Here’s a healthy patch of Fat Hen (Chenopodium alba), building up it’s seed supply, close to our local Chinese restaurant today.
I saw lots of beautiful Yew (Taxus bacata) berries (contain very poisonous seeds) around town today along with a few more fallen but unripe Gingko biloba fruit. Autumn is definitely here!
Today on a walk to the local swimming pool we found a lovely stand of Rose bushes which are still partly in flower. I harvested a handful to their into an old Indian ginger tonic recipe. It’s very simple and we’ll look at it on the Exotic herbs workshop on 14th October.
In almost every place I turned this morning, there were Gallant Soldiers growing. Now is a good time to harvest, dry and store this little herb for use, especially in potato dishes, through the winter. See day 154, for some background on the herb and a link to a traditional Colombian recipe which requires this South American herb.
Here’s a welcome sight in Amsterdam at the moment; the fruit of Potentilla indica (Barren strawberry) continue to look just like little strawberries on the floor of shady areas. They are not at all strawberries but they are edible and interesting. Step them in vodka or honey for an interesting drink and pudding accompaniment respectively.
Another tasty herb, Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacae). Can be used in place of mint for teas and some medicinal preparations.
Just a quickie today;
Calendula seed heads ripening on treepit plants. These plants will go on flowering into the winter. They grow very easily from seed so why not collect some and spread them around? The flowers and leaves taste aromatic and better, they have a multitude of uses in food and peoples medicine.
Here’s Yarrow, a scarlet flowering variety but just as useful as the white native variety. This evergreen herb is still flowering in town and still surviving the strimmers! One of it’s country names is nose bleed, it has many uses including regulating blood flow.
I harvested three tiny prices of that fungus which I found a couple of days ago. I have checked it’s identity in the woods, at home in books, online with reliable sites and as there is nothing nasty I could confuse it with, I felt happy to cook a little. The photograph above is a little washed out but below you’ll see I’ve placed my test harvest against the photo in one of my mushroom books. What a beautiful colour!
It is Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) and boy does it taste good, simply fried in a little ghee! It does taste quite similar to chicken, it is meaty in texture too. If it sits well in my stomach, I’ll be harvesting some more tomorrow. This isn’t going to turn into a fungus foraging blog, I don’t have enough experience of them and it’s so easy to go disastrously wrong, but if I find more interesting autumn fungi I’ll certainly post them here.
Rosehips (Rosa spp.) continue to ripen.
As do Haws on the Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) shrubs and trees.
I got all excited to see thousands of fallen Sweet chestnuts, at the front if Huis Frankendael but they are to small to do anything much with. Hopefully they have been shed to help the tree focus on building up carb’s in the rest.
It’s still possible to harvest as much as you like of invasive alien Himalayan Balsam. The flowers have a nice taste, quite mild and like lettuce. I heard of someone using the stems as drinking straws recently. That could be interesting too.
I think these are the sought after roots of Cat‘s Tails, dredged up in the current canal clearance operation. They don’t look very appetising in that must soup though.
And lastly, Feverfew having a brilliant second flower flush. So bitter and do linked in traditional medicine to the treatment of migraine.
Today is beautifully autumnal; a crisp, bright morning followed by a dimmly lit afternoon and an all pervading air of quiet, inward, downward energy.
If you like to attune to the cycles of nature, you may notice that this is a time to slow down, to store energy, to reflect on what has gone well and otherwise in your life. It’s a time to sew seeds in your soul and the soil; seeds that will benefit from the transformative powers of winter darkness.
We visited the Hermitage museum this morning. There’s an enormous, somewhat stylish, lawn filled space in the middle of the building, which I hope is home to more than just grass. Close to the inner entrance of the museum is this stately pair of Horse Chestnut trees. Parts of this tree species can be used in capillary tightening preparations.
Back at home, I thought it was time to share a photo of this useful and (I think) beautiful, creeping evergreen herb. It arrived on the wind at “my” tree pit, sometime this summer. It’s such a tasty and interesting little plant, mostly overlooked but offering many uses thoughout the while year. If Ground Ivy sets root on a patch near you, I hope you’ll welcome it and try it.
Lastly, Hollyhock seeds – again! I keep on mentioning them, hoping and dreaming that there will be a few more of these useful beauties growing and being used in the city, as a result. Please collect them and save them to sew next spring, or better still collect them and sew them right away in every dull tree pit or neglected corner of soil you can find! Just rub the soil over a little with your shoe, to make them less obvious to paying birds. No digging required, just plant them and hope! Search this site and others for medicinal uses of this relative of Marsh Mallow.
I’m enjoying the autumn equinox and making Hawthorn things, so a quick post today. I hope you are enjoying the day too!
Hops (Humulus lupulus), beautiful flowers for drying, using, sleeping, brewing.
Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna).
Pennsylvania Pelitory
Elderberries, not many of these left.
Holly berries (not edible)
Elder trunk
Above, Cherry Laurel
A beautiful fungus, probably not edible but it looks remarkably like Chicken in the Woods to me and I remember that from Exmoor. May have to get my mushroom books out before tomorrow’s walk…
Some time ago Amalie and Daniel joined me for a herb walk alongside Park Frankendael. One of the plants which was in bloom at the time was Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna). Amalie knew the berries from Denmark and kindly sent me some recipes to try and share. Hawthorn is in fruit right now, it is a common hedgerow plant and the berries (well “pomes” actually but they look like berries) are edible raw or cooked. Most of each fruit is seed, these need to be strained out of any recipe unless you’d like blunt teeth.
Here are the two recipes from Amalie, plus one I have been experimenting with, which doesn’t need sugar. I also posted a Hawthorn Elixir recipe a short while ago which may be interesting.
Hawthorn puree and juice
1 liter of hawthorn berries
300 grams of sugar
Water
Mash the berries into a puree.
Add the sugar and heat to about 70°C (hot, steamy but not boiling). Strain out the seeds.
The puree can be used for various things including the making of Hawthorn juice, by diluting in water (1 part puree to 10 parts water).
Hawthorn with apples and prunes
½ liter hawthorn berry juice (see above)
750 grams of apples, peeled, cored and quartered
100 grams of prunes, roughly chopped
Sugar (as much as you like to taste)
Cook apples and prunes in the hawthorn juice until the apples turn to pulp and the prunes are swollen, soft and succulent. Then add the sugar to taste. If you like, you can add a bit of melatin with pectin, to thicken it all up.
This can be stored in sterile canning jars or eaten straight away.
Haw & Honey Syrup
1. Spread your Hawthorn berry (Haws) out in your kitchen for a while to give any bug residents time to relocate. (dry Haws can also be used but they’ll need to simmer for much longer in step 4, to soften them up)
2. Clean your Haws in fresh water.
3. Place them in a small saucepan and almost cover them with just boiled water.
4. Bring to the boil and simmer for just a couple of minutes, to soften everything up a little.
5. Remove from the heat and slow to cool enough to handle.
6. Strain and push out the juice/mush through a standard kitchen sieve. Get out as much as possible. Squidge it with your fingers and a widen spoon. Combine the mush with the water that was used to simmer.
7. When the juice had cooled to being warm but not hot, stir in a nice big dollop of good quality runny honey.
8. Give it all a good stir and chance to combine before storing in a pressure safe glass bottle or jar (like an old flip bung Grolsch bottle).
Use as a tasty winter tonic, straight or mixed. Hawthorn is best known as a gentle heart tonic, for the emotions and the circulatory system.
Just one photo today, of Gallant Soldiers (Galinsoga parviflora, NL Kaal knopkruid) in a crack at the local garage (where we took our car to get the golfball hailstone dents taken out). I certainly would advise anyone against harvesting from such a location, as it’s sure to be polluted but it certainly is a nice example of this edible plant. Gallant Soldiers seems to be everywhere at the moment so if you develop a taste for it, you certainly won’t go hungry.
It was apparently brought to the UK Kew Gardens from Peru, in 1798 and made a very successful break for freedom. It has since become a garden weed throughout Europe and much effort is put into weeding it out. However it is edible and tasty, it’s used to spice up a particular potato & chicken soup called Ajiaco, in Colombia and I intend to try it out this weekend. The only problem for me being that each time I see it, it’s growing in quite dirty locations. It’s obviously quite a survivor! Here’s a recipe which seems to be fairly authentic, although it does use stock cubes. The herb they name as Guascas is Gallant Soldiers.
As I was searching for more uses of the plant I found this treasure trove of a website. Scroll through the list of herbs to find out African uses. Gallant soldiers is apparently a known wound herb in Kenya. Pound the leaves and stem, squeeze the juice onto the wound.
I bought a few more lovely storage Kilner bottles, from a shop around the corner if my house today. On the way from it, I found a street full of well tended hollyhock plants, with this years flower stems removed and the first year plants, which should flower next summer, taking over the plots. Such a useful city herb.
Here is another wonderful herb, seen less often in the city, Hops (Humulus lupulus), growing up and over the front fence of the NH Tropen Hotel. What a wonderful choice of herb. Perfect for a good night’s sleep. Now is a good time to gather the seed heads, they are used to stuff dream pillows and make numerous remedies.
At the bases of the same fence other plants have crept in. this one looks like Hazel. I didn’t notice any nuts.
Urban Herbology 