Old fashioned cereals, again.

[tombear]

The plan is now to grow the AS food plants in the well maintained (ie i do the weeding with a thick layer of bark chippings to help supress them ) herb garden out front as examples rather than actual food crops and to devote the back yard to the staples, peas, beans and mostly cereals.

We have the pound of Bere Barley seed to go in in the spring and near two pound of the red spelt to go in by the end of this month ( I don't think it will do well here but we have to try it since I really love the taste ) but I'd also like to try oats and rye, stuff that should do well.

To this end I've been looking for sources of Avena Strigosa ( small/black/bristle/ Shetland oats) and Secale cereale ( Hebridean Rye ). As far as I can work out these are the closest to Anglo Saxon period strains I'm going to get.

I'm not the best at surfing so if anyone can point me towards where I can buy or scrounge some of each I'd be profoundly grateful.

I did plant a patch of Wild oats, they grew well enough but only a couple developed seed heads, infact I'm not sure they ain't weeds, ill have inspect them more closely when I get the chance!

ATB

Tom

 

[tombear]

Sent off a few emails to various crofting or wild life diversity groups in Scotland to see where they get there's from.

atb

Tom

 

[zornt]

found a source for Bere Barley. Sustainable seed company $3.99/ounce. Thry don'sell quantitys larger than that.

For the other two all I got ere links to ponye, and rye whikey.

I will keep searching, cause this stuff interests me.

 

[tombear]

Cheers, I'm hoping some of the folk in the Island and Highlands where thery are encouraging the use of this stuff that does well on marginal land will have some info.

http://www.scottishlandraces.org.uk/scotlandrace_index.htm

atb

tom

 

[tombear]

A kind lady at Crofting Connections has offered to send us some of their Black Oat seed and also some Emmer that they use in their education programme. Also in a couple of weeks ill be getting a different strain of spelt and what's being refered to as a ancient bread seed, ill find out exactly what it is, from a nice chap at Butser.

i've also but connected with some folk who may have Hebridean Rye to spare, we shall see.

if I could find enough einkorn for a decent patch we would be pretty well sorted.

atb

Tom

 

[Goatboy]

Sounds good, hope to see some good results for you next year. I'm a big fan of oats, heck it's probably the main part of my diet these days as times are hard. Usually porridge for at least breakfast an lunch at the moment.

Some friends and I were talking about if you could only ever eat one vegetable for the rest of your life what would it be, must admit to being torn between onions and tatties, with kale being a close third. On the grain front it was oats or barley for me. My favourite bit of homemade soup as a kid (which we kind of lived on) was always the pearl barley. Something that seems to only be done in east coast Scotland is the addition of oats to mince. It not only pads it out making it cheaper but it adds a great nutty taste to the meat. Hmm now I want mince, tatties and peas for my tea.

Hope the folks come through for you, would be excellent to see how it goes next year.
ATB,
GB.

 

[tombear]

Roughly what sort of proportions with oats to mince can you get away with? I'm trying to increase the amount of oats I'm eating.

Atb

tom

 

[Goatboy]

Roughly what sort of proportions with oats to mince can you get away with? I'm trying to increase the amount of oats I'm eating.

Atb

tom

Depends on how poor you are and tastes, but I get away with about a handful or so per person. It you want to be healthy pop it in after the meat and onions have browned and the fats been drained off otherwise it soaks up the fat. If you're going for calories just leave the fat in. You can do the same in other soups and stews too just to eek them out a bitty.

 

[tombear]

Cheers! Ill see if anyone notices. I made cawl a few weeks back and I threw in several handfuls of oatmeal in that to help thicken it. That worked well.

ATB

Tom

 

[tombear]

I chucked in 3 big handfuls of oats and the feedback was they prefer it that way. So only a pound of lean mince fed all 5 of us which ain't bad at all!

ATB

Tom

 

[Goatboy]

Excellent Tom,

Glad they liked it and as you point out cheaper but also healthier too. There are quite a few old grain based recipes still in use in certain parts of Scotland, some of which may be of use to you with your project of growing older types like skirlie and furmenty.

 

[tombear]

Cheers ill have a look at those threads. Herselfs family are Scots on he dads side so traditional cooking goes down well with her, flashbacks to visiting her grandparents and relations. Also I'm trying to wean the kids off just eating modern wheat products. It's too late for me but if I can give them a taste for barley, rye and oats as well as spelt ill be doing them a favour.

I actually did myself porridge while the lads had bacon sandwiches for breakfast! That wsa hard, cooking someone else bacon! Still its nearly one and I'm not vaguely hungry yet. its just laziness that's been stopping me eating more oats.

Will make myself some oat rich bannock for snacking on later.

Thanks!

Tom

 

[Goatboy]

Cheers ill have a look at those threads. Herselfs family are Scots on he dads side so traditional cooking goes down well with her, flashbacks to visiting her grandparents and relations. Also I'm trying to wean the kids off just eating modern wheat products. It's too late for me but if I can give them a taste for barley, rye and oats as well as spelt ill be doing them a favour.

I actually did myself porridge while the lads had bacon sandwiches for breakfast! That wsa hard, cooking someone else bacon! Still its nearly one and I'm not vaguely hungry yet. its just laziness that's been stopping me eating more oats.

Will make myself some oat rich bannock for snacking on later.

Thanks!

Tom

There's nowt wrong with crumbling a bit of crispy bacon into the porridge or bannock! In fact one of the things about furmenty is that it has meat in it.
Something they used to give wee ones or sick folk, especially when milk was in short supply was oat milk. You can get fancy recipes (like this)for it but in the past I've just mixed porridge oats with water then strained through cloth. or a fine sieve. Used to get that heated up or arrowroot pudding if you'd been ill.

 

[tombear]

Get thee behind me!

unfortunately crispy bacon is my heroin, I have a real problem and could eat it endlessly. Infact I'm drooling like Mr Pavlovs best friends at the mere thought of it.

off to the fridge to see if there's any left!

atb

Tom

 

[Goatboy]

Another one I found in an old Scots recipe book a while back and indeed was my breakfast today is to toast some oats 'till golden. Spread some bread with butter, a smear of honey and pop on the toasted oats. Make yer sandwich and eat with gusto. Suppose it's kind of a poor mans forerunner to the muesli bar! Has certainly kept me fueled on my fruitless fungi hunt this morning.

 

[Joonsy]

Another one I found in an old Scots recipe book a while back and indeed was my breakfast today is to toast some oats 'till golden. Spread some bread with butter, a smear of honey and pop on the toasted oats. Make yer sandwich and eat with gusto. Suppose it's kind of a poor mans forerunner to the muesli bar! Has certainly kept me fueled on my fruitless fungi hunt this morning.

where I grew up in the black country ''groats'' was a poor mans food for porridge and soups and sandwiches, ''groaty pudding'' is a traditional black country dish, recipe here in this link

http://www.blackcountrybugle.co.uk/Reader146s-Quest-Elusive-Groats/story-20123051-detail/story.html

 

[Goatboy]

where I grew up in the black country ''groats'' was a poor mans food for porridge and soups and sandwiches, ''groaty pudding'' is a traditional black country dish, recipe here in this link

http://www.blackcountrybugle.co.uk/Reader146s-Quest-Elusive-Groats/story-20123051-detail/story.html

Looks good, have taken note, the article reminded me of my search on how to make "singing hinnies" that took an age and I was never really happy I had the old way of doing it. Typically they came up with this sort of thing, http://britishfood.about.com/od/specialty/r/Singing-Hinny-Recipes.htm but I'd seen/heard of a version you made in hot water and boiled.

 

[Joonsy]

but I'd seen/heard of a version you made in hot water and boiled.

Nice one, not heard of those before, they may not ‘sing’ so much if boiled instead of fried.

 

[Goatboy]

Nice one, not heard of those before, they may not ‘sing’ so much if boiled instead of fried.

They're a bit like Welsh Cakes, or the Scottish (Orkney) version is Fattie Cutties. Careful how you type that last one in in Google images - you may get a shock!Both recipes are worth a try and a little different to each other.

 

[tombear]

I received a few seed heads from my kind contrast at West Stow, one bag contained Spelt which I veplanted in a foot high pot on the sheds south west facing window sill to see if I can get them to germinate. They are the winter planted strain. The other contained what he described as thir Bread wheat which I have tentatively identified as a mix of emmer and einkorn. I've planted them in another tall pot, decided best I could into two halves, the single spiked ones ( einkorn? ) one side, the split fom double spiked ones (emmer?) on the other. Ill see what comes up!

I could of course be totally wrong! I've asked the chap for clarification.

ill water them lightly everyday until I see something coming up then as required.

Plans to get a decent sized crop of spelt from the St Fagans seeds out back have been confounded by the weather and unavoidable family carp. If things calm down I'd like to get a section weeded dug and planted soon, if a bit late. I higher priority is getting the fruit hedge this winter and any fruit trees herself wants.

Labelled examples of the lads AS crops are now going to be incorporated into my herb garden out front which is kept weeded under a thick layer of bark chippings, we were just too slack about weeding the rows out back this year. This will also alloy me to turn at least a third, maybe half of the back Arden to just bere barley so we can get what will be a crop that will provide a usable amount of seed to actually cook with.

atb

tom