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snacks & adventure

Tag Archives: summer

Urban Homesteading

22 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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Cambridge, England, food, harvest, summer, vacations

I spent a year living in rural Pennsylvania, and while I was there I had a huge garden and a small orchard. I froze fruit, made applesauce, harvested garlic, learned to make pesto from different greens to deal with the chard that ran wild in my garden, picked berries, foraged for chives in the spring…I was just learning, so I didn’t do anything stupid like pick mushrooms, but one of my favorite parts of living in the country was how much the land gave you if you looked.  Even an idiot like me could materially reduce their grocery bill just by paying attention.

Then I moved to Boston, where opportunities for gleaning were much thinner on the ground, and I was too busy to take advantage anyway.  Apart from a memorable trip to pick blackberries, my time in the big city flew by in a blur of grad school and Trader Joe’s frozen meals.

Last autumn, I was too overwhelmed by the move to think about apple picking.  But even though my attempts at gardening only yielded about five strawberries, it turns out Original Cambridge is full of free fruit, and apples are just the beginning (or, seasonally speaking, somewhere toward the end).  Earlier this month, I wrote about plum picking at the Orchard Tea Rooms. Things have picked up speed since then, and here is a brief list:

– applesauce with apples purloined from Grantchester, used in a variety of baked goods and distributed to friends and coworkers
– a second round of apples for applesauce, apple butter, apple helppies, apple juice, and any other apple product you can recommend because
– plum freezer jam, again with purloined plums
– elderberry syrup from elderberries in the Mill Road Cemetery
– elderberry muffins
– frozen elderberries
– blackberries frozen for baked goods later in the year

Last weekend I got completely carried away with the elderberries.  I strolled through the Mill Road Cemetery until I literally couldn’t carry any more, encountering two adorable small children near the Cambridge Blue, both of whom wanted to help me pick fruit.  Because I wasn’t eager to be the creepy adult peddling fruit to six year olds, I said no thank you and told them it would stain their fingers – which they took as a challenge.  One of the little girls, with pale skin, frekcles, purple leggings, a purple skirt, and pink crocs, held a single elderberry between four fingers and sang “look! I didn’t stain my fingers! I’m going to eat this one!”

I must have managed to strike the appropriate air of adult authority, because I gave her my best Disapproving Look and said “I would really prefer if you asked your mum first.” And she said “aw man!” but let the berry fall, and I moved on.  At this point I was lugging around a giant pot literally overflowing with berries, so I slogged home and started de-stemming them.  Five hours and no breaks later, I had about three pints of elderberry syrup, a purple-stained countertop, and four or five cups of elderberries for muffins (check!), freezing (check!) and leaving in the fridge too long and letting them get mouldy, thereby wasting all my hard work (check!).  I’m including two pictures, including one blurry one with my face in it – for context.  We are talking serious elderberry action. The pot was so big that I had trouble getting everything into the photo.

It was epic.

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Southwold

10 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

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holiday, My Friend Jaime, Southwold, summer, Typical British Seaside Holiday, UK, vacation

I’ve written about Tibby’s Triangle, an award-winning housing development in Southwold, on my other blog, (see upper-right corner of collage) but I also wanted to tell you about the rest of the town, which is utterly charming.  The beach is lined with those quintessentially British seaside huts, which apparently cost obscene amounts of money. There is a giant pier with a famous sculpture, a famous arcade, and some schlock.  I was absolutely charmed by the whole place.

It was wonderful to be there with another urban planner – Jaime and I camped a few miles away, and then had the better part of a day to spend in town.  We walked up and down the main drag, got a sub-par latte in a hilariously awful cafe, visited the Adnam’s shop (we meant to do the brewery tour, but we ran out of day); hung out in a playground and toured the housing development referenced above; went to the pier; took lots of photos; went swimming, and called it a day.

I had originally intended to take Jaime to Lavenham, a really sweet Suffolk town that I’ve mentioned on the blog before, but as we hopped back in the car, I turned to Jaime and gave her the options: we could go look at Lavenham – walk around the main drag of a very cute little town – OR we could race back to Cambridge with plenty of time to hit up the Waitrose on Trumpington Road, the yuppie supermarket that I’d never gone to because of my car-free situation.

Jaime intuited that I really, really wanted to hit up the yuppie grocery, and so that’s what we did.  For the results of the shopping trip, see below.

Summer 2012?

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

≈ 2 Comments

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London, summer, the Peak District, UK, Wales

How have I fallen off the wagon again? After my friend Georgiana told me she checks Snacks & Adventures religiously, I promised myself I’d step up the posting and recommit to my quest to become internet-famous (it still might happen!) (Hi, Georgiana!).  Summer 2012 is drawing to a close, but in 2011 England had a terrible summer followed by an incredible autumn.  Since we’ve already had a terrible summer, here’s hoping for a repeat performance!  Its a little early for a retrospective, but now is as good a time as any to reflect on the last two and a half months…

Anyway. There have been many things that haven’t warranted a blog post but have been pretty great: a lazy day in London with my friend Robert; a stroll across the lawn at King’s on my birthday (those are my feet on the grass!), many breakfasts of challah and fruit (I particularly love challah for two reasons: 1. its delicious and 2. the cute bread vendor at the market always smiles at me and makes small talk when I buy it). Its been too cold to have leisurely drinks in pub gardens very often, but I have still managed to make the rounds and do some indoor drinking.

The Mr. Kipling biscuits in the photo are so weird even English people laugh at them (I mean, someone must buy them, but no one I know).  But I had my first tea cake yesterday, and those are no laughing matter.

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