Teas & Tisanes

Berber Artisans and City Life

Margaret Lear Status Appletree Places, Dishes/Comestibles, Firewood, Fruit Press, Habitats, Purposeful Plants, Resources, Spring, Teas & Tisanes, Wild Food

My trip from mountain to City was very eventful, but that’s for another day….I love to see people who can make things! I watched a leather worker in Chefchaouan make me a wallet, but in the maze of Marrakesh you can see gates being welded, chickens gutted, bed heads being carved, banjos being stretched, fabrics being woven and all within a few hundred yards of each other….well I did get lost and spent a happy 2 hours or so looking for the exit! If you have been there you will understand!  What a rich den of skilled people, they are highly inventive and recycle lots of odds and ends as part of their craft. The very narrow alleyways are surprisingly cool in the 34 degrees of last week. But watch out for the caleches, donkey carts, motorbikes and the sort of one way system of people!

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In contrast I visited the Yves Saint Laurent Jardin Majorel. I was told it was a major tourist attraction…I was there at daybreak so saw no-one else, but wow what a place! I’m not surprised it’s popular. It is the most perfectly manicured garden I have ever seen and very stunning in design and colour. And there’s a very good Berber Museum within.

Majorelle

Majorelle

Cacti Forest

Cacti Forest

So my intention to see horticulture here was more or less achieved, at least in the North, seeing the contrast of home vegetable gardening, small farms and large commercial farmers. It is a rich productive land wherever water allows in the mostly dry and rocky landscape.  Some dusty French hikers told of rich valleys in the High Atlas and Walnut groves, and where are these Argon trees…….mmmm next time…..oh and did i tell you about the air display at the airport, and the Romans at Larache, and the El Djemma Fna Concert show?

Djemma Fna

Djemma Fna

A Berber Way Of Life

Margaret Lear Status Appletree Places, Blogs, Dishes/Comestibles, Flora, Fruit Press, Habitats, Spring, Teas & Tisanes, Uncategorized, Wild Food
Peaches

Peaches

Well where to start! I experienced a week or so of life with a berber family at  Ribat El Kheir in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco. On route I passed a large commercial Apple Orchard, apparently 200 hectares or so of very closely spaced dwarf trees, all for export.  They have many deep wells to support the parched terrain and the workers are paid bonuses, so work very hard I was told.

The peaches were in flower in one of the smaller orchards around me. All the trees in this plot were headed back at about 30cm to make an upright open framework.

My week was very relaxed, looking after a few cows, many types of poultry, rabbits,  doves and pigs. And a lot of time relaxing and drinking tea with neighbours….and of course delicious tagines! All food is shared, there are no separate plates, and it is most often scooped up with bread with your right hand. The bread is flat and unleavened in Morocco and made fresh each day. We ate it a lot.The mint tea is very sweet and refreshing in the heat.

Tagine Dindons!

Tagine Dindons!

We also ate omelettes and dipped bread in olive oil, as well as a semolina in a sour milk, butter milk maybe? The daughter made it in a plastic bottle, rolling it on the floor for an hour or so. Also side dishes of sweet broad beans and a fennel paste from the buds of the wild fennel around us.

Fennel

Fennel

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The Berbers lived simply, and ate what they grew or farmed mostly. They had a bottled gas cooker and oven, but no electricity, though new pylons at the end of the farm lane forewarn of a change to come. It was very amusing to see Berber shepherds using mobile phones to communicate with each other across the hill! Samsungs are ubiquitous!

Berber Brebis

Berber Brebis

A stunning landscape was my daily view, often with these Berber sheep which are kept on the move all day to eek out the few weeds. This field will not be sown because it is too dry this year….incomes are so precarious here! The puit ( well ) is a vital element in life here; the French Colonialists in the 1920’s chose these areas to create commercial farms as they had a reliable source.

Le Source

Le Source

I saw these wooden ploughs being used behind mules and oxen in many areas. Such is the contrasting extremes easily seen in this country twixt the traditional ways and modern city life. And so to the city….

Wooden Plough

Wooden Plough

Espagnol in Morocco

Margaret Lear Status Appletree Places, Blogs, Dishes/Comestibles, Estuary/Wetlands, Fruit Press, Purposeful Plants, Seashore, Spring, Teas & Tisanes

I have just spent a few weeks in Morocco on a farm and travelling around and thought i would record some of the events here. Those of you who have visited this fascinating country will be familiar with much of what is to follow!

English Breakfast

English Breakfast

I failed to secure a hostel in any of the Spanish enclaves so plumped for the longer ferry from Algeciras in Spain to Tangiers Med port.A lovely way to enter Africa, but not without a last breakfast of Eggs and bacon on the ferry.

Then refusal to pay 200 dirham for a grand taxi toute seule, ( thanks Lonely Planet my trusty companion ), and eventually got crammed into one with 4 others for a mad dash to Tangier bus station for 30 dirham. And there I enjoyed my first chaotic experience of the bus stations in Morocco, albeit with a few exceptions like the lovely CTM one at Tetouan. Anyway, I now knew to look for shared lifts, and waited patiently for a cheap shared grand taxi to Assilah. There’s always a headman ready to guide you …its actually quite a good system. But good to get away from that busy place and arrive at the wee town of Assilah by the sea ( though crammed in with 6 others this time! ) .Miles of beaches along the coast en route.

Mint Tea

Mint Tea

My memories of this place are of children moving to and from school at all times of the day, great mint teas, Spanish being spoken, prayers called at 5am, and the one shop with beer for sale!

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Woodhouse Coffee Shop

Lynsey Payne Appletree Shop, Cider & Ale, Farm Shop, Fruit Press, Teas & Tisanes

Hot on the heels of my last coffee blog I continue the theme here after visiting the Woodhouse Coffee shop near Kippen (on appletree business of course!).
Its very accessible from Stirling, and on a roundabout also so easy access to the large car park.
The shop was loaded with interesting goodies including many organic items, the largest pie I have ever seen from the Kippen Butcher section, teas of exotic nature, and a fine selection of interesting beers and ales. Also a few ciders from Cornwall with weird colours, a must try for the future!
Slightly puzzled at the lack of vegetables in a farm shop, though there was a ‘naughty’ sweety section….what nae spuds?
Its fab to sit on a comfy cushion in a cafe, and recycled ones too, and I love all the wooden tables, boxes and baskets etc. Solar panels on the roof also….You get a ‘hello’ as you enter and there were plenty of staff serving on a Monday afternoon.
But best of all was the list of teas you can buy! And I ordered a good latte before I read down the list. Mistake, as a ‘Gunpowder’ would have been just the ticket or a chai! Lunch of Fennel and lemon soup will also wait for my next visit.
On the way out – oops a ‘Grapevine’ pale ale for a pick me up  later tonight….it comes recommended from a local microbrewery. You do know about the old Kippen grapes, the world record holder? No, maybe the owners should put a photo on the wall? You’d be impressed. So cycle out a few miles from Stirling or pop in en route to the west and enjoy a cuppa!Woodhouse Cofee Shop

More Dock Puddings and some wild onions

Margaret Lear Berries, Broadleaved Woods, Diary entries, Estuary/Wetlands, Flora, Hedgerow, Mountain, Pudding, Salad, Spring, Teas & Tisanes, Vegetables, Wine Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Oddly enough now I don’t have to drink herbal teas, I’m really enjoying some of them! Mints are growing  now, so lots of choices – chocolate, basil, apple, eau de cologne… or shall I just have peppermint? All taste so fresh, so green and lively. Mind you I am inundated with orders for mints that are really hard to keep up with given the slow start into growth – must be the herb of the year. Bistort is everywhere just now, and I’ve been making more traditional dock puddings, using oatmeal and a little chopped bacon with the variety of wild leaves around now.

River floodplains throw up some odd edible plants at times – in an old orchard next to the River Tay at its tidal extent Andrew found not only Ramsons (Allium ursinum), but also Three cornered leek (Allium triquetrum) and what we think was Field Garlic growing wild. They went into a salad to go with the first barbecue of the year last weekend. On a field trip with my countryside students this week, we enjoyed snacking on fresh lemony-sharp leaves of Wood Sorrel – a real appetite stimulant. We harvested a few juniper berries from the wild trees near Rumbling Bridge; they add a fantastic aroma and taste to game dishes. It was nice to note the pretty, bell-shaped flowers of the blaeberry or bilberry up in the hills, promising a harvest to come. Had another taste of bracken shoots, but I remain unconvinced. I don’t like the texture and the taste is woolly and bitter. Better wayside snacks are brand-new lime leaves, hawthorn shoots and the first broom buds, tasting of new pea pods, all available now.

Blackthorn, along with cherry blossom, seems to be very floriferous this year – I have noted where to go for sloes, but must find something other than gin to make with them, as we never seem to drink it all! Andrew’s explorations of relict orchards have identified potential pears in the autumn; we are looking forward to apple blossom time – just beginning here with our James Grieve wonder-tree against the shed.

Who else is back? HIRUNDO! the first swallows were spotted in Bankfoot on Sunday……. and an orange-tip butterfly…….. the ospreys are home, to and busy breeding…… St. G’eorges Day tomorrow – look out for St George’s Mushrooms! (and the dragons who got away).

Losing It.

Margaret Lear Bog, Flora, Hedgerow, Herbal Remedies, Pudding, Spring, Teas & Tisanes, Vegetables Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

This week I’ve been increasingly bored with what I’m eating, and failing to do much about it. High point was James next door discovering a row of parsnips he’d forgotten about and didn’t want; lovely roasted with pheasant on Sunday, but then it was on to another week of variants on stew which all tasted the same. On Thursday I even forgot to take the food flask to work, so went from 7am to 6pm on a boiled egg and some REALLY boring yarrow tea. My students offered me various Pot Noodles and Crisp Rolls but I resisted; even the cake, with which one student insisted on rewarding me  in shock at passing an assessment, I passed on to a colleague whose birthday it was. By the time I crawled home, I considered myself crazy to be doing this.

And then I ate a baked potato and a poached egg and was full, and couldn’t be bothered to eat or prepare anything else. Not surprisingly, I am losing weight. I need a belt to keep my trousers up. What’s helping me lose weight? Not avoiding carbohydrate (as a one-time (briefly) Atkins diet veteran, I couldn’t go through that again). I am eating less carbohydrate – and what I am eating is mostly the starchy kind. But then I’m eating less of everything. No dairy produce – apart from the small quantity of home made cheese I’ve now discarded (partly suspicion it didn’t smell so good, partly because I dropped it in the washing up water).

Anyway – crossly I chopped up skinny leeks and bits of vegetables and herbs, pushing aside  packets of biscuits left out to annoy me and odd bunches of dried chillies…… hang on. How could I have forgotten? I GREW THOSE CHILLIES – AND DRIED THEM IN 2007! So I could use them! Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Chopped and chucked one into the stew – would it still have any power? It did! Oh joy, a change in flavours….. and I had the first of my forced rhubarb for pudding; so tender and sweet I had only to add a touch of redcurrant jelly to make it palateable.

Sweeteners – honey and sycamore syrup – are getting low, it’s a good thing I am getting used to sharper tastes. Wild greens are forming a larger part of my diet. Orpine (Sedum telephium), a native succulent with fleshy, crunchy leaves, is available, nice in salads and I’ve added it to stew as well. Nettles are appearing, and I’ve seen the first Bistort coming up, so will try a variant on Dock Pudding soon. Comfrey and ground elder remain mainstays – going in everything. Wild garlic and Welsh Onions and Three-cornered leeks are lined up to replace garden leeks of which I have only 4 left. No hardship in wild greens – they have always been one of my favourite foods. I like their strong, pronounced flavours and the freshness after months of root veg.

I also noticed Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) coming up – a beautiful white flowered native found in dampt meadows andboggy ground. It contains salicylic acid, and aspirin was first synthesised from it. I made some meadowsweet tea forthwith, it is a quite distinct flavour, can cure a headache (not that I had one) and as welcome a change drinks wise as peppermint was last week.. I am now past the half-way point to Easter Sunday, a challenge coming up next week when I go off to Ullapool for a 3 day student trip, if I get through that I’ll be on the downhill stretch.

The “Humble” Potato and Respite from Spinach

Margaret Lear Flora, Fritters, Fruit, Hedgerow, Nuts, Salad, Spring, Teas & Tisanes, Vegetables Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Ian from the church (who has previously cheered my dietary life with a bag of apples) has given me a big bag of potatoes from his farm! Suddenly I don’t have to eke out tatties for the rest of Lent – I have plenty. This is reassuring, and potatoes aren’t known as versatile for nothing. Having an abundance of them and very co-operative hens just now, I made a pile of savoury potato bubble and squeak “pancakes” – mashed potatoes, combined with beaten eggs, herbs, seasoning, onion and assorted greens, and fried. Very tasty – as a meal, accompaniment to breakfast, or a snack. Cottage pies of various  types come to mind – had I enough fat left I could even make crisps (but then I’m forgetting I don’t actually like crisps).

Things running out:
All freezer vegetables
home made soft cheese
hazelnuts
Fresh onions and leeks (beetroot and celeriac already gone)
Venison fat

Things still plentiful:
Meat (alive or otherwise)
Frozen soft fruit
Donated apples and potatoes
Herbs, dried and fresh

New foods appearing:
Comfrey, Ground Elder and other weeds for greens
Orpine, wild garlic and other wild plants for salads
MINT!!!!  and other aromatic plants at last for teas – which have suddenly become more palateable

The now rapid growth of spring greens (even seedling brassicas that I’ve sown are coming on now) means that I can have a rest from spinach. There’s still some in the freezer, but not much else veg wise, so I’m ekeing it out. With four weeks to go, I am nearly half way through Lent, and I think my body has now adjusted to the change in diet. My thinking has changed a lot – no longer panicking about what I am going to eat, no longer really thinking about it very much either. Sometimes I manage to make something really enjoyable like the potato pancakes, sometimes I think “oh no not another egg”, but I’m not craving other people’s food all the time now. I just know I can’t have it and so long as I’m not hungry Im not bothered. This is a new experience for me!

I realised I am still eating apples in mid-March from last autumn’s harvest, and enjoying them. OK so they have to be peeled and are a bit wizened and spotty – but perfectly edible. Normally I’d have fed any apples still hanging around by now to the hens. Now I value them and will be looking for varieties to grow that are good keepers.

Confess your sins Margaret. I nearly slipped today – the other half asked me to test his rice to see if it was ready and it got right to my mouth before I realised what I was doing. And then I needed to fry a potato pancake to go with my vegetable stew, and as the venison fat is running low, I decided it was both practical and allowable to fry it in the pan in which HE has just cooked a chop….. well it saved some fat, but the pancake did taste faintly and delightfully of pork…..

Live to eat, or eat to live?

Margaret Lear Fauna, Nuts, Pickle, Salad, Soup, Spring, Teas & Tisanes, Tree Sap, Vegetables Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I just realised I am now eating to live. And predominantly in our society we live to eat. Which I don’t have a problem about. I like food and enjoy experimenting, savouring and sharing the experience of good food.

However, now that food is more than a bit repetitive, has to be eked out and includes no real treats, I’m becoming aware how much more than physical sustenance food has always been in my head – comfort, reward, healing, social interaction, social belonging, reassurance, substitute – to name but a few! When you think that most people in the world have no choice but to eat purely to live, and don’t have the choices in what they eat that I have even during this fast – well, you have to wonder. Someone sent a comment advertising a weight loss programme – do you know what I’m thinking, it’s no wonder so many of us need to lose weight when we are using food to do so many jobs for us! What do you think?

I did have a lovely salad yesterday – the last half beetroot, half a potato and an apple, with pickled ash keys, roasted hazelnuts and a variety of weed leaves, garnished with Calendula  (marigold) petals (I’ve had some flowering away in the greenhouse all winter). Some nice garlic mustard coming up on the edge of the car park at Perth College, which went in. Back to chicken and spinach for dinner!

Second batch of curd cheese much better than the first; but the sap has stopped rising in the sycamore because its uncompromisingly cold still. Negotiating with one of my students who’s a keen fisherman for a fish in return for the ruff feather from a cockerel (for fly-tying). Starting to hate herbal teas with a vengeance! TINY little shoots appearing on my white peppermint – hurry up! it might not be rooibos, but I can live with it…

Predominantly spinch soup for lunch. Hmmm. Well it was OK for Popeye.

Spring Greens – and Winter Returns!

Margaret Lear Flora, Hedgerow, Spring, Teas & Tisanes, Vegetables Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

It has been icy today – a freezing wind, with snow and sleet. The sycamore is refusing to draw up any sap at present and I don’t blame it. But because I am worried about running out of frozen veg (that’s all the beans gone, most of the courgettes too) I decided it had to be wild spring greens today.

I dredged the largest of the little shoots of comfrey out from under the hedge and laboriously picked tiny leaves of ground elder wherever they were to be found (this covers most of my garden actually, but the best bits are round the compost heap!). Still noy enough, so I added several young dock leaves. I’ve stood up in front of numerous SWRIs (Scottish Womens Rural Institute) and stated that dock is edible at a pinch, but this was the first time I’d tried it. I boiled them all quickly together and had them with a slow-roasted cock (au vin, elderflower to be precise) for dinner. Last night’s dinner was adventurous too – eggs florentine, topped with my home-made curd cheese. Stomach must be shrinking – I couldn’t manage it all and had some for breakfast this morning.

Not much else to report – still bored to racking sobs with every “herbal” or weed tea I try; I went for gold with an infusion of dried apple and lemon balm, a favourite garden herb that smells overpoweringly of lemons and can be used in cake-making (when one is allowed flour) and let’s say it DID taste of something, but I woke early this morning from a glorious dream of REAL TEA with milk…… ah well less than 5 weeks to go now……

Andrew returned from the sunny south today and was delighted to find the peach coming into leaf and the apricot in flower bud – this is unexpected good news as he told me he wasn’t going to let it fruit for another century (or something). And I love apricots almost as much as I love tea. He didn’t bring me any wild food from Devon or any filched vegetables from his brother’s garden (difficult on a megabus anyway) but did bring me some Somerset apple juice and a couple of sponsors (Thanks Di and Betty!)

Food or First Aid? March 6th

Margaret Lear Diary entries, Flora, Hedgerow, Herbal Remedies, Salad, Spring, Teas & Tisanes Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

A couple of uneventful days up till now. My wild salads consist of: ground elder, miners lettuce, rocket, hairy bittercress (not too bitter this time of year), fennel leaves from the greenhouse, lemon balm from a pot I have put above a radiator to produce rapid leaf growth, and Brooklime (Veronica beccabunga), an aquatic weed I have growing in a small pondlet which makes good watercress. A couple more days and shoots of Orpine (Sedum telephium) will be added. As there’s not much green, I have added chopped apple and beetroot – but down to my last half beetroot unfortunately.

Actually a bit worried about running out of stored and frozen veg before Easter. I remembered today (in the course of chasing the ducks off them) that I have some celeriac in the ground still- pretty minute but packs a lot of flavour. Spotted comfrey coming up today which is a great relief as it produces lots of leaf and is quite filling, but unless we get a week or so of warm sunny weather it won’t grow very quickly. Yesterday it snowed again, and the frosts are fearfully hard just now.

This morning I put some of my curd cheese in my omelette; thanks to the garlic and herbs it was most tasty (not exactly gourmet cheese mind). Hens churning out eggs well, ducks and goose show no signs of activity. They should remember I quite like roast duck. Anyway, whilst peeling celeriac for yet another stew (this one I nearly burnt and rescued by chucking in some fish stock I had in the freezer – tasted good!), I peeled deeply into the top of my thumb. It was excruciating and bled copiously. With a big pile of washing up to do and food to both find and prepare, it had to be stopped and from past experience I know the remedy. Yarrow.

Out to the nursery to see if any had come up yet – yes, it had! Then I remembered that yarrow tea is pretty acceptable compared with rosemary and wild strawberry – do I save it for tea, or stop the bleeding? (never mind the customers, their time will come). I chose healing. Made a poultice  by grinding the yarrow, applied it to the cut  and bound it with cotton wool and tape. Then donned a disposable glove to get everything done.

As is the way with yarrow, the pain stopped almost immediately, though the blood soaked the cotton wool. When I changed the dressing an hour later, the cut had very nearly sealed over.  It should by rights be throbbing, but hey, this is one old hippy remedy that WORKS. It’ll be fine tomorrow!