A forage on the riverbank

Another sunny day on Sunday took us for a ramble down the estuary with this time plenty of bags and id books. We didn't really spot any mushrooms on this trip other than a couple of diddy generic brown ones that we didn't touch but we did get a bunch of edible free food - always good. We took my pocket gem version of the Mabey classic 'Food for Free' which I urge you to get if you have the slightest interest in this sort of thing. It has recipes as well as the expected photos and line drawings and it's compact size fitted in my jeans pocket.

We got blackberries [also multiple nettle stings, scratched arms and thorns in sides], a few apples [before backing slowly away when the bloke nearly stepped in a wasps nest], some rowanberries [watching where we were jumping in between the cowpats], a small handful of chestnuts [prickled fingers] and sloes. Lots of sloes. Even better the only bad thing that happened when we gathered sloes was that the bush swallowed my sunnies; literally, without a trace. It was like a blackthorn magic trick, they were there one minute and gone the next. Oh well. [I am the opposite of a black hole when it comes to sunnies - I repel them it seems. These were my 5th pair this year...]

Sloe gin it's going to be then so I've popped the sloes in the freezer for now. This I've made before and very good it is too, my only advice is don't take a whole batch home with you at xmas and expect to bring any back even when only staying for 2 days. No chance!

The weekend also brought the arrival of an enormous carrier bag full of cooking apples from the bloke so I'll be doing something with those over the next few days as well. Got a few recipes from the t'internet to try so should keep me busy as I've taken the next 2 days off - uses up some lieu time and tomorrow (21st) is an important day to me where I'd rather not be at work so I think a bit of home concocting / preserving and reflection time is just the thing. I have a preserving pan [ebay earlier this year] but have yet to christen it so fingers crossed some of it works!