Foraging for Frugal Food

  
Foraging for Frugal Food

Colourful, nutritious, tasty and free!

Foraged fruit and berries are brilliant. I had vowed that I wouldn't do any foraging this year, as I still have a shelf filled with assorted jams and jellies to use, plus tubs of garden-grown fruit in the freezer, but today's walk proved to be too tempting. Read more

 

NYK, Frugaldom

Frugal Photographic Fun - Picture in Picture

September Sunshine and Fun in the Frugaldom Garden

Part 2

Following on from my earlier post, I have now had a closer look at the original photographs and found many more contained within them.

I spotted several things that I hadn't even noticed while taking them, so quite a few frugal bonuses and rather fun searching the photos for hidden 'clues' to what's really going on in the garden.

The initial view of the garden, on closer inspection, revealed several runner beans that are ready for picking. I'm amazed that the rabbit hadn't already helped herself to these.

This fly was one of a few that were on the sunflowers.

I'm not a great fan of creepy crawlies or flying beasties, but I was really impressed by how the bright yellow of the sunflower petals highlighted the lace pattern of the wings.

If you look closely, you can even see this fly's hairy little knees and feet!

What do you think of this sunflower yellow? It's fabulous!

Sunflowers are really quite amazing. The closer you look at them, the more fascinating they become - this brown mosaic swirl is the very centre of the flower. Each one of these will become a sunflower seed one day soon.

For some strange reason, this reminds me of an armadillo!

Moving further out from the centre of the sunflower, I spotted this strange array of what looks more like they should be swaying on the bottom of the sea bed!

I can highly recommend playing this fun and frugal game. Out of a few digital photographs, I have managed to highlight several aspects of the garden that would, otherwise, have been overlooked. (Family like to see the photo diaries, as they aren't close enough to visit in person on a regular basis.)

Hello MUM! :)

Along the dry stone wall, beyond the pumpkins and kale then past the sweet peas, there are still hundreds of rosehips of all colours.

Despite the autumnal weather that seems to be fast approaching, there are still quite a fe wild roses blooming.

It was while inspecting the photo for all these rosehips and sweetpea blossomgs that I spotted an anomaly. Can you spot it?

Almost in the centre of this clump of colourful swet peas, I can see a single yellow flower - some sort of rogue dandelion or daisy - a weed that has clambered up through the sweet peas to emerge among the blooms.

I love the smell of sweet peas and am really glad that there are so many flowers. They just keep on growing, as if coming through in wave after wave of colour.

Did anyone spot the snowball turnips growing below the kale? I will need to get out and lift a few more of these, as I hadn't spotted them on my round of the garden. Oops!

I love this photo in a photo of Floppity rabbit finding Scruffy cat beneath the brussel sprouts. It really is the cat's whiskers.

Floppity soon took off, so a closer inspection of the next photograph provided evidence of her escape route... this is her big furry feet and tail about to disappear further into the sprout patch.

All of these images are part of the photographs published in part 1 of today's blog.

If anyone decides to play the frugal photo game, don't forget to upload your findings to your own blog or site then let us all know where we can see them.

The sun shone all day, so the patio was the favoured spot for coffee drinking and chatting, especially when visitors arrived. Floppity got confined to barracks, as she can be such a pest, but Scruffy insisted she oined in and got all the attention.

In between baking, biscuit making and soup making, I did get around to planting all the spring bulbs. Frugaldom now has a selection of daffodils, tulips, irises, snowdrops and crocuses crammed into the planters that sit around the front of the house. A bit more compost needed to top these up but then it's all down to nature to do her good deed and make my bulbs grow.

Don't forget you can join us for regular updates from all the frugalers, with day to day results of the various money-making and money-saving challenges by visiting the Frugaldom Forums.

Foraged Rosehips and Luxury (Frugal) Chocolate Confectionery

Rosehip Truffles

This time of year is great for foraging. Right now, although the blackberries, sloes and elderberries have a bit to go, the place is alive with rosehips of every shade, from pale orange through to deep, blood red. Some are such a deep red that they have passed burgundy. I opted for a russet shade of rosy red for my late summer delicacies. The hips are enormous this year and these all grow along the south facing wall of our garden, so not far to go for foraging.

I picked about 500g of hips, gave them a quick rinse and then popped them into the mocrowave in a covered dish with a couple of tablespoons of water. It takes only 10 minutes on high power to reduce the berries to pulp, which is then squeezed through a jelly bag to remove all the skins and seeds. You can, of course, stew the berries down in a pan on the cooker. 

In this particular case, the resulting liquid came out mango coloured. I did taste it once it had cooled and, even without sugar, it had a lovely flavour to it, so I was happy enough to use this foraged produce as an ingredient in my August entry to 'weshouldcocoa'.

My Frugal Recipe for Rosehip Truffles

150g of chocolate

5 tablespoons of icing sugar

3 tablespoons of stewed & strained rosehip 'juice' (or any other flavouring you fancy).

A seperate 100g of chocolate

1/2 tablespoonful of icing sugar & 1/2 level tablespoonful of cocoa powder combined

Being a frugal household, I don't usually have any sort of luxury baking items in stock, so this time around, the 'past their sell by date' milk chocolate santas got used. We bought a full case of these when they were on offer from one of the clearance stores, I can't remember which it was, but if you check on the Frugaldom forums, they are all listed in the 'Frugal Food' section.

Melt your chocolate in a bowl over over a pan of simmering water. I just use my steamer on the cooker top, as it seems to work as well as anything else I have tried.

While your chocolate is melting, you can sift the icing sugar into a seperate bowl and then slowly combine that with your chosen flavouring. In this case, I'm using the juice from stewed, garden-foraged rosehips.

It changes from a deep mango colour to a shade more like condensed milk once it's mixed with the icing sugar.

As soon as your choclate has melted into a smooth paste, slowly pour the icing sugar mix into the bowl, stirring and blending at the same time.

Your mix will lighten a few shades, regardless of whether you have used milk or plain chocolate.

You can now set this aside to cool. I cover mine with cling film and put it in the fridge as soon as I can.

It doesn't take too long before the truffle mix is set, so it's a good idea to keep your hot water in the pan, ready to melt the next lot of chocolate, which is for covering the truffles.

I left this lot to set in the fridge, overnight, then shaped them into 'logs' before pressing them down with a fork. If you love chocolate and don't mind a bit of a chocolatey mess, handmade truffles are the very thing for you to try.

The above recipe is exactly the same as before. You can use almost any flavour you choose, be it alcoholic or otherwise. In case you missed my last lot of truffles, check HERE

Feel free to join us in the Frugaldom Forums, where moneysaving and good living go hand in hand on even the strictest of budgets.

Rosehips aplenty and chilli peppers, too!

Cacophony of Colour - so vibrant, you can almost hear it!

Who said red and green should never be seen? I decided to take a walk down the garden to see how everything had faired after the day of drizzle we had yesterday. The assortment of shrubs that cascade over the south-facing wall mean that it is now awash with colour, transformed from the former pinks and yellows to vibrant reds, greens and deep purple berries. These rosehips are particularly spectacular, huge orbs of glossy red against a background of healthy foliage. There are still a few pink flowers scattered among them, Dog Roses, I think. Thoughts of what I can do to preserve these are on my mind.

Along the way, you come to the more muted, gentler shades of the fragrant sweet peas. I thought I had left these too late in sowing the seeds for us to benefit from such a colourful display, but they have battled on relentlessly and are now producing an array of pastel shades ranging from buttermilk through pink to deep maroon. Some of them appear almost frosted with their two-tone pink and white flowers.

But it's the rosehips that have taken today's vote, as there are just so many of them.

I wonder if these will still be here when the elderberries, haws and blackberries arrive? Hedgerow jelly is one of the favourites in this frugal household. Memories of rosehip syrup are springing to mind, but I haven't ever tried making. I wonder if I should? What else can be done with rosehips?

You can still see quite a few of the pale pink flowers on this particular bush, so I am guessing there are plenty more hips to come. Hopefully, this display is not some sort of forewarning for a treacherous winter!

In one of the little raised beds - made from a discarded chest of drawers - the leeks are beginning to resemble what they should. Despite weeding this bed almost every time I pass it, there are still telltale signs of what has shot up through the soil over the past two days.

Previously, I didin't bother much with leeks but, like the brussel sprouts, we will learn to love them. Autumn and winter evenings need a bowl of warming homemade soup and I have had great success in the past freezing these to use as and when required.

All going well, there should be enough here to see us through to next year's crop with enough surplus to trade with friends and neighbours.

I have never had great success with tomatoes, mainly owing to the fact that I either haven't had the space to grow them, the weather has been awful or else we have been preparing to move house each time tomato season came around.

This year, having yet again moved house, there was no time or space to organise the construction of a greenhouse, so these tomatoes - 6 plants I traded inwards through LETS - are sitting outside with a strip of metre high plastic across the front of their pots. It seems to have done the trick, but that's probably more to do with the fact that we've had such good weather for the past couple of months than anything else. Alongside these, I have some Cape Gooseberries, which are now flowering and beginning to set fruit.

Our latest housemove, which will hopefully be our last, has found us in a street of like-minded people who all take great pride in their gardens. They really are a lovely bunch of neighbours, we couldn't have asked for better.

Surplus produce and plants are happily exchanged and it isn't unusual to see folks walking along the street carrying some form of fruit, vegetable or plant. It's a great little place - very friendly and very welcoming!

Just yesterday, I received a knock on the front door and opened it to find someone bringing me surplus blackcurrants, which I'll probably make into jam or apple and blackcurrant pie filling. In exchange, I hope said neighbour is happy sampling their dozen fresh quail eggs that I was able to offer them.

Indoors, on the kitchen windowsill, I have my three pepper plants - one, a much appreciated gift from friends who were visiting and the others given to me by fellow LETS members.

This is the Jalopeno pepper - a type of chilli - that has started producing quite a few long, green fruits. I daren't taste them, as they're too hot for me, but I will be using them in whatever Tex-Mex meals I make in future. Stir fried with other veg and served with chicken in a warm, homemade tortilla dressed with salsa, mayo and cheese, these are delicious.

This is my Apache chilli pepper, the one that arrived through the post from the friends who had been to visit us last month.

This is a lovely plant, which sits neatly in the middle of the windowsill in it's own little tin bucket. In the brief time that I've had it, the many flowers and tiny peppers have developed quickly and now range through all stages of the growing/ripening process. It is absolutely dripping in fruit.

Again, these will be used in chilli type dishes, added as extra spicy topping to homemade pizza and I'll be drying all the extras for storing. If I'm lucky, I'll save some seeds to sow next year, but will also attempt to over winter the plants in the hope that they see us through a second year. My sweet pepper is just beginning to flower, so I didn't bother photographing that, maybe next time.

The whole house now smells of sweet peas, as I'm clipping a few flowers every other day to keep in small vases in each of the main rooms. They certainly smell much nicer than any chemically manufactured spray, block or gel and I haven't ever found myself sneezing at these.

Who needs air freshener, or even perfume, when the garden can produce such fragrant flowers? It reminds me of the times when we used to soak the rose petals to make homemade prefume many, many years ago. I wonder how easy it would be to dry some of these for pot pourri?

I promised myself that I would try to keep the blog up to date even when there was no significant progress in the Frugaldom microholding, but seeing these photographs reminds me firmly that every day is a day of progress. Afterall, this time last year, we had not the slightest inclination that we'd have moved house again, nor had we even considered the possibility that we'd have bought a place like this. 

Never give up on your dream. In frugaldom, every penny counts and a penny saved is always seen as a penny earned. Visit our frugal living forums HERE and share your frugal exploits with others who are all in pursuit of their own dreams. Being rich doesn't need to mean having money- see you there!

Edited in: I came back to edit this part in - after catching up on a few other blogs, this ties in nicely with today's topic, so I'm going to give it a go. Chocolate Log Blog: We Should Cocoa - the August Challenge.