Frugal Living Blog - Cooking Whatever is Growing.

If you are here for the animals, wildlife & nature project, Scottish hutting or our off-grid stopover site for campervans/motorhomes, see HERE for details. By way of update for our wildlife watchers and bird spotters, the first swallows have returned to the barn, there are bats out and about, the grasshopper warblers have returned and the badgers and pine martens are active most nights. 

This blog post is more to do with the origins of the name Frugaldom: Frugal living freedom. You are very welcome to read along if you would like to know more about frugality and money saving, plus you can join the Friends of Frugaldom or support the project HERE, or join us free in the Frugal Living Challenge within the forums section of moneysavingexpert.com website.

TODAY HAS BEEN FAIRLY FRUGAL AND PRODUCTIVE

After mucking out, watering and feeding all the animals, I had coffee with the friend who had been helping. She had made a fruit crumble so we ate that at lunchtime. The topic of food growing is a popular one here so we were planning where to plant different things. She pointed out that the nettles were already growing and I had spotted many dandelions flowering.

This afternoon, I picked a tubful of young nettle leaves, some garlic shoots (not cloves), lemon balm and some chives, plus a mugful of dandelions.

I often used chives in place of spring onions and they are perpetual / perenniall so create a colourful purple display in summer. The garlic is now also perennial after leaving bulbs in the ground to grow wild.

Chives and garlic are growing happily together in the herb garden and as you can see, so, too, are the strawberry runners and chives.

The rhubarb is at a stage that we can harvest stalks for crumbles, but the very mild, wet winter interspersed with sub zero temperatures and occasional high teens warm sunshine caused the plants to flower so those had all to be cut out as soon as spotted. You will see here that there are also strawberry plants evident. They get everywhere but I do lift some and pot them on to sell or swap at the main gate where we have the 'Trading Post'.

The rain stayed awake long enough to allow two buckets of weeds to be pulled out and some of the herb beds tidied. This one contains sweet cicely, one of my favourite herbs, great for chewing on, adding to stewed rhubarb or feeding to the ponies, who love it. It's said to be good for soothing throats during persistent coughs.

I picked some lemon balm while weeding and this got added to the other herbs picked.

We have never tried growing butter beans so this is something new for us. Friend brought them along today and we will decide where best to plant them over the next week.

Chopped herbs - nettles, chives, garlic shoots and a few leaves of lemon balm. I fried these for a few minutes in some butter and a splash of oil, seasoned with salt and pepper to have with spaghetti.

The resulting meal was very tasty and I can highly recommend it. I am not vegetarian but meat is so expensive that it does not feature strongly in our diet.

What did I do with the dandelions? I made some cookies. There was no flour at the hut so I used a pack of pancake mix and added the dandelion petals, some sultanas and some finely grated orange peel, then mixed it into cookie dough using butter and some warm water.  I 'baked' the cookies in the Omnia on top of the gas camping stove, as I'm currently at the hut,. completely off-grid. 

That has been my day so far: There is a campervan parked in the yard with the occupants keen to spot the badgers and pine martens tonight. The rain has returned with a vengeance but, thankfully, the wildlife cares not a jot about getting wet when there are peanuts, eggs and other tasty (appropriate) snacks available at the feeding stations.