International edible gardening

I am thinking of making blackberry syrup to go over more common fruit like apples and onto the Pavlova I am now into. (I have my iced tea beside the computer - hot outside.)

Yields 1 quart

• 2 pounds blackberries, raspberries or similar fruit
• 2 pounds sugar

1. Pour the blackberries into a saucepan and turn the heat to medium. Pour the sugar all over the berries, but do not stir.
2. Let the heat begin to break the blackberries before stirring gently, about 5 minutes.
3. Stir every five minutes, just to keep anything from burning on the bottom of the pan. Let the blackberries melt with the sugar slowly.
4. As soon as the syrup hits a simmer, turn off the heat.
5. Set a very fine-meshed sieve over a large bowl. Carefully ladle out some free-run syrup, which will be beneath the floating blackberries. Pour it through the sieve.
6. Keep doing this until you have all the blackberries in the sieve. Let this drain for 1 hour. Do not mash the berries into the sieve, or you will get cloudy syrup.
7. Pour off the syrup into jars and either keep in the fridge or seal in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.
8. Oh, and the leftover blackberries? Mix them with plain yogurt and they are delicious!

From this chef who specializes in wild foods: http://honest-food.net/

Any advice? Comments?

Later I will tackle jam, when the berries are done, but want some for tonight - I really hope they are good.

Nothing achieved today, no apple planted.......and I got a fishing report from a neighbor and the fishing is bad, so no fishing today. The water is so brown and fresh.

edited to show the final results

 

MrsK, I see you are new here too, I guess this is kind of my Coventry; bleming into the void as they called it on NottheTalk, before they banned me.

But it is time to talk of salads. We still have the soup about half the time (current soup made from a roast chicken carcass stock, lots of garden wax beans, lots of garden peppers, head of garden kale, and dried red beans (so easy and quick to cook in my pressure cooker, I use a lot of them - a guy I know gets food from the food bank often and they always give dried beans which he does not know how to use - so he gives them to me.) carrots, and a liberal amount of Mexican chicken stock stuff - it comes in a half gallon bottle (powder) and is Knorr, smells bad, but is very, very, cheap and really gives an OK base - with lots of onion and some marmalade and a good amount of chopped tomato. Sort of a Mexican minestrone (coriander (cilantro USA) too)

But salads:



This is the standard base - lacking the usual cucumber though. Garden tomatoes, my chicken's pickled eggs, (lump of feta between them) garden pickled beet slices, Greek olives. Usually there would be a couple slices pepperoni, couple blanched beans or such. We love our salads and really look forward to our cucumbers coming on - I make some great stuff with them! the garden stuff is in almost anything we make.

 

'Three post ment' is the saying elsewhere - that if you post three consecutive posts you are ranting; an over excited brain, and on a bit of a mental overheat. But then who cares.

I worked at 17 years old as a groundskeeper at a high end place - not the horticulture side but the grunt side, and also the servant side. (I got to shake the hand of the King of Greece and mix with the lords and labour MP's, top corporate men and such - In a serving capacity, I lugged their stuff)

But I remember old Jack, a wizened, bent man with a stick to walk - about 4 and a bit foot tall, who had been there over fifty years and was basically just a feature like the grand trees (one of which we managed to blow a large limb off when the big cannon was fired before the banquet - some fool had packed the rag ball with 4 pounds of wet clay not knowing better and thinking it would make a harmless shot. It went off with the bone jarring bang it always did - and one could see the shot arch off a hundred and fifty yards, almost like slow motion, and blow a large limb off a grand tree with an explosion of bark and leaves. The crowd of big men watched it very impressed and went into their fine banquet. All us staff acted as if that was just how we did it.)

But old Jack had been gassed, and wounded too, in the trenches of WWI and was very strict about three on a match always; that strong WWI bad luck omen from the trenches at night. One man lights a match for a cigarette, his friend holds the match hand and lights his, the third man holds his cigarette over the match and BANG! that is how much time it takes for the German sniper to sight in on the match. But I just remembered that from the first sentence - I do have this memory that goes all the way back to a small child where short films of the past pop up clearly. And now is the time we remember the soldiers.

I even think of the British two finger salute, the two fingers in a V. That is the British way to telling the French they still have their bow string fingers so F*** Off!, going way back to Henry V and still in common usage. The old USA SNAFU and more recent FUBR - time to remember the soldiers.

But I am rambling - I am posting to say someone mentioned they may want to get rid of 1/4 acre back in the woods here for $500 or $1000. The land is basically worthless but if I had that 100 foot X 100 foot bit I could dig the pond I want for growing giant fresh water prawns!

The voltage drop over the additional 300 foot needed to get electricity out to it would mean only small things could run there, but a small fountain pump would be ok. Then an additional 300 foot of pipe from my well to it...... $.32 a foot for 3/4 inch PVC line means $100 and I have well water. $100 more and I get power, it is an interesting thought. To dig the pond, say $900 - water, power, fountain pump, $300 - buy the land, $750. It comes to $2,000. about twelve hundred British pounds. I imagine a pond 40ft X 70ft, 15 foot deep in the center. I have a couple marine pilings to make the dock. Then a hill for a micro orchard or vineyard. Be something to do.

 

Now that's a proper salad. The rosy pickled eggs are visually very appealing. The beet juice doesn't flavour them at all? I guess it wouldn't be detectable along with the pickling. Do you use a dressing?

If you're still interested in multiple-egg recipes, here's one I like quite a bit which requires 6:

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/amaretto-almond-pound-cake-50400000110796/

I imagine another clear liqueur could be substituted if you're not an amaretto fan, but the amaretto's effect is like marzipan minus the cloying.

Such an outlaw. How does one blem, and can it be done with a tea mug in hand?

 

YES! I am doing it now, but with iced tea in hand.

Pound cake is traditionally 1 pound each of: flour, sugar, butter, eggs. Yours is a bit lean, but still pretty solid, and then one puts the sugared fruit on, and the mounds of heavy whipped cream....... or Ice cream........Sounds good but open to abuse for people like me. I will video me making a pressure cooker custard, my main way of knocking off 7 large eggs. The easiest dessert there is to make, and still excellent in a simple way. (7 eggs, 1 cup mixed sugar and sugar substitute, 3.5 cups milk, 1 tea spoon vanilla. Beat, put in pressure-cooker, in same bowl, on rack, pressure cook 8 minutes, leave an hour to cool unopened- done, chill!) This was our childhood food in the Middle East when we had upset guts - which was often. To do it really well caramelize some sugar; put on bottom of bowl (always scares me that it will shatter the glass bowl) and carry on from there = pressure cooker creme caramel, great stuff.

YES! the beets give a lovely, fruity, veg, overtone to the eggs, an excellent flavor - and then the beet chunks put in the jar with the eggs are also excellent. Want to know how to do it? I never have a recipe so just make it up each time, but it is always excellent, and so easy. I will note the amounts I use and put it down and then latter tell you how I used too much of this and that - after you have also made your batch. Pickled eggs are a staple of mine - not just pretty on the salad, but a truly good addition. It is time to make another batch - in fact I will make some tonight possibly, , only one egg left in the jar - but then am out of cooked beet - still plenty in the garden though.

 

What happened to Sheal and Fern?

I have 15 of the very small banti/Orphington cross eggs on the stove right now (I am in for a large iced tea). I kept them for over a month in the back of the fridge (eggs less than two weeks old are hard to peel, less than a week really hard to peel.) I use the method of covering with cold water, bring to boil - then turning off and covering for: 15 min large, 9 smallish, 8 for small - cool right down in tap water then. Time to make pickled eggs, get your dozen eggs and a can of beets - or couple whole boiled beets (use little water - you will need a cup of beet water to make them really purple if you wish), some white vinegar, the really cheap stuff is fine (%5), some pickling spices (1 tsp) and some white sugar and a quart jar and pickle along with me.

So I over heated the incubator eggs possibly, sigh. Last night I checked them and the temp was 4 degrees F high! Just out of the blue, after 3 weeks of smooth running. I do not expect them to have survived as today is when they should hatch and I could hear no cheeping from the eggs. Why that happened is a complete mystery.

The good news is I get my large machine tomorrow. It was supposed to have been here a month ago. If that is coming I definitely want to look at that really poor bit of land I could possibly buy back in the woods. I have shorts on and it is way back in the wild blackberry briar, green briar, wild rose, laden woods. I will get stuck up, but this machine would whack a trail back and clear it off easily. My memory from going back years ago - and it is hard going, is that making a road back on the other side has caused it to be non-draining in real wet so the trees may have died. - it would be right beside an excellent bit of woods though - need to look. I am going to log onto a satellite mapping program to get more info of where it is off in thicket forest. If I would buy it then I would have to survey it - would not pay anyone to do it - I do surveying (like everything else) but would not be fun dragging lines through the thorns and triangulating. I had surveyed one bit elsewhere through head tall wild rose - talk about thorns!

 

Chick update - because something I found interesting. The chicks should have hatched last night/today - but it had gone to 104f (99.9f is right) which is a lethal temp depending on the duration.

But one banti chick hatched - such a loud nonstop shrieking that I carried it out and stuck it under a hen. If you have hatched with an incubator the chicks just keep yelling, and loud. They will be quiet if you pick them up, or will go completely silent if you put them on a hen - they just burrow under and shut up.

So I figured they were dead - the one hatched was off in a corner furthest from the heat. So I read about a late hatch and read that you put the egg in a bowl of warm water and if it keeps jiggling it is alive. So I did, three, one at a time, and two did jiggle minutely after I let them be still. I had never heard of that. But they did - very tiny motions, but were movements, not just momentum. So will see tomorrow.

edit - off to pick the berries and set rat traps - lost 2 tomatoes to rats last night where the berries are the heaviest hit - a good crop there but almost none harvested. 2 traps. I had a laissez fair attitude because the berries are finishing - but now the tomatoes, have to act.

 

OK, the eggs.............

So I water floated the lot and 6 had movement, but weak compared to the youtube examples. A little egg had opened its shell yesterday at about 7 pm - with lots of shrieking but then gave it up - as they do when it is just not meant to be. I later gave it a bit of boost, which is not recommended, and pulled back a patch of shell bigger than my thumb nail and went to bed.

This morning - just a minute ago, I picked it up, the membrane had become 'shrink wrap' as they call it and the chick had made no progress in 15 hours and must be dead - so I picked it up to throw in the bayou but it squeaked. And I peeled it open carefully, very delicate indeed, and it flopped about in my hand looking exactly like every new chick. (They are very ugly; wet, huge feet and head, naked looking - but in a couple hours are fluffed out and cute.



Another egg has punctured the shell and quit - and thus is life. This gardening, animal keeping thing we do - it is odd, one has to think on existence. 20 days of good conditions, 24 eggs, and one day of what amounts to an extreme, dangerous, fever for us and the damage is done.

I am raising this brood as meat birds which means life for a few months only first it means hatching, Then the hen and running about, 3 weeks and the hen kicks them away and they group alone together and really find the world. My pack of 8; the last brood that about 5 weeks ago were hatched, they are always off in the woods, always this group up to something, going somewhere and digging into what ever is there. The old hens spend the mid day in dug bowls in their dust pile, sunning. they look like dead things, laying on their side with a wing out exactly like a road kill. The chicks are off scouring their turf - too much to see and eat, too much to do for sleeping.

Chicken and the egg thing...when is a fertilized egg a chick? What does it mean to nurture it to butchering time? I like it, bit unpleasant to kill them, but not so much - more just the bother of butchering and then processing the meat and cleaning up afterwards. I do not know why I do it all; really it is cheaper to buy it - the industrial product that is produced with every minute efficiency ironed out till there is not one hundredth of a penny that has not been figured out a hundred times and cut by a thousandth.

I have been out between these paragraphs - checked the rat traps under the berry bushes, baited with peanut butter, nothing. I can't blame them, they are in the garden of edenish ways - terriers and Chihuahuas though, but all else they need is there; in warm and easy times.

 

Hi Colne, no I haven't deserted! My son-in-law had my computer for a few days to sort out problems with SKYPE. I won't know until next weekend whether it's working properly when I SKYPE for a couple of hours with my son in Columbus. I've also been celebrating my birthday so haven't had much time to spend here on GC.

You say when is a fertilised egg a chick? We could ask the same question about a foetus and a baby but that's a whole different scenario. I would say when the chick is fully formed and ready to hatch.

 

Ha, I got banned from Urban 75, the anarchist site, for discussing the legality of sex selection abortion which was in all the news as Parliament raged impotently and the CPS recoiled at the impossibility of their position and everyone else had an oar to put in. Cannot ask for a better radical site topic than that moral, ethical, and legal morass. Too good actually.

But the chicks™ have kept coming a bit and I have stuffed 4 eggs with peeping coming from them under the hen - and 2 actual chicks. She is happy. Hens make a tic tic tic sound when they hear a hatching or distress tiny chick to call it, but especially to sooth it. And she dutifully did and it worked well. Did I mention I had a black orphington hen go broody so kept her going for the last 10 days with a marked egg, to be ready for these chicks - works well, and a couple are likely hers too.

But I got my big machine today - 650 pounds, V 2 Honda, 26 horsepower, over six foot long, 40 inches wide. Ran well up the ramps and into the truck but it was getting dark as we got home so did not unload it. And bought $70 of feeds! A lot. 50# of layer pellets, 50# chick growing crumbles, 50# of mixed grains (mostly cracked corn, then milo and small amounts of others.) The layer pellets have a flax seed product added (it was being promoted and the same price) (by Purina) so high Omegs3 - cholesterol fighting - with pogies should be extra good.

Then 25 pounds of %34 protein fish food. Floating pellets, I carried some out as I quickly picked the blackberries (over 1 and 1/2 pound today) and the fish love it!

My wife lost my video camera a few days ago - in case you noticed I am not posting any, I have found a couple things I would have filmed but no.

So tomorrow: cook, vacuum pack, freeze the last beets using a bit to: Make pickled eggs, and run off another batch of pavlovas - all would have been videoed as I think I can really crank that stuff out but not this time. Then run my machine and plant the two Kumquats I bought. Wal-Mart had nice kumquats, 1 gallon pots, but 4 foot tall, spindly a bit, and with a good bit of green fruit on them - for $10 each! I grabbed 2. (they are closing their whole trees and spring plant sections out and all must go.)

So off to eat - making a Waldorf salad, a real favorite - Bosnian kebabs which I will have in a baguette as a hamburger with garden tomato and solid lettuce, crab soup, and a frozen hazel nut torte thing I could not resist (will whip cream too).

 

Well, no topical photo - so I just popped back for a minute as the dogs eat and thought a picture should be sent - and so here is one particularly good at showing the raw intelligence my dogs radiate

 

I see no one 'liked' the picture of the wet, new, chick yet 'liked' the pictures of the puppies. cuteism run rampant; you all should be ashamed.

Two more chicks this morning, getting a bit of a haul - I must have gotten the date wrong for the hatching.

Rain coming. I want to unload my machine but I would rather wait for my wife because the front has small wheels (it mostly rides on a welded steel skid - but has little wheels for running around on concrete) that catch in the truck ramps which is not good. A heavy, stuck, machine halfway down a ramp alone is bad.

 

The wet new chick will be eaten in a few weeks. Can't be bothered with shame.

 

I didn't 'like' the wet chick as I've seen enough chicks to last a lifetime, not chickens though. My mum bred parakeets and budgerigars for many years.

 

Colne, I don't understand why you say we should be ashamed ? I think it looks very unattractive - all birds do when they are that young. Should I be ashamed of that ?
Jenny