to wonder why there are blackberries going bad whilst people complain that they don't have enough money to feed their family healthy food.

[froken]

We went blackberry picking today, I was expecting a couple of manky blackberries to be left because I hear so often in the media and on mumsnet people saying how they struggle to feed their dc healthy food and sometimes people saying they have a hard time finding enough money to feed their dc at all.

There was a huge amount of blackberries, we were a 20 min walk outside a major city so an easily accessible place for 1000s of families.

We picked 9 pounds of blackberries.

Aibu to think that it would be a good idea for those struggling to feed their family a healthy diet (and those struggling to feed their family at all) should be out picking the free fruit that grows all over England's public spaces?

LEM rosehip wine. my dad's side were proper rural working class. you can make wine out of anything (wine in the losest interpretation of the word) including dandelions.

I love coffee revels

We're going to make syrup, but I think you can put them in jam also.

you freak ubik

ubik

I'm looking up foraging type blogs. Apparently you should pick blackberry leaves (and eat them) before the plant comes in to flower, when they get a bit tough. Think of what the OP has been missing out on with all the focus on the fruits.

i prefer the chocolate discs myself! lost a filling in a toffee one too many blackberries

Apparently birch leaves will remind you of radicchio.

Is the op Jamie Oliver?

Why is it so wrong to think that people who have no money to buy food should take advantage of local free sources of food? Not instead of foodbanks, not instead of benefits but to supplement those sources of help.

If a family uses a foodbank and they go and pick a couple of pots of blackberries maybe they could leave some blackberries for other people.

I am not benefit bashing, my entire childhood was funded by benefits, I feel that families with a limited income could embrace the tasty free food around them a bit more.

Ooh I remember rosehip syrup on rice pudding for school dinners. That lovely little pool of gorgeousness!

if anyone finds any instructive, simple descriptions of how to pick and make elderflower cordial please share.

The blog I'm reading has a recipe for grass juice. SAF, you are obviously being too posh with all your nettles and dandelion talk.

I hate the horrid toffee ones they are like bullets whereas the coffee ones are lovely a soft and ..er..coffee-ee

Hate blackberries, although the ones airfreighted from Mexico aren't too bad. Everyone round here is obsessed with stripping the roadsides of anything vaguely edible and giving it to their pink-cheeked cherubs, although a pal made some rather fine elderflower champagne a few months ago.

Elderflower cordial is a storecupboard staple, sAf.

Don't tell me you're one of those feckless types who don't get in Kaffir lime leaves as well?

It gets better, 4 year old twins celebrating their birthday with ... Weed soup. I'm just imagining DS2's face if I suggested serving that at his birthday party.

I've mentioned on another thread, but I bought a book called Food for Free (Collins Gem). It's quite basic, but good enough for me.

Just surprised (at reading) you can eat rowan berries, but made into a (sharp) jelly or distilled into alcohol.

How much jam, exactly, do people eat? Because we get through about three jars a year, so even buying Bonne Maman, and even if sugar etc was free, we'd save about £1 a month making our own, and about 10p a month if we bought value.

Blackberries are shite
iPhones is where it's at now
Signed.....A Poor Person

Weed soup sounds just what I need myself at the moment

I can definitely source that from my local park but I need't even go that far. The house three doors down should be fine.

apparently you can live on jam brian.

elderflower cordial is lovely and MASSIVELY overpriced so that's one that would make economical sense to make yourself given elderflower is everywhere. need a nice simple recipe though. i have an archaic make your own wine/cider/allsorts book somewhere that i pinched from my grandad but nothing is simple in there - not least because you have to try and calculate what the hell they're on about in measurements.

Fruit picking is brilliant! Took the boys I look after blackberry picking a few weeks ago and got lots! There was no one else there and we could have picked all day there was so many. Some people have the attitude now that its not safe or clean to pick your own, it's such a shame. You are not being unreasonable- blackberries are fresh fruit and a healthy snack, could be sprinkled in cereal or shoved in a pie. Op isn't saying you can live on blackberries on their own but it's very correct that its a free way of getting very healthy fresh fruit.

You have to have jam with peanut butter, it's the law.

I make it in the bread machine, just chuck in the fruit, sugar and lemon juice and switch it on. Apples are high in pectin so I put some in rather than buy it. All my jam is apple and something .

We're off for more rosehips this weekend as we didn't collect nearly enough last time. We haven't had much luck with elderberries, finding very few, not enough to do much with anyway

This is all well and good but what about when your