One of the volunteers at work bought everyone in a bag yesterday and today there are crap apples on freecycle, which only two people have asked for and that's me and my mother!

Apple pie and cakes are lovely in the winter, and apple cake is a really good packed lunch food as well.

I spotted a flowering gorse, and was suddenly gripped by the desire to make gorse-flower wine. I've never tasted it; I wasn't even sure I'd ever heard of it. So I ran inside to check whether such a thing existed. There wasn't anything in the pocket edition of 'Food for Free' but there were plenty of references and a couple of recipes on t'internet.

5 pints of gorse flowers are required for a gallon of gorse wine. That's 3 litres of flowers. It took about 90 minutes to gather the flowers off four different bushes. I've no idea how many hundreds of flowers that involved, but for each flower I picked, I was pricked at least once by the thorny bastard that is the gorse bush.

Once I'd gathered the first litre though, I stuck my nose in and was greeted by a sweet and heady aroma. A bit like walking past a honeysuckle bush on a summer's evening, but milder. This delicious smell was my incentive to continue. I now have a gorse flower stew sitting, extruding in the fermenter. It smells incredible... in a few days I'll add yeast and sugar to do their magic - and by the time I raise a glass in toast to the rugged, thorny bastard gorse bush, these prickles and invisible splinters will be a faint memory.

Hopefully the bird I scared out of the last gorse bush will have only a faint memory of Pip's and my presence... just as I finished gathering, I glanced into the centre of the bush and saw a neat, round nest with 4 large-ish, blue eggs. I think it belongs to a blackbird, but I didn't see the bird, and can't find any egg descriptions in my 3 british bird books.

Sucht Jemand zufällig eine Gurke? Dann braucht ihr nicht mehr länger im Internet herumzugurken. Hier ist sie:

Kostenlos und unbegrenzt nutzbar d.h. frei kopierbar, darf verändert und weiterverbreitet werden. Ihr dürft sie exportieren, importieren, ausführen und einführen . Ihr könnt sie auch ausdrucken und aufessen. Egal, macht doch damit, was ihr wollt! Ruhig etwas übertreiben, aber immer sauber bleiben ;-)

Natürlich ist dieses ein symbolischer Akt der Solidarität. Weitere Hintergrundinformationen hier:
Unbedingt ansehen! Plusminus: Abzocke im Internet, teure Informationsfallen
Projektaufruf Lebensmittelfotos

Viel bessere, Lebensmittelfotos, wo ein Brötchen nicht 6000Euro kostet, sondern gratis ist, gibt es hier :
Lebensmittelfotos.com

Freie Lebensmittelfotos für freie Bürger! Give me the food and let me grow!

Taraxacum officinale Weber ex Wiggers
Daisy Family (Asteraceae)

Habitat and Range: Meadows, roadsides, lawns. Native to Europe, dandelions are now naturalised in all temperate regions of the world.

Identification: A perennial herb with a short stem hidden beneath a basal rosette of toothed leaves. The plant has slender, hollow stalks that bear single heads of tiny, tongue-shaped flowers (spring-summer). When mature, the flowers turn into downy, white balls of seeds, each with its own parachute that carries it away on the wind.

Uses and Properties: A tea from the leaves is used as a tonic and to promote bowel regularity. Although a brew from the roots is given for liver, gall bladder and other digestive ailments, only its use as a tonic is well-substantiated. Wine can be made from the blossoms. The flowers can be used to make a yellow dye and the roots a magenta one.

This book has a lot more interesting information.

There are so many uses for this common herb. I've tried dandelion tea from a health food shop before and it's surprisingly palatable.

Apparently the leaves are more nutritious than anything you can buy. They're higher in beta-carotene than carrots. The iron and calcium content is phenomenal, greater than spinach. You also get vitamins B-1, B-2, B-5, B-6, B-12, C, E, P, and D, biotin, inositol, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and zinc by using a tasty, free vegetable that grows on virtually every lawn. Read more here

Think you'll be trying them anytime soon? I will, and will report back with results!