Right then – Sorry, I was away catching the train to my brother’s wedding in Istanbul. Back now.
The first thing I do on my return, once I’d recovered fully from the food poisoning, was to head down to the garden megastore to pick up a spade, fork, hosepipe bits, axe and a hatchet, and then, this morning, to use at least a few of these digging out some nettles. I have a border along the eastern edge of my lawn which is about 25m long, divvied up by two lovely big mature sycamore trees, and bounded by a dry stone wall, on the over side of which is the main road to my house. I say road, it was probably tarmac once but is now mostly made of moss and clumps of grass.
So I start around a little patch at the southern edge of the border, where I’d planted some carrots that were now in danger of getting suffocated. I pulled out all the nettles and dug up the roots, gradually working my way back up to the first sycamore tree. This took me about an hour and a half, until I remembered that I had to nip down to Market Town to pick up some nail polish remover, as birght scarlet nails are funny on muddy hands, but will probably get me dodgy looks in the office tomorrow.
After lunch, I looked over the small section I’d de-nettled, along with the little pile of porcelain remains I’d dug up. the next section between the two trees was less sparse, and the nettles much younger. Young nettles.. reminds me of something.. aha! A quick hunt online and I have a recipe for nettles soup – onion, potato, garlic, stock and half a carrier bag full of nettle tops and young leaves. Picking nettles in gardening gloves is impossible, so I just use my bare hands; it doesn’t hurt for very long and leaves an “interesting” tingly sensation for the rest of the day.
Nettles then thoroughly washed, everything cooked up, blended (I’ve had a blender for 12 years and I swear this is the third time I’ve used it) and holy crap, it actually tastes nice. I cooked something delicious using ingredients from my garden, a lot sooner than I ever thought I would! Brilliant. Now just waiting for the copious amounts of brambles bordering the paddock opposite to come into fruit.. any day now..
