Celebrating seasonal, homegrown, and wild food
Cherry blossoms might be long gone by now this year, but if you joined me in preserving some of the young buds with the recipe in this Japanese Salt-Pickled Cherry Blossoms post then this recipe is for you! If you didn't preserve any blossom buds this year, don't worry you can actually buy them online if [...]
Flowering currants are a beautiful pop of pink in gardens, parks and the occasional hedgerow in spring. They are particularly abundant in March and April, but can still be flowering in early May in more northerly parts of the UK. I love their fruity aroma and gorgeous bright colour and they are just perfect as [...]
I know it's probably a little late now for cherry blossom buds unless you live fairly far north in the UK, but I've been sharing how to make these Japanese salted, pickled cherry blossom buds over on my Instagram stories and wanted to put together a post with all of the information in one place [...]
You might have noticed a hiatus in my blog posting over the last few months. Without going into too much detail at this point, my body wasn't taking no for an answer and the enforced rest was pretty much mandatory for a while! The good news is that I'm in full health, there is nothing [...]
With May being so cold this year, a lot of things have been a little slower to appear than usual. One example is the St George's mushroom, Calocybe gambosa, which as its name suggests usually starts to appear around St George's Day, 23rd April. This year, however, they didn't seem to start appearing until much [...]
Radishes are one of the quickest foods you can grow, from seed to plate in just 4-5 weeks, and they are a great spring food with their crisp, crunchy texture and hot, peppery yet fresh flavour. I've gone from hardly liking them at all to considering them a bit of a wonder-veg. Now is the [...]
Greetings from plot 66A! When I posted this update in February we were almost knee-deep in water, ice and snow in some parts of our plot and getting very little done. Fast forward a couple of months and although things have been much drier and we have no signs of flooding (almost too dry if [...]
A little while back I would have been the first to complain that foragers seem to be obsessed with making everything into a syrup - especially flowers. However, I've gradually learned that it's one of the best ways of harnessing and preserving the flavour of many of nature's best, and most fleeting specialties. Making syrups [...]
I've loved magnolia trees ever since I was a child visiting my grandmother's cottage in spring and seeing the beautiful Magnolia soulangeana in bloom in her garden. There seem to be a lot of magnolia trees where we live - I feel very lucky to be able to walk down nearby streets and see them [...]
At this time of year there really is a sense of emerging as the blossoms and bulbs begin to flower. Saturday 20th March was the vernal/spring equinox which marks the final transition out of winter as the days and nights are of equal length. We spent the day outside on our allotment in the fresh [...]
Plot & Lane 