Tag Archives: foraging

Babs goes nuts!

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Here’s some we did yesterday:

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First preheat your oven to 200°C if it’s a fan oven (higher if not), or 400°F or gas mark 6.

Then rinse the chestnuts, trim off the stem, and cut a cross in the outer skin.  If you don’t slit the skin they will explode in the oven.

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Get a grown-up to help you with this because it’s quite fiddly and needs a sharp knife.  We don’t want any fingers getting sliced!

When you’ve done that you can put your nuts on a baking tray or dish …

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We only collected a few yesterday because we’d never tried them before and didn’t want to waste too many if we didn’t like them.  Of course you may deduce now that we did like them!

Bung them in the oven and roast them until the skin peels open which should take around half an hour.

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While they are warm, peel off the outer brown skin and the inner paler skin …

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And you’ll be left with a beautiful, soft, creamy-coloured nut which is absolutely delicious:

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Yum!

Happy foraging love Babs

I just remembered …

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For the story so far, click here

vegan comic for children

vegan comic for children

To be continued ….

The following day ….

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For the story so far, click here

vegan comic for children

vegan comic for children

To be continued ….

Wild and Fruity

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Remember the No Bake Blueberry Flapjacks?  Well, I didn’t have any blueberries so I decided to improvise with something wild – the blackberries are ready!

blackberries

so many blackberries

So many blackberries and we only needed a few so we left plenty for others 🙂

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And we saw plenty of others enjoying them.

ouch

I did sustain a nasty bramble injury – ouch!

picked

But we got what we needed 😉

*****

No-Bake Sugar-Free Apple and Blackberry Flapjacks

You’ll need:

chopped apple

4 small apples, peeled and chopped.

washed blackberries

Washed, freshly-picked blackberries

soaked pitted dates

Fresh dates, pitted and soaked for 1 hour.

I didn’t measure how many blackberries I had but you can tell from how they look on the plate (it’s a small sandwich plate).  The dates weighed 200g before they were pitted and soaked.

all the fruit

blackberries and apples in first

Put the apples and blackberries into your food processor together and whiz for a few seconds until well blended.

then add dates

Then add the dates and thoroughly blend it all together.

transfer to bowl

Transfer the delicious jammy mixture into a bowl – then lick the spoon – mm mmm 😉

add oats

Mix in enough rolled oats to make a stiff mixture

put mixture in tin

and then transfer to a square tin.  Flatten down so that it’s smooth and even.  Put in fridge.

melt chocolate

Get some lovely vegan organic fair trade chocolate.

Melt it.

Cover your flapjacks.

Put them back into the fridge to set.  Done!

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These are good!  And just so you know what that means coming from me I’ll be honest and say that I don’t normally like blackberries.  I so want to like all berries – I love the look and smell of all of them, I love picking them, but blueberries are the only berries I like the taste of.  I have previously not even been able to enjoy apple and blackberry pie or crumble with sugar on.  Just don’t like ’em.

Until now.  These flapjacks are yum.  Wholesome, beautiful, wild fruit and I love ’em.

This is quite a momentous occasion for me.  I hope you like them too 🙂