieval feast with authentic music.

And this is why I haven been able to be in my veggie plot or foraging mushrooms.

A star is born...

 It's me - a movie star!

Or not. But I got a very tiny role in small budget (read zero budget) children's film, I even got a line to say! Mostly my part was my feet walking up and down the stairs. They had an emergency, they needed someone and because someone in the team knew me and thought I might be able to be there at the time of the filming, they contacted me. Because of the small budget, no-one gets paid 😁 so it's very freelance and very indie stuff. But nevertheless it has never occurred to me I would be in a real movie. I doubt I ever will end up in IMDb.

Otherwise, life is just as it always is in the end of summer. Busy. Kids are back to school, ys has flu and there was a mix-up in d's rental and she got her power cut off - without any warning, of course. It was a real mess, their electricity is totally screwed and mixed with others, even with someones not living even there. At one point there were half a dozen electricians and some higher up people in their apartment wondering what the heck went wrong - among otoher things it turned out they have been paying wrong electric bill - they have smart meters of course, but somehow in the system their information has been connected to the wrong meter which isn't even located in their building. They should be compensated e.g. from spoiled food in the fridge - it was a heavy loss for low-income students but everything takes time of course and all three girls are fuming (d lives in apartment with two of her friends to keep costs lower). And the whole apartment block is a brand new, it was finished AFTER they moved in.

But yes, it was and still is a huge mess, yesterday they got two hours of electricity...

Garden is producing. I've picked currants for my mother to make cordial with steam juice extractor, she usually makes dozens of bottles, they keep nicely in their root cellar if there is glass bottles. Plastic bottles are not very good at preserving, so that juice is then put into freezers.

Zucchinies have a good year, and I've found some pumpkins emerging. I've been picking peas, shelled them and put in freezer, first handfull of greenbeans is waiting to be eaten (today), this is my best year ever to grow potatoes and even corn is looking promising. There is tomatoes coming, but none of them is even blushing yet. Pickling cucumbers are a dissapointment, there haven't been any yet.

Garlic is about to be ready to pull out, I need - I really should - to build another bed for garlic, it's something we use every day in cooking. I used my last garlic gloves last week and pulled first of new harvest yesterday, it was really good looking.

And 'shrooms! This has been a very good yeat to forage mushrooms. Porchinis, chaterelles, hedgehog mushrooms, milk caps... I know most people will not forage or eat milk caps, but they are really nice preserved in brine. Maybe it's just me and my lovely childhood memories?

Potato salad and coleslaw

As I can't eat shop bought salads (they usually have some onion or chives or leeks) I lived a substantial part of my life without any mayo-based salads. It didn't occurred to me than I could make them myself. Live and learn.

First I tried coleslaw - it was so simple. Then, much later, when I had purple potatoes, I decided to try to make potato salad. It was even more simple to make. With coleslaw you have to grate or chop a lot, with potato salad you just have to cut potatos and pickled cucumbers, and garlic. Or any other veggies you want to add.

I thought everyone else was making those salads every now and then, and I was the slow one not making them. It seems no-one else is making salads at home, because they can buy them!

I've run out of blue potatoes!

I've run out of blue potatoes. Bugger, I like to make potato salad with them, it's very pretty because it's so purple! I have to wait until this yeard crop will be ready. After some digging I estimated I need to wait another three-four weeks for them to be ready to use. Main crop will be ready in september, but I have some in my cold frames, they will be ready sooner.

We (the royal we, it's my sister's root cellar but my parents' harvest) have some old white potatoes left, so I made potato salad with those and saved some spuds to make soup/stew next week. After that I have only my early potatoes, not much. For some reason I have both horse radish and potatoes growing in one of my cold frames, there was supposed to be carrots and parsnips. Oh well. I need to dig that horse radish up and re-plant it somewhere it can grow freely. I don't use it much but it's still good to have in case I want to make something like pickles that requires hirse radish.

But we are really in the harvest season now. I know bluberries are not doing great this summer, but our surraoundings have enough of them:

They are the original blueberry, but nowadays they are called bilberries, because American species is called blueberry. I just took that picture to show my aunt she can go and pick berries. My other aunt sent a message saying they are not having any. First time ever ar far as I know.

I will be picking blueberries, too. But my main target is mushrooms. Our mushroom season begun on monday, and yesterday I even found a single tiny porchini to pick. 

This is just enough for a panful of fried chaterelles, and three teenagers ate them all.

With all troubles in the world I feel I need to harvest more than ever to keep my family safe... We also have much more firewood than usually for the winter. I just hope my blue potatoes will yeld a nice crop this autunm.

(they are more healthier than normal potatoes)