Category: Food: Cooking and Enjoying
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Carqueja
Carqueja (Genista tridentata) is a low growing plant which covers the hillside with it’s yellow blooms at this time of year. The flowers, harvested now and carefully dried, can be used throughout the year as a tea or an addition to rice. Our neighbours grant it incredible medicinal powers, from a cure for colds and more »
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Optimist
You know, one of the great things about growing a garden is that you can try again next year. Here’s this year’s carrot harvest. I’m looking for recipe suggestions 🥕🥕😆🤣🥕🥕
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Busy Day
Busy day, and soon a freezer full of meat. So many thanks to friends who helped.
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Wild Food Walk
On each of our summer Permaculture Design Courses, we try to mix classroom based sessions with practical. One of the practical sessions Josh and I work together one is often a Wild Food walk, identifying the plants which nature has blessed us with for food and medicine. If you’re a follower of our blog you’ll more »
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In the Kitchen: Bottling Elderflower Cordial
One thing we’re not short of at Casalinho at this time of year are elderflowers. We love to dry them for making tea throughout the year, but I also make lots and lots of elderflower cordial whilst they’re in season. Recipes abound, but this is my tried and tested one – Elderflower Cordial recipe. more »
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Rendering Lard
I finally got around to jarring up the lard which we’d carefully rendered from our pig fat today. When processing the meat, any scraps of white fat were set aside. Heated very very gently with a scrap of water to set them off and prevent burning, these were melted down to make lard. Today I more »
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In the Kitchen: Broom Blossom Pickles
The hillsides and road edges are vibrant yellow here at the moment with the blooms of the broom bushes (Cytisus scoparius – Scotch, or Common Broom). The flowers have an interesting flavour, and I like to pickle a few jars for use on salads through out the year. As with any wild food, don’t more »
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Pig nuts
Have you ever dug for pig nuts? You perhaps can’t see them well in this photo, but in the cleared patch surrounded by broom there are masses of white flowers on very delicate leaves. Each of these has a tuber underground which once dug up is absolutely delicious. You’ll know how passionate I am about more »
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Eat Up All Your Vegetables!
I wrote this back in 2014. Spending some time away from home reliant on supermarket veggies brought it to mind again. If you’ve gone to all the time and trouble to grow something delicious and nutritious, you’ll want to make the most of it. Well, that’s the way we look at it anyway! We don’t more »
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Seasonal decor?
Seasonal decor, Casalinho style. Home made chorizo and morcela dry curing above the stove. It’s been a busy few weeks, with the killing and processing of our first home grown pig and the completion of the olive harvest keeping us busy. More on what we’ve been up to in due course, but in the meantime more »