I’m in a Facebook cooking group and they do a theme challenge each month. April is Depression Era or Frugal. So I decided to go as cheap and gourmet as possible. Soldiers and eggs with dead nettle pesto.
Homemade: bread, butter Home raised: goose eggs Home foraged: pecans, dead nettles, wild garlic
I made a soft skin and a hard skin loaf because my wife likes a softer crust.
Paid for: Salt, pepper, EVOO, flour, yeast, heavy cream. Cost per person: $1.13
I think it looks lovely. Good idea with the nettle pesto, going to try that this weekend!
Last year I didn’t get any because my geese ate all of the dead nettles in the yard. Fortunately I put up some fencing around my raised beds which keeps chickens out but also takes the volunteer dead nettles.
I just realized that we’re talking about two different nettles. I looked up yours, I didn’t know you could eat those! I will have to try it. I’m talking about stinging nettles. They are just coming up at home, next weekend will be perfect for harvesting. I like to steam them, then form them into logs on a baking sheet and freeze them. Save the steaming water for stock too.
Stinging nettles are edible too!
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/165071/stinging-nettle-soup/
Yeah, that’s the ones I was talking about! I freeze em so I have dark greens through the winter. Apparently the steaming water is great for your hair too.
I completely misread, lol. It’s never occurred to me that you could freeze them… Is that after boiling?
For sure! After you steam them form them into little logs (ngl, they look like little shits) and freeze them. Then when you’re making a soup or curry or whatever, just throw one in.
We get no stinging nettles here. But dead nettles are so much easier to work with, so we have that going for us.
Yeah, that’s a true fact. They always seem to find a small hole in my gloves.