Adventure 54: If in doubt, leave it out

What is the difference between these two plants?

Plant A  

   Plant B

                                      

They're very similar you must admit. They're both tall, with thick stems and an umbrella of little white blooms. 

Well that's where the similarities end. Plant A is lovely cow-parsley, for which the wonderful Robin Harford has a great recipe for sweet pickled cow parsley (and you should in general check out his blog, its brilliant). Plant B, on the other hand is deadly Hemlock - yep, that which is found in King Lear, causes "drowsy numbness" in 'Ode to a Nightingale' and killed Socrates. 

Can I tell the difference? Sort of, is the short answer. Hemlock has a purple mottled stem, cow parsley doesn't. Am I confident enough to make Harford's recipe? Nope. I stick to the golden foraging rule: "If in doubt, leave it out" and so should you. 

A short post today, as I'm horrendously busy with reports and lesson planning.

Foraging news in brief - my elderflower gin is ready. It smells divine and I think it would go well with some chilled lemon tonic. Will let you know more when I've tasted it.

Pub wise - this weekend Levi and I decided to do a walk from Feniton to Ottery St Mary. Feniton is on the train line from Exeter and has a great old man pub called the Nog Inn. We first came across it a few years ago. It has delicious 'Tawny Owl' beer from Cotleigh Brewery, in Someset and an authentic 1930s interior. 

 We then took part of the walk we found here. Sadly, there were no instructions and the map is teeny. I however, spent some time with google maps and have written some instructions below if anyone would like to replicate it. 

Feniton to Ottery St Mary's Walk

1. Turn right out of Feniton Station onto Station Road

2. Walk up Station Road until you turn right onto York Crescent

3. Turn left on the bend to a continuation of York Crescent

4. Continue straight on to Salisbury Avenue

5. Turn right onto Wells Avenue

6. Turn right onto Green Lane

7. Go over the bridge, on the left there is a small footpath (signposted)

8. Walk through two sets of fields with the Orchard and chickens on the left

9. Walk over the bridge over the A30 and then a second bridge until you reach the other side of the A30 to a parallel road

10. Turn right and walk up the verge of the old road (be careful of traffic). This house is on your left

11. Turn left onto Gosford Road where the John Coleridge Patteson* Memorial is

12. Continue up the side of the road and cross a bridge with a little white bunglow on the left

 

13. Turn right onto another public footpath by the River Otter and follow the path through the woods until you get to a mud skate park

14. Don't be tempted at the park to go to the path on the right. If you get to Fairmile Lane, you've gone too far. Instead follow the path round to the left and keep going for another 1/2 mile up a stony path in the woods until you emerge at the main road into Ottery.

* John Coleridge Patteson was the great nephew of Coleridge the poet, and got murdered in the Solomon Islands in the 1870s by the locals in his work as a missionary. The memorial is in bad shape, partly I suspect because it refers to the polynesians as 'savages'... the tolerance of the Victorian imperialists towards other cultures is always so pleasing to see in 2015.....

Ottery St Mary was as always a pleasure. It was so weird to see the place in daylight without burning barrels (if you have no idea what I'm going on about see my post on the Ottery Tar Barrels here from a few years back).

We stopped off at the church there, which is highly interesting with a planetary clock, some medieval effigies and lots of Coleridge memorabilia (he played in the church yard as a child apparently).

 And finally, we stopped at the Lamb and Flag Public House, which CAMRA recommended. Only Otter Bitter on (the other two went off when we went in - bad luck)  but the landlord is friendly and it was good to put our feet up. 

Sadly, I must return to report writing but my summer holidays to Norfolk and Scotland are all booked and I can dream of fine pints in North Norfolk and Dumfries while I'm doing them. Hate 300, but quite like this MEME.

Adventure 53: And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes, Gleamed through thy bright transparence.

BUDLEIGH-SALTERTON, a village in East Budleigh parish, Devon; on the coast, immediately west of the mouth of the Otter, 2¼ miles S of East Budleigh. It has a post office‡ under Exeter, hotels, and many respectable lodging-houses; was, not long ago, an obscure fishing hamlet; and is now a fashionable watering-place. It occupies a dell, running obliquely to the shore; looks warm and luxuriant; and commands rich means of comfort and recreation. Coleridge says of the Otter in its neighbourhood:

Mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,
But straight with all their tints the waters rise;
Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows gray,
And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes,
Gleamed through thy bright transparence.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England 

and Wales (1870-72))

  

I've never been a fan of Coleridge. I tried, I honestly did, to get into him (the mater has a number of his works on the bookshelf at home) but alas, Wordsworth is preferable to me, and Dorothy Wordsworth at that.* However, reading this description of the Otter flowing into the sea up the coast from Budleigh Salterton, I could not fail but to finally appreciate his penmanship. In the beautiful smoothness of the many coloured pebbles on the beach there, the 'bright transparence' and the 'various dyes' finally came to view in my mind’s eye. 

 

 

*I’m a massive fan of her diaries. An interesting discussion of her Grasmere journals featured on Radio 4's Good Read a couple of years ago... 

But enough of Coleridge and poetry – I am no literary scholar (I firmly refused to take English for A-level despite my teacher’s abject disappointment… though I thoroughly value good literature, discussing it is quite beyond me). 

Budleigh Salterton, then, was our destination this sunny weekend in Devon. A year or so ago, we discovered in an old guide book that there was a nice walk between Exmouth and there, following the old train track there. The walk goes via Littleham which is where Frances, Lady Nelson was buried after her death in 1831. 

 

(Left:) Miniature of Frances "Fanny" Nelson, watercolour on paper, painted in 1798 by Daniel Orme, the year of her husband's victory at the Nile

  

The walk is very easy, mostly on the flat with nice views of the countryside and woodlands and as ever, I was armed with a little carrier in my handbag should any foraging opportunities present themselves.

 

It wasn’t long before it was clear that every two minutes there was an elder tree, each one bent over under the weight of the thousands of little white blooms, each giving off a heady scent. The scent that marks the beginning of summer. 

I almost missed elderflower season last year when I made elderflower wine on a shoestring budget (see here) but this year I have been on to it like a shot. I have been like a falcon and its unwary prey. Even now, I am very conscious even at this very moment that there is an elder tree in my very street that I can see from my sitting room window. And though I know that is too high to pluck the blooms, I am constantly looking at it and seeing bottles of elderflower cordial in my mind’s eye. Sigh. 

I have already blogged about making elderflower cordial so I won’t bore you, readers, with this again but I was also eager to try out some other recipes so I collected a small bag of the flowers and with it carefully tied to my handbag I was as happy as a pig in muck for the rest of the walk (and Levi was too, because he didn’t have to endlessly stop to go foraging). That said, Levi impressed me greatly with his knowledge of bullace, which is starting to form its fruits ready for the autumn. They’re small and green now, but in five months they will be ready for gin.

Finally, at Budleigh Salterton we had a very pleasant walk around the cute little lanes, with the little fisherman’s cottages and the boats before having a pleasant pint of Yellow Hammer at the Feather’s Hotel there (which we’ve now discovered has a decent beer garden, hidden away up some stairs at the back). I also discovered that the fishmongers there sells Marsh Samphire, which I have been dying to find (but at the moment still unsuccessfully). As mentioned before a family friend, McKenzie Thorpe, the wild-goose man, used to cook them up with vinegar (that reminds me, I really need to do a post on him over the summer). The bus back was simple – we managed to get a quick pint in at the Powder Monkey, the Spoons near Exmouth Station before enjoying the last of the sunny day in the Beer Cellar near the Cathedral. 

The problem with having a blog that you’re passionate about and a couple of pints down you, is that one’s enthusiasm can be hard to curtail. Once home, I decided (in my excitement) that I wanted to make my elderflower things right then and now (Levi: ‘you’re not very good at anticipation are you?).  

First off: Simple recipe for Elderflower Gin

500 ml of gin

4 tsp of sugar

20 elder flower heads. 

Put sugar in gin and shake

Add elderflower heads

Shake once a day for a week

Strain through a muslin back into the bottle and drink.

Second recipe: Elderflower Cup Cakes

Makes 12

For the cakes

125g of caster sugar
125g flour
125g butter (I used salted)
2 eggs
7 tsp of elderflower cordial
1 tsp baking powder

For the icing

2tsp elderflower cordial

100g of icing sugar

Mix flour and baking powder and put to one side

Mix butter and sugar together until creamy

Add each egg separately with a spoon of flour and mix

Add the rest of the flour and mix

Add the elderflower cordial and mix

Spoon into casings and put in the oven for 15 mins (I had mine on 200)

Leave to cool on a rack for five minutes

For icing – mix the icing sugar and cordial and ice the cakes

 

Was all fairly straightforward. My mix overflowed the casing so my cakes were a bit wonky, and I ended up adding a bit more elderflower cordial than the recipe says for taste but all in all very tasty little cakes (I haven’t eaten five already, I swear). 

In other news....

 

• Marking has taken over my life with summer exams (Stanley’s been helping)  

• I’ve booked my tickets for Norfolk in the summer and researched my very own North Norfolk Pub Beer Guide (68 days 9 hours to go….) 

  

• My most recent batch of sloe gin is now ready (yum) 

 

• I’ve discovered that Marks and Spencer’s has a newish collection of real ales in collaboration with major breweries which are not only affordable but tasty that I got to try out (I know hardship) on Monday night when Levi was away in Oxford with Stan (HOWEVER, I still feel strongly that you should support your local pub several nights a week... join CAMRA and protect our pubs!!!)

• I’ve been continuing to make good use of the Untappd app. Thank you for those of you who’ve added me as a friend. Do give it a go, its good fun and strangely addictive (though do remember to drink responsibly). 

Now back to marking…