Buds are slowly revealing their silken insides on willow. Sycamore buds glow green, Blackthorn is dressed in hints of bridal white. Sloes are still out though, and they’ve been nicely bletted by the cold. I can even eat a few raw without wincing.

Sloe Recipes

A Sloe Ice Lolly could be a good bet, but I don’t have a freezer. Can one of you try this please?? As promised earlier, I’ve been experimenting with Sloes to find out if lacto-fermenting them breaks down the astringency.

Neolithic peoples created pits in the ground which they filled with sloes. Archaeologists suspect they were fermenting the sloes to get rid of the astringency, so I thought I’d give it a try.

So far, I’ve tasted sloes I mashed and fermented next to my cooker with a pinch of salt. Apart from the fact salty sloes taste really weird, they are still REALLY astringent!! I then tried boiling the mixture – no change there. I tried adding lemon juice, which made it even worse. I wonder if adding something alkaline, like bicarbonate of soda, would counteract the malic acid in the sloes?

Ray Mears and Gordon Hillman made several experiments crushing sloes into cakes and exposing them to air for 2 days. They roasted them afterwards.

I’ve tried leaving them exposed to oxygen, as my last experiment was anaerobic (in an oxygen-free atmosphere). After the required 48 hours of being crushed and left to the air, I can say they WERE less astringent, so the oxygen helps break down the malic acid, NOT lactobacteria. However, they had lost their tanginess – that’ll be the Vitamin C.

Mahonia flowers

Mahonia (Mahonia sps) flowers are out now! for more on this evergreen spiky shrub, visit my previous post on Mahonia (Oregon Grape). I added some to the sloe dessert for some citrussy zing and colour.

ROASTED SLOE CAKES WITH CREAM & MAHONIA FLOWERS

Ingredients:

1 cup raw sloe berries

1 tbsp runny honey

Squirty cream

Handful of Mahonia flowers

I used one cup of Sloe berries, picked in first week of Feb. I crushed them and left with stones in for 2 days in an open pan (covering lightly with a paper towel to stop the cat treading in it).

I sieved as many stones out as possible (difficult, ended up picking them out with my fingers), then added 1 tbsp of runny honey and squeezed the sloe paste into small cakes.

I grilled these, turning once, for around 15-20 minutes. You could bake them, but I wanted to grill them as this is the more likely method around a camp fire! Milk and cream goes well with sloes. Yes, I know…so does gin.

Track & Sign: February Week 1

In other news, I’ve been finding out what this woodland poo is. It’s plain old Wood Pigeon poop. Why is this important and not just disgusting, I hear you ask? Well Wood Pigeon happens to be a quite large and very tasty bird, so if SHTF, it’s good to know where they hang out.

This log is covered in it, so they obviously enjoy roosting just overhead. This scat doesn’t smell much and has the texture of mud (I used a stick, ok, fans).

(If pigeon poo fascinates you, check out this contender for the most awful video: a 45 minute A.I rant on Racing Pigeon poo and various pigeon diseases. Yes, people. I watched this so you didn’t have to. That’s 20 minutes of my life I won’t get back.)

These oval -shaped emergence holes are from either Longhorn beetle (Cerambycidae) or Jewel Beetle larvae (Bupresdidae). There’s 4,000 species of beetle in the UK alone. Their young larvae burrow through weakened or dead trees and emerge in Spring. They also provide lots of food for woodpeckers!

Hazel Catkins

Now, too, is the time to harvest Hazel Catkins. I’ll do a separate post on this next week, as I’ve got a lot to say. If you can’t wait, why not check out my Youtube video on Foraging & Eating Hazel Catkins?

Yes…finally, after 15 years of physical teaching, I have joined the world of YouTube. I’m not sure I like how I look on camera, but hey, that’s just vanity. Stay tuned for many more videos.

I’m making some eBooks too, which will be online soon. Great for those who can’t get to my courses, or if you forgot to take notes! Next course is below.

Check out “Spring Foraging With Tapas @ Tiddenfoot Lake” on Eventbrite!

Date: Sat, 28 Mar, 10:00

Location: Tiddenfoot Waterside Park

xx Hedgewitch Kat xx