The car scrappage scheme

What's the point of this? I can't believe it is ever 'greener' to scrap an older car in favour of a new one, given the carbon footprint of modern automated manufacturing methods.

Especially if classics like this (sadly not mine) are scrapped in favour of a Kia Picanto:

Barbecue Season

LOL. "Now that BBQ weather's here" is something I often read. Ermmm... if it isn't actually tipping down with rain, I'm barbecueing.

Getting the thing started is simple with scrunched up newspaper / a few sheets torn out of the phone book - useful since telephone directories can't otherwise be recycled - topped with dry twigs and a few pieces of lumpwood charcoal:

When the flames are leaping, cover in more charcoal, or just wood.

Wood takes longer to develop the required ember base for cooking, but the results are well worth it - beechwood is my favourite for flavour. Choose similarly sized pieces so that they all reach the ember stage at the same time.

Once I've finished cooking and the embers are dying down, I then close all the vents and throw on some fresh beech twigs, followed by a piece of trout or salmon. Whack on the lid for 20 minutes until it's cooked through, and the resulting hot 'smoked' fish will be succulent, flavoursome and enough to convert even the most ardent fish hater.

Which wild food books?

I get asked quite a lot about which books to use for wild food indentification. Here are my bibles:

1. Roger Phillips Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain and Europe, ISBN 03302644193. This is the definitive work in my view, the big selling point being the visual key to the main families on pages 10 - 12. It's now out of print, however used copies do appear on Amazon from time to time. Bag one if you can.

2. Roger Phillips Wild Food, ISBN 0330280694. A bit of a 'period piece' this, however the recipe for beech leaf noyau on page 67 is worth the cover price alone.

3. Richard Mabey Food for Free, ISBN-10:0002201593. The seminal work, and more useful for plant identification than Phillips' Wild Food in my opinion, however the two complement one another rather nicely.

4. Antonio Carluccio Complete Mushroom Book, ISBN 1844001636. Actually too far from 'complete' to ever use for identification, however it is a useful source of recipe ideas and inspiration.

Mean cuisine

I'm impressed. Since I switched to using a slow cooker and electric steamer (from an electric fan oven and hob), my domestic electricity consumption has halved.

That's without deploying any other energy-saving measures, since I already turn off lights in rooms which aren't being used, chargers once finished charging, and nothing is ever left on standby.

Researching further, the difference in energy consumption between the various types of appliances is quite scary:

0.79 kW/hour for a typical oven, compared with 0.15 kW/hour for the slow cooker.

1.2kW/hour for a halogen hob, compared with 0.9 kW/hour for the steamer (the steamer also cooks faster).

At a cost of £11.97 for the slow cooker (Asda), and £14.65 for the steamer (Tesco), my recent acquisitions have paid for themselves within a month. Plus I've had some very tasty stews, soups and vegetables.

Wood cutting

Spring is the time to get out there cutting, splitting and storing firewood, so that this:














Can be transformed next winter into this:

As a newbie to 'wood power' I've learned the hard way about which types of wood are worth bothering with and which are not, with much fiddling around trying to light wet petrol station logs on bitterly cold winter nights.

However, I've recently been given a chainsaw and can now cut my own firewood. In theory - fekkin' dangerous things, chainsaws. Agricultural colleges sometimes offer training sessions for the occasional / domestic chainsaw user. If not, the two-day NPTC 'CS30' Chainsaw Maintenance and Cross-cutting course covers everything and more.

Armed with a chainsaw (and the appropriate training and equipment), I'd go out and cut, in order of preference:

1. Birch
This burns well green or seasoned, and gives off a lovely smell. Since birch burns fast and hot, it is useful for mixing with slower burning woods such as beech or oak, especially if these aren't fully seasoned. (Or crap petrol station logs.)

2. Ash
The King of firewood. Burns well green or seasoned, although it lacks the aroma of birch I love so much. There's also lots of it about - much of the devastation caused by the great storm in 1987 has since been filled by ash seedlings grown up in their natural environment.

3. Beech / oak
Burns slowly with an intense heat. These woods need to be well seasoned, ie. cut, split and dry stored for at least a year before using - two years if cut in spring / summer. Save any chips from the splitting to flavour the BBQ.

4. Fruit woods
Cherry, apple, plum, pear. These smell wonderful but need to be well seasoned, else they'll smoke the house out. (I know.)

5. Sycamore / elm
These need to be well seasoned, particularly elm which has a high water content, however they burn slowly with a steady heat. These are common garden trees which require thinning, or felling if the elm has succumbed to disease. If ever I see a tree surgeon working on one, I make a point of asking if I can have whatever wood they've sawn.

6. Everything else
Virtually any wood will burn if well seasoned, or on top of a good bed of hot embers. A few lumps of smokeless coal or charcoal can help things along. I use candle drippings, or the unburned wax residue in tea lights to get the fire going if need be, rather than buy firelighters.

999. Coniferous woods
Larch, pine, spruce. Last and least. The red net bags typically found in petrol stations, at least in the South East. Avoid these like the plague unless your woodburner is just for decoration. Often wet, they're difficult to light, and don't produce much except an oily smoke that will clog up the chimney. They also spit like fury, and therefore shouldn't be used in an open fireplace without a fireguard.

Dogshit Park

So what do you do with a fungi find from a location that's used as a doggy toilet, or else otherwise contaminated? Or if you find an example of a prized species that's well past its best?

You could simply leave the fungi to decay in their natural habitat, however I pick them anyway and seed them in more desirable locations - not least because next season, I'll know where to look.

Picking doesn't harm the fungi since what's on the surface is only the fruit: the main body of the plant - the cobwebby mycelium - being underground.

Here's an Agaricus bitorquis I found today in Epsom town centre's notorious 'Dogshit Park':

Agaricus bitorquis is good to eat - it's the wild parent of the cultivated Portabello mushroom.




However this particular example was riddled with worms and not something I'd consider eating, quite apart from where I found it. I've chopped it up and scattered it around the garden, hoping for rain.

Hyacinths for the soul

Out on the North Downs Way, I stumbled across a bluebell wood. Bluebells aren't to be eaten, since all parts of the plant are poisonous, but they reminded me of the famous poem:

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

I'm surprised at how little-used the North Downs Way is. Once past the car parks and lookout point at Box Hill, I've walked for hours and not seen another (human) soul.