Cloudberry / WILD FOOD FOR FREE

The cloudberry, a relative of the blackberry.

They can be picked at big bogs, mostly in the North of Sweden.
Cloudberries, slightly sweetened with sugar and just heated are superb to vanilla icecream. We also use cloudberry jam to pancakes together with whipped cream. Another speciality is Swedish curd cake with cream and cloudberry jam

The cloudberry plant (Rubus chamaemorus), also named bakeapple or salmonberry outside UK, is less then 30 cm (12 inch) tall and generates just one white flower, thus just one fruit.

First, the fruit is red and hard, but while ripping, it gets a golden or amber color and turns soft and juicy.

The name cloudberry alludes to the fact that in the UK, it only grows in northern mountains surrounded by low clouds.

But the real home of the Ice Age plant is the Arctic tundra, moors, bogs and marshlands.

In southern Scandinavia, the fruit matures in august, but in the remote north at the beginning of the fall.

For centuries, the Laplanders and Inuit

 (Eskimos) collected the cloudberries to be consumed during winter. 

The berry is rich in various vitamins, especially vitamin C, and, as it has a natural preservative, the marmalade can be kept in good condition for years in cool places.

As in the northern lands vegetable food is scarce, the meat and fish based diet of the northern people received an important vitamin supplement through cloudberries.

That's why cloudberries are also called "the gold of the marshlands".

Currently, huge quantities of these fruits are collected for supermarkets and food industry.

Crowberry

Bogs, moors. A small creeping shrub, 30 cm (12 in) high. Leaves: linear, edges rolled under. Flowers: small, pink, April-June. Fruit: shiny black when ripe.

The crowberry trails like heather over some of the northern moors. The berries are difficult to gather in any quantity.

Uses

The berries are used in Arctic regions and have some value as a soure of Vitamin C. Some collectors have enjoyed a jelly made from the berries.

Recipe

Use fresh, wild and fully ripe crowberries.
It doesn't matter if they are small, dry and shrivelled as they can be after a long and dry summer. You can just crush them before steeping.
But remember - steeping time is then a little shorter. So taste it from time to time.
It's very important that you leave the berries to dry for a couple of days in order to get rid of some small ticks which taste extremely awful.
The ticks will just leave their "home" once you start drying the berries.
Direction:

• Rinse the crowberries carefully.
• Leave them to dry in the shadow - on paper towel.
• If your berries are frozen - defrost them in the vodka.
• Use a clean glass jar with tight-fitting lid.
• Fill the jar with berries.
• Fill up with clear, unflavoured vodka - 40% alcohol content (80 proof).
• Steep for 1-3 months or longer - in a dark place at room temperature, 18-20°C (64-68°F).
• Shake lightly and taste it from time to time.
• Strain and filter your infusion into a clean glass bottle or jar with tight-fitting lid.

You can serve your crowberry schnapps after it has settled for a couple of days.
Or - you can store (age) it for 4-6 months in a dark place at room temperature before serving.
The flavours will change completely during storage. For the better I think. But it's a matter of taste.
Some prefer the young, fruity taste - while others prefer their crowberry schnapps after some storage, when it has a much stronger aroma and taste of berries.

Milk Thistle / WILD FOOD FOR FREE

Centuries ago this handsome thistle was introduced into western European gardens from the Mediterranean, for use as a pot-herb. The spiny white-veined leaves were believed to increase the milk output of nursing mothers.

Harvest / Pick

Almost all parts of the plant were eaten. Bryant, in his Flora Dietetica, writes: "The young shoots in the spring, cut close to the root with part of the stalk on, is one of the best boiling salads that is eaten, and surpasses the finest cabbage. They were sometimes baked in pies. The roots may be eaten like those of Salsify."

Uses

The leaves can be trimmed of their prickles then boiled. Peel the stems, soak them in water to remove the bitterness and then stew them like rhubarb. The spiny bracts that surround the broad flower-head can be cooked and eaten like globe artichokes.

Rosehip / WILD FOOD FOR FREE

Hedgerows, rough grass, scrub. A thorny plant with arching stems up to 3 m (10 ft) high. Leaves: pairs of toothed leaflets. Flowers: pink of white, June-July. Fruit: orange-red, oblong, up to 2.5 cm (1 in), late Aug-Nov

The fruit of the wild rose, the hip, is the star of one of the great success stories of wild food use. It is the only completely wilf fruit which supports a national commercial enterprise - the production of rosehip syrup.

Rosehips had been used as a food for centuries, but it was not until the Second World War, when supplies of citrus fruits were virtually cut off, that the potential of rosehips as a source of Vitamin C were taken seriously. Rosehips had been found to contain twenty times the amount of Vitamin C in oranges.

Harvest/Pick

The hips are on the bushes between late August and November.

Uses

Rosehip syrup can be used as a flavouring for milk, puddings, ice cream or almost any sweet, or diluted as a drink, and making it is the simplest way of filtering out the prickly seed, which can be a dangerous internal irritant.

Rosehip Syrup

Wartime Ministry of Food recipe foor 1 kg (2 lb) 

Have ready 1.5 litres of boiling water, mince the hips in a coarse mincer, drop immediately into the boiling water of if possible mince the hips directly into the boiling water and again bring to the boil. Stop heating and place aside for 15 minutes. Pour into a flannel of linen crash jelly bag and allow to drip until the bulk of the liquid has come through. Return the residue to the saucepan, add 750 ml of boiling water, stir and allow to stand for 10 minutes. Pour back into the jelly bag and allow to drop. To make sure all the sharp hairs are removed, put back the first half cupful of liquid and allow to drip through again. Put the mixed juice into a clean saucepan and boil down until the juice measures about 750 ml, then add 900 g of sugar and boil for a further 5 minutes. Pour into hot sterile bottles and seal at once. If corks are used these should have been boiled for 15 minutes just previously and after insertion coated with melted paraffin wax. It is advisable to use small bottles as the syrup will not keep for more than a week or two once the bottle is opened.