I've Got A Sample For You!

The other day my office neighbour, she has the space next door to us, popped her head 'round the door saying 'I've got a sample for you' as she handed me this bottle.
You should have seen the look on the interns face!

Of course it's Elderflower cordial, and so delicious even the kids liked it!

The elder flowers in our garden have all gone now, roll on the elderberries!
Any elderberry recipe ideas gratefully received!

Thanks for reading
SBW

Two New Blogs - Well New To Me

Hiya

The feedback from my OBS interview has exposed me to a couple of blogs that are well worth a mention.

First Rabid Outdoorsman's The Maine Outdoorsman
"Greetings fellow outdoor fanatics and welcome to the Maine Outdoorsman Blog. I started this blog as a way to share some of my favorite hunting, fishing and outdoor experiences with the general public. My goal for this endeavor, is to work to improve my writing skills so positive comments and suggestions are much appreciated. With that said please sit back, make yourselves comfortable and join me in conversing about a few of my favorite outdoor memories."

And Fish Hunter's Hunting Knive
"When you are in a position to indulge in it, hunting is one of the activities that can provide both a great deal of physical activity and bragging rights, not to mention an impressive amount meat and a truly epic trophy at the end."

Both struck a chord with me, hope you'll enjoy them too

Thanks for reading - leave a comment or two
SBW

Road Kill Rules

A little while ago the three ring circus that is the clan de la bushwacker were driving through the leafy lanes of Kent. As we entered a village I implored Mrs SBW to pull over. Bushwacker Jnr. and yours truly ran back down the road and recovered this delicious hen pheasant that had recently meet its demise at a passing vehicle's wheel and had not been there long.

How do I know it was safe to eat?

Well I'm no Tom Brown Jnr. but there were a couple of tracks that even I could follow:
1. It was about 11am and reasonably sunny - her blood was fresh and no flies had gathered.
2.It was about 11am and she was still there, if she'd died during the previous evening a fox would have had her during the first available cover of darkness.
3.Hung game has a strong smell and is still completely safe to eat. This one had hardly any smell.

At the butchers shop/game dealer you can buy a nice plucked pheasant (looking a lot like the one pictured bellow) that was shot on a shoot near by, it then sat around in a field for a few hours before being taken to the chilled game larder where it resided until at least the next day, when it continued its journey to the butcher/game dealer, where it sat in the chiller until it was plucked. Only then did it make it onto the shelf of the shop. We're talking £5.50 or eleven bucks from the butcher nearest my house, cheaper if you live out of town and up to a tenner if you live somewhere really swanky.

Mine had probably been clipped by a passing car that morning, took ten minuets to pluck (it would be less with practice) cost me nothing, and I got a really cool bag of feathers to use later.Bushwacker jnr. and I tucked in after Mrs SBW came over all squeamish and pushed hers to the side of her plate.Sucker!

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker.

Ashleys Site - Natural Bushcraft

Imagine if you wanted to find (nearly) all of the cool things that appear on the bushcraft websites and forums but you didn’t have the time or inclination to wade through the arguments and pomposity. Good News. A fella called Ashley has painstakingly collected together most of the best bits! Natural Bushcraft has the videos, the tutorials and a fantastic bushcraft quotes section. Life just got easier!
Well worth a visit, he really puts a lot of effort in, every time I visit I've seen something else interesting.

Thanks for reading
SBW

Bushwacker Edu. - A Knotty Problem

As James pointed out the other day, unless you come from a family who hunt or live in a small community where everyone knows everyone else, your chances of getting involved in hunting in the UK are relatively slim. The net result is that there are a few holes in my education.

John: Hey, Jeremy, what do you know about holes?
Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD.: There are simply no holes in my education.
Paul: You mean you haven't composed a "hole" book?
The Beatles - The Yellow Submarine

James has invited me to go Ferreting in a couple of weekends time. As you can imagine I’m fairly excitable at the best of times, so he’d no sooner invited me than I was starting my preparations.
“Apart from my hat & coat what will I need to bring?”
“We’ll need some Purse Nets”
“Where do I buy them?
“Your making them – a kit’s in the post”
“ How difficult is it?”
“ Just one Knot, tied lots of times!”

So I’m about to start making some purse nets that we’ll stretch over the exits to the rabbits warren, before sending in his business of ferrets to flush the bunnies out.

Wish me luck - thanks for reading
SBW

Really Actually Tasty?

Much to my surprise the office has yielded a lesson in preparedness and survival this week.

Due to the early January lull when the rest of the world seems to still be on holiday. Last weeks office life was at a much slower pace than could be productive. The morning football conversation extended beyond its mandatory 20 minutes and peaked on Friday at an hour and a half.
Work, as it was, centered around half-hearted researching, most of the day went on teasing each other and reading stuff out from the internet.
One viral email caught everyone’s attention and made me think about the nature of our dinner and our expectations of it.

LOOKS GOOD

EASY TO COOK

PLENTY OF THEM ABOUT TOO!!


As we watched to squeals of horror, the question everyone was asking, well more shrieking than asking, was ‘Would you? – Could you!”.
Mr. Bojangles (the resident song and dance man) has lived in Senegal for ten years so he speaks with an authority the others cant muster.
“In lots of the parts of the world people eat all kinds of stuff”
Would you? Have you? You didn’t!
“I wouldn’t be surprised if I had, in a lot of places people just need to eat, you never know what you’re being served ”

In the Southern US and much of eastern europe squirrels are well known as good eating, a few people shoot them to eat here, and a couple of the more adventurous London restaurants have them on the menu.

Well they call squirrels ‘tree rats’, maybe these fellas should be re-branded as ‘ground squirrels’. Hmmmm?

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker.

Hunter Angler Gardener Cook Joins My Blog Roll

Hunter Angler Gardener Cook has left this comment on a post

Bushwacker: I see it as my goal in life to get those who turn their noses up at game meats to shed their hang-ups and give it another go. If you ever need recipes for whatever it is you bring home this week, I have a fairly monstrous collection of wild game cookbooks and have a few tricks up my sleeve to make the wary drop their guard and pick up their forks...

His blog Honest Food: Finding the Forgotten Feast has made a great start, I'm looking forward to reading more, check him out!

Told you you wouldn't need to buy the papers this weekend!
bushwacker.

Swedish Survival Skills

I’ve been meaning to recommend Michel Blomgren and his site Bushcraft.se for a while. Not only is he very knowledgeable about the skills that will keep you comfortably alive should you get lost while in the forest, but he’s also a talented TV presenter who is not afraid to suffer, if it means imparting some knowledge.

If you do nothing else make sure you watch Episode 1 - Five points survival.
It could save you life, it will make an overnight stay in the woods more comfortable, and if you are trying to get your kids into the outdoors the skills he demonstrates are so simple you could be teaching them to your kids by this weekend. Genius!

Enjoy
Bushwacker

Bushwacker Des Res

How cool is this!

It took 1500 man hours to build and it only cost £3500 or $7000!!
The pictures of the inside are even more amazing.

I'd like to build one for myself but i'm worried it might be 'Hobbit forming'. Sorry.

Bushwacker

When Going Nuts, First Take A Leek.

Been a while hasn’t it? I’ve been ‘up north’ with The Northern Monkey and on my return the lair of the Bushwackers has suffered from water ingress, so I’ve had to dedicate the last few days to plumbing.

The chestnuts are now on form at more northerly latitudes, and I promised I’d post a recipe for my pal The Northern Monkey.

If you’re fortunate enough to be picking your chestnuts off the ground (as opposed to buying them) early picking really seems to help processing, as the dew makes the skins are a little more flexible.And of course your beating the competition to the last nights crop.

When I started using the SharpMaker on everything in the house with a blade, I noticed that I habitually started the sharpening stroke a little way down the blade and this has given my F1 a very slight (1mm) curve with a steeper blade angle on the 5mm nearest the handle. And I’ve started to see this as a lucky accident. The slight curve made the ideal ‘nicker’ for opening the skins and then peeling them off.

Once you get inside the nut you get to the pith which when fresh and damp is much easier to scrape off. If your roasting your chestnuts the pith isn’t really a problem as it crisps up inside the shell and falls off. When you buy pickled or dried chestnuts from the deli they are perfectly pithless, just beautiful ‘brain like’ orbs of, well, yummy-ness.
I’ve always wanted my gathered chestnuts to look like that too. This year I’ve gotten a bit closer.

As I was peeling, I put them into salted cold water, then blanched them in boiling salted water, before plunging them into cold water. Quite a few more ended up skinless this year. It was all pretty time consuming; a carrier bag three quarters full took four hours to go from park to freezer.

Despite this success I had no joy at all remembering that, while my thumb nail is the ideal peeling tool, its my nail-bed that pays the price for the next few days. Ouch!

For the next batch:
I have a boning knife (somewhere?) that has an exaggerated curve at the start of the blade, I’m interested to know how it works out. Also I’ve just learned that the tannin rich skins were extensively used in traditional hide tanning, either dried or fresh. Which will be handy as TNM has a source of unprocessed deer hides. Sadly the skins off the first lot are already in the compost heap.
If any of you have any pointers on how to get a skinless finish they’d be much appreciated.


Marrons du Gallois or to you and me ‘Welsh Chestnuts’

Your going to need:
Leeks (easy to grow or buy)
Cream (Organic unpasteurised is best)
Splash of white wine (maybe a Chardonnay)
Hand picked-hand processed-artisan chestnuts (or failing that ones from the shop).
Shallots (onions wont really do it)
Pancetta (or ‘dry cure’ bacon pieces not the factory farmed watery stuff )
Garlic

Fry the bacon in its own fat until its got some colour leaving the bacon fat in the pan set the bacon aside.
Slice the shallots and garlic as thinly as you can and add them to the pan, reducing the heat to a flicker. Put a lid on the pan and sweat them to a syrupy mush.
While that’s happening you can thinly slice the leeks LENGTHWAYS so the slices look almost like spaghetti.
When the shallots and garlic are really slimy in go the chestnuts, bacon, and the wine.
Turn up the heat to evaporate the alcohol, and reduce by about ten percent.
Pour in the cream and as it starts to reduce add the leeks.
Its important to time the last bit so the cream reduces enough while the leeks are still a vibrant colour. Better under cooked than over cooked for the leeks.

Serve with
Pie crust: (to guarantee a perfectly cooked crust with no nasty stodgy bits, I cook the crust separately – just roll it out put it on a baking tray and stick it in the oven)
Pasta: I vote for papadeli!
Mashed potatoes: or better still mashed potatoes with forest mushrooms stirred into them!

If you’ve got any left add milk and water, wiz the whole lot up in a food processor to make a great soup.
Hope you're all well, thanks for reading
Bushwacker

Mother! Behave Yourself!!

Just in case you didn’t believe me when I told you about the foraging septuagenarian matriarchs!
As I was taking this picture I got into conversation with one of the park guys who told me he blamed the current crop of wildfood TV show’s.
“They only show cooking, people don’t know when they’re ripe and they just try and pull ‘em down. It’s a problem for us”.
Keep ‘em peeled
Bushwacker

Shh Keep 'em Under Your Hat

They've arrived! Ripe and ready to gather!
I picked (picked up?) this crop yesterday.
Had a few for tea, after last nights running club.
More details and Recipes in my next post
(I didn’t have a camera with me and there’s something in the park I want to show you)
Bushwacker