I’ve got my zest(er) back

I’m in Italy, in a tiny house with a tiny garden, in the middle of a tiny village, surrounded by stunning countryside, friendly people and delicisousness in the bushes and in the shops (when we are allowed to go to them)!!!

I’ve started replacing all the wonderful things I had, one thing that I was very upset about was the loss of my microplane, I know it’s easy to replace, but it wasn’t just about replacing things and filling my life up again

I had been fundamentally changed by the fire, so I didn’t really want to cook much anymore, I did kind of get into it last autumn, when we arrived in Italy and spent days foraging and making sloe cheese, quince everything and figgy stuff

which I loved, but then I lost the desire again with the breakdown of my marriage and the subsequent, sudden death of my husband…….

I’ve been in Italy since lockdown, organising what has fondly become known as “Italy death bollox” and whilst I was appreciating being here, in a remote and beautiful country, I still had no desire to cook much. let alone forage………

It’s been a long time since I lived anywhere where there were any hedgerows, and it’s a wonderful thing, there’s so much diversity here, you don’t even have to look very hard, you just have to have the right eyes in, a bit like mushroom hunting, once you tune into your environment a multitude of abundance reveals itself…..

What’s nice about foraging is the chance to just stop and admire what is growing out there, the countryside is rife with life, identifying it and making it into something is therapeutic not to mention practical, what’s even better is that when you crack open a jar of something, from whatever season it came from, you are instantly reminded of that time, the picking of it, the light, the sounds, the winding down of the days, the changing of the seasons, this is one of the most evocative things about growing, preserving and making, it’s a reminder that the simple things are the best, it’s the time that you were most calm and happy and grateful, to just be with nature and give thanks by turning her gifts into a culinary delight, elderflower cordial heralds the beginning of a new season for me, a season of abundance, after the quiet time of winter in the hedgerows, it’s a new start, a fresh start with a fresh drink to whet the appetite and forge ahead with a new strength and vigour and determination……..here we go again!!!

blackberries

today’s foraging haul
5lbs blackberries

stored in the freezer for deliciousness in the winter

an odorous task

I’ve harvested the garlic and onions, firstly I want to say how bitterly disappointing both these crops are, when I lived in England I had an allotment which was heavy clay, with easy access to all kinds of manure, everything flourished, esp. the garlic and onions. I had never had a problem growing these basic crops, until, that is I came to Portugal. Despite my efforts to get nutrients into the soil, other than the first year here (land had been fallow for quite a few years), I have yet to have a successful crop, by successful I mean enough onions and garlic to last the whole year. I had always grown onions from sets, sowing in late Autumn, this year was the last year for that. All the sets I grew went to seed,

which made up over half my crop. The rest were plugs bought from the market and planted in early spring, these did not go to seed.

So, from now on I will either try and grow my own plugs or buy from the market. Gone to seed onions do not store at all, whilst you can cut off the seed head, get rid of the head and cut the stalk up and saute in butter (very delicious), they will not grown anymore. I had to skin and chop 7 kilos of onions, with the idea of freezing them…….having been given a lot of ziploc bags recently (again, generous friends from Canada) I decided I would double bag all these onions and put them in my freezer……..bad move……i had to take them out and quadruple bag them and they still smell and are stinking up all my fruit, so they’ve gone to live in my friends, mostly savoury freezer, they said they don’t mind, they may change their minds, in retrospect, I should have wrapped them in smaller portions in tin foil and then bagged them……..the freezers here at the farm are still stinky.

The garlic again has been disappointing, I gave up with my experiment of growing my own from my own seed (see previous blog entries) and bought some teeth (as they call them here), they’ve not done too badly but again alot went to seed.

Lessons learned:

don’t grown from sets from here (they are probably not heat treated)

don’t plant too early

don’t plant too late

don’t let plants get cold

don’t let plants get hot

what a faff!!!