Foraging walk

Today we went on one of the Manchester festival walks along the Rochdale canal in Newton Heath.
It was a foraging walk led by Jesper Launder, a very knowledgeable herbalist.

The first plant we saw was Ribwort plantain, the brown tops before they flower taste nutty and the leaves are said to be good as a tea to help cure hayfever.

Ox eye daisy - unopened flowers are tasty

Ground elder - young shoots

Meadowsweet

Common/Tufted vetch - like pea shoots

We found many other edible plants, many i can't remember now but some we discussed were:

Japenese knotweed - not as deadly as is made out. (Can be kept under control by nettles)
Rosebay Willow herb
Hawthorn - flowers smell rather fishy but apparently berries make delicious ketchup
Sorrel

 Some goslings on the canal

An interesting walk and lots of new tastes to be tried!

The Rochdale Way 2

Tonight was the second leg of The Rochdale Way walk and after the awful rain yesterday it was lovely to see the sun shining as we set off from Owd Betts, down hill this time.

We could see right over Rochdale and Oldham it was a lovely clear evening. We dropped down into Naden valley and followed Naden brook. Spotted lots of wild garlic near Millcroft tea gardens - will have to remember that!

 

Over the Paper mill bridge and down the familiar path on the far side. After crossing the road we followed the brook all the way down to Bury and Rochdale Old Rd. Lots of bluebells out on this section and Wood Sorrel too.

A lovely walk - completely different terrain from last weeks walk. Not many of the Rochdale Way signs though - good job we were familiar with these paths.

Naden Brook joined the River Roch. Approx 5.75miles in all, finishing at Queens park.

Chillies and nature journals

Over the last week we have been watching John Muir on you tube talking about keeping a nature journal. Its quite long so we watched a little section each day as I wanted the boys to learn from someone who is passionate about what they do.

When we had finished watching I asked them if there was anything they would like to study and they decided to observe our chilli plant that has been growing in the green house but had been brought inside to harvest.

The chillies were grown from some seeds we had saved from chillies we had bought last year from the supermarket.

We found that Capsaicinoids are the chemical which give rise to the heat of chillies. The "hotness" of a chilli is measured by the scoville scale which was originally a subjective measurement but is now measured scientifically by using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to see how much capsaicinoid is present. It is named after its developer Wilbur Scoville.

 The hottest chillies - the Haberno and Scotch Bonnet have pungencies of 300 000+ with the hottest recorded one being 577 000 compared to pure capsaicin being 16 000 000.

I was so pleased with their attitude to completing a page in their nature journals and although we didn't all manage to sit down together to complete them (which is my dream - maybe one day!) I was very impressed with their pages and they had incorporated some of the ideas given in the video -

•  asking questions,
•  not worrying about the quality of your sketches, 
• adding details of scale,
• zooming in on small parts of what you were studying.

Lukes' nature journal

Bens' nature journal

Our chillies have been harvested this week and I have tried various recipes:

• lazy chillies (chopped and preserved in vinegar and kept in the fridge)

• hot pepper jelly (chilli and bell peppers in a jelly)

Hope they taste good!