Carolyn's Blog

I have been gathering herbs to freeze down for the winter and we have been bringing some plants indoors. The bloody rhubarb is still growing like a weed.

Speaking of weeds, another story from my youth. I bought and still own an absolutely brilliant book called All Good Things Around Us published brumpty mumble years ago. It is a book that tells you about all the edible free stuff there is out there thanks to Mother Nature. When I bought it I was young, feeding a family and pretty much broke so free stuff sounded good to me. One recipe that caught my eye was Nettle Wine. If there is a plant that the hedgerows of Essex (England) and my back garden had in abundance back then it was stinging nettles. Free wine! Sounded like a good plan to me.

Recipe said you need 2.5 litres of young nettle tops. Reasonable… or so I thought. First there was the collection thing. I wandered out to the back garden with a basket and started in on the weeds.

You know that phrase 'Grasp the nettle'? When I was a little girl I was always told that to pick a nettle you had to grab it quickly and firmly and it would not sting.

They lied.

I went back indoors and plunged my hand into icy water for a while, then donned a pair of rubber gloves and ventured out nettle hunting again. Got a ton of nettles, which produced about an eighth of a litre of nettle tops. Obviously this would require a more structured plan. So me and the kids headed out with bags, scissors and rubber gloves and for the next 4 hours I shepherded them along the road picking nettles. This resulted in a few strange looks from passers-by in cars and buses. Having finally accumulated enough nettles I discovered that you need all kinds of other equipment to make the wine so that meant a trip to the shops to buy a big jar thingie, plastic tubing, corks, sterilising solutions, yeast, an air filter, sugar, root ginger and lemons. My free wine was getting less so by the minute but I was on a roll.

I followed the recipe and put the whole thing in the airing cupboard - I know you don't generally have these in North America but they are closets that have the hot water tank in them where you store your linens because they are warm - anyway after the required amount of time I decanted the stuff into bottles and waited. They recommended waiting six months. So I did.

Finally the day arrived and we opened our first bottle of nettle wine. Tasted. Then we opened the rest and poured them down the sink. Believe me for a Fisher to pour away any kind of booze it had to be pretty horrible and it was. I did notice however that it cleaned the sink a treat and the drains were clear as a whistle for months afterwards.

Sadly I did not understand what I had stumbled upon and now every time I see an ad for CLR I think 'I invented that!'.

Drop me a line with a comment carolyn@witchweb.net but please include or do not delete 'Carolyn's Blog' in the subject line to make sure it gets through my spam filters.