Adventure 42: Get ready, get set....

A quick post this evening with two more substantial ones to come in the next couple of days. Times are moving quickly in the natural world and even a couple of weeks ago, upon my return from Africa there were things to get a hold of, though I wasn't particularly looking. After three hours sleep on our flights back, I decided a walk was in order and Levi and I wandered down some footpaths near my London home to Lower Sunbury which were chock a block with the first blackberries of the year. Picking a couple of handfuls, and finding a load of fresh windfall apples by our tree in our garden, I thought the weather was sufficiently rubbish and autumnal to warrant a blackberry and apple crumble. 

The recipe I picked up off the BBC website and it worked out fabulously! Find it here: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/778642/apple-and-blackberry-crumble

What is particularly good about it, is the fact that you pre cook the crumble bit so it doesn't go all mushy when topping the fruit section. Dad almost cried, that we had to chuck the last of it before heading to Ireland... 

Anyhow, I'm writing this two weeks on and things are coming on quickly. The time to go and get blackberries is definitely now! Not next week, but the next few days. In Hampton there are loads on the Oldfield Road in front and the passage down the side of St Mary's Primary if you fancy finding them... Hawthorns coming on well too, elderberries already going and juniper berries getting nice and juicy. Most surprising is the millions of sloes and bullace (sloe cousins) that are sprouting everywhere. I can only put it down to the good summer and I've already put an early bottle of sloe gin down in my bedroom which I'll deal with in October when I head home for a few days. Though traditionally not ready for another few weeks and you usually wait until the first frost to pick them, they are very much ready now and some are even shrivelling away though September is not until tomorrow! I will post more on this soon, but for sloe gin fans near Hampton there are two massive heavily laden bushes down the Oldfield Road about halfway down. Will be posting again very soon about my adventures in the West of Ireland and the various jams I've been making this weekend after persuading Levi to come foraging with me. So stay tuned to find out why sloe jam is hell on earth to make (which is why it is why sane people make gin with it instead!!!).

Adventure 41: The Spice of Life (August 2014)

Many of you will know, that I have just returned from a fortnight in Africa where I have been staying with one set of my in-laws, who are based in Kigali, Rwanda. Rwanda is genuinely the most remarkable country. Twenty years ago it suffered one of the most horrendous genocides of modern times, yet today, you would never guess, such is the tremendous spirit of this wonderful nation and to build itself anew. I have had the most fantastic time: visiting Akagera National Park where I saw baboons, monkeys, warthogs and even a rare elephant; gorilla trekking in the Volcanoes National Park with these most remarkable and human like creatures; relaxing by Lake Kivo on the Congolese border and generally exploring Kigali, its capital city where Brian and Elena (the in-laws) are based. I attach a couple of photos from this remarkable leg of my trip below for you to enjoy, but really, are all these things truly in the spirit of this blog? Is this blog not primarily about foraging (as well as real ale and supporting local home-sprung businesses primarily around Devon)? So whilst all these things are exciting and I hope to have a link to my journals in the next few weeks if you are interested in finding out more about my trip, the majority of this blog post is going to be about the wonderful spice farm we visited in Zanzibar. What I found out about the origins of many of our spices and how they look when being grown may surprise you.

Zanzibar. It is a real place. A big mysterious fusion of the Africa and the Middle East (it used to be the capital of Oman) filled with winding streets, bustling markets, children playing and on the air, the smell of spices. After wandering around the Old Stone Town, Levi and I perchanced to find The Palace Museum, an old sheikh's palace from the nineteenth century, of peeling grandeur, almost stuck in time. At the end of a rather resplendent tour, our guide made us an intriguing offer. He said that he was training young guides and that they had exams coming up the following week. He explained that though their explanations were exemplary they were not so good at answering questions off the cuff. For fifty dollars (including taxi fare and a tour around the Concubine's Palace thrown in for free) would we be willing to go on a Spice Tour? Well, it seemed too good an offer to miss, and so, we found ourselves suddenly in a taxi across the island to one of the spice farms. Our guide, a young man of around twenty or so, was indeed an excellent source of knowledge on the spices, for which the island is famous (though as the guide had mentioned, his question answering skills were a bit on the weak side e.g. Me: "what is the name of this spice farm, so I can write about it in my blog?" Guide: its called 'spice farm'). He was accompanied by a teenage boy who hoped to train as a guide one day himself who was very talented at making things out of palm leaves. I received a frog necklace, a bracelet and a handbag and Levi, a tie. 

We saw all kinds of spices including: pink cloves (I didn't know you could get pink ones and green ones and that different ones are harvested to make different things); vivid orange tumeric; sweet cinnamon (made from bark!) and an interesting plant called the 'Lipstick Tree' which has seeds, which when crushed, can be used to make masala red, bindis, and of course as the name suggests, lipstick. 

vanilla pods

tumeric

pepper corns

cloves

cadimon

nutmeg (which got me singing "I had a little nut tree" on repeat)

lipstick spice

Our guide demonstrating lip stick spice

cinnamon

There were also lots of fruit trees laden with sweet limes (the guide laughed at us, and said "Your faces are funny! You expected it to be sour!"); papaya; bananas; zanzibar apples (which don't taste or look like apples particularly so their name is rather perplexing); cocoa beans (you can suck the flesh around them and it has a rather sweet sour taste) and a rather mysterious thing called a Jack Fruit which tastes like banana and pineapple at the same time. The thing that got me most, was a small root which I was given which when I smelt it was tea-tree oil! Yes, that stuff you use to unblock your nose when you have a cold. And would you believe it, it is cinnamon root! Bet you didn't know that!

coffee

zanzibar apple

sweet lime

jack fruit

cocoa

cinnamon root

We also got to eat lots of coconuts thrown down to us by an old man who climbed agiley up a fifty foot tree all whilst singing the popular mzungu (white person) kiswahili song which goes: 

"jambo, jambo bwana, habari gani, nzuri sana, wageni, wageni bishwa, Zanzibar yetu, hakuna matata' which was released by Them Mushrooms in the 80s and translates as 'hello mister, how are you? i'm fine, visitors you are welcome, in Zanzibar there is no problem!

If this song is new to you, please find a link to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VWBND1ggF8

And I've been annoying Levi ever since by singing it. If you ever get to Zanzibar, do visit a spice farm, its truly fascinating. But for now, Kwaheri! Goodbye!