Processing wild foods to make them fit to eat

[Toddy]

I sometimes grind flour, especially if I want a mix of seeds and grains.
I do have a, "clamp it onto the table and caw the handle" type grinder and it's surprisingly effective. The coffee grinder works too if I only use small handfuls and am feeling lazy.
I have ground enough flour on a saddle quern this year to feed the 5,000 and it quickly loses it's novelty Not something one would want to be doing everyday if there were another way.
The rotary or bun querns are much less stressful on knees, feet and backs.
My big mortar isn't the best thing for the job either; grain needs to be gently cracked before it's ground and that bit is fine in the mortar, but grinding the flour finely enough is a skiddle, it really needs a sieve handy so that the lumpy bits get more attention.

As ever company makes the job move along more quickly and the sense and hand/eye memories your daughter is learning, Xylaria, are priceless

atb,
Toddy

 

[Tadpole]

but grinding the flour finely enough is a skiddle, it really needs a sieve handy so that the lumpy bits get more attention.

As ever company makes the job move along more quickly and the sense and hand/eye memories your daughter is learning, Xylaria, are priceless

atb,
Toddy

I think that is part of the problem that re-enactment societies or living history, faces today, is our eating habits and taste have changed so much in the last few hundred years. Our aged ancestors, their teeth were worn down by eating rough grains, (and of course bits off the milling stone) .
I’ve milled flour to the standards laid down to pre-revolutionary France, and I for one can understand why Queen Marie Antoinette, extolled the virtue of eating cake, rather than the rougher “sawdust” like flour that was reserved for the peasants (if you understand anything about the milling industry you will know that far from being a vacuous fool, Queen Marie Antoinette, was quite a wise person, her misrepresentation in history an insult to her memory.) the food eaten back then, was a lot rougher. Nowadays we like our food a lot softer and easer to digest. When I think of the food I used to eat as a child, (soused pork, brawn, pigs brains, dripping, stuffed heart, and chickens feet) I just know that my little girl would rather starve than be in the same room.

Fork to fork sounds good - never saw it, can you get DVDs?
I am too lazy to peel food except oranges - and then I save the peel for firelighting...

Hmmmm I don't think so, but there was a book to go with the programmes.

 

[Toadflax]

and I like in intellectual challenge of trying to find the easiest way of making wild food taste good.

I think this is why things like wild fungi would be so important in a wild diet. My understanding (and I'm happy to be corrected on this) is that fungi don't generally provide very much nutritionally, but that their flavours, textures and colours can help to make unappetising food interesting. I think that's what makes the difference between surviving and living.


Geoff

 

[spamel]

It's like the processing of thistle heads. Prickles in your fingers if you don't take gloves along and fluff everywhere just for that little nut at the end which probably has a minimum of calorific value, but it tastes great!

I like the mill posted in the link above, it's got a few extra bits in the link so it didn't quite work but i found the place in the end!

http://www.browfarm.co.uk/online_store/grain_milling_grinding_machines.htm

No 'shrooms around here this year unfortunately, but I did OK out of brambles and a few other bits and bobs.

 

[Toadflax]

I like the mill posted in the link above, it's got a few extra bits in the link so it didn't quite work but i found the place in the end!

That's the best one I found after a bit of googling - next one up was a wooden one at about £100.


Geoff

 

[spamel]

I've looked on ebay and they come even more expensive than that!

 

[Tadpole]

I think this is why things like wild fungi would be so important in a wild diet. My understanding (and I'm happy to be corrected on this) is that fungi don't generally provide very much nutritionally, but that their flavours, textures and colours can help to make unappetising food interesting. I think that's what makes the difference between surviving and living.


Geoff

Some are quite high in protein
schrooms
"Fungi have several other noteworthy nutritional attributes: they are rich in a number of important vitamins and minerals, they have low saturated fat, and they are low in calories. Fungi are the best non-animal source of vitamin D and have high levels of the vitamins niacin, thiamin (B1) and riboflavin (B2). "

 

[Toddy]

My mill looks like this one, but has grooved metal plates too and a large screw on hopper and guard to direct the flour downwards into a bowl.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VINTAGE-COLLE...ryZ13930QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD2VQQcmdZViewItem

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Toadflax]

My mill looks like this one, but has grooved metal plates too and a large screw on hopper and guard to direct the flour downwards into a bowl.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VINTAGE-COLLE...ryZ13930QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD2VQQcmdZViewItem

cheers,
Toddy

Now, that's a classy looking piece of kit!


Geoff

 

[spamel]

I saw a few like that with the stones, one was quite pricey and really old. My only worry is that the stones are out of production according to one seller, what happens when they eventually wear out?

 

[Tadpole]

My mill looks like this one, but has grooved metal plates too and a large screw on hopper and guard to direct the flour downwards into a bowl.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VINTAGE-COLLE...ryZ13930QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD2VQQcmdZViewItem

cheers,
Toddy

my mother had one just like that, with a clip on/slot in wooden hopper, we also had one like it for making sausage meat,

 

[Toddy]

I've got mincer too
If I use the biggest cutting disc it's really good for rosehips, doesn't burst up very many of the seeds, but leaves the pulp ready for being *just* stewed and then drained.
Old fashioned these items may be, but they're rock solid reliable. My mincer belonged to my Mum and had been given as wedding present in the 1950's and it's still working perfectly.
....funnily enough, I have her old oak kitchen table too, and when I lift the table cover to fit the mincer to the top, the clamp marks I used to fit the mincer to as a child, are still where it goes now......you'd never guess I hate furniture shopping, would you?

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Toadflax]

I've got mincer too

cheers,
Toddy

We're getting off topic for the thread, but so what? What about this - anyone guess what it is? I bet Toddy will tell me straight away. There's some more pictures to follow that will give it away, but here are two for now (with the instructions blurred out!).

Geoff

 

[spamel]

Surely that is an old mince meat thingy device thing!

 

[Tadpole]

Marmalade maker/ orange slicer

 

[John Fenna]

Sausages! Woof! Sausages!

 

[Toadflax]

Keep the guesses coming...I'll let on when I get an answer from Toddy!


Geoff

 

[Toddy]

Oh no pressure there then

I *think* it's an enamelled cast iron slicer, and if I'm right you ought to be able to slice carrots, potatoes and the like in it, but there used to be a version (different blades?) that sliced up almonds too

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Toadflax]

Mincer...no.

Sausage maker...no.

I'd say that Tadpole was first but Toddy got the vegetable slicing as well. It's good that we still have the original instructions as well. I don't know the date, but it came down my wife's side of the family. The price may give some clue.

If I was British Red, I'd be giving a prize for this, but I'm not, so you don't get anything! As I've said before, the definition of a Yorkshireman is a mean Scotsman. But well done, and thanks for the interest.


Geoff

 

[Toddy]

I've just noticed it's a Spong too, they're good, reliable tools. My Granny used one (not enamelled) very like it for making crisps, and slicing horseradish paper thin to line the dish for my grandpa's potted hough; he liked it *hot* . Neat to have the original instructions, as well,
How does it do marmalade? I like tiny wee slivers for that.

cheers,
Toddy