Invisible Food at the Grove Adventure Playground
On Saturday 27th June, the Grove Adventure Playground organised a wonderful summer fair for the children and families in the Loughborough area. Invisible Food and Ceri Buck had a stall where you could taste nettle tea (good for detox), peppermint, yarrow and elderflower (good for colds) and lemon balm and lime flower tea (very relaxing).
Nettle beer, this batch boiled up with ginger
You could also taste Ceri’s second batch of nettle beer, brewed and bottled a week ago. It tastes a bit like ginger beer and you get the fizz from the yeast.
Rosemary: an aid to memory
The Rosemary at the Wild Herb garden near Angell Town estate is beautiful at the moment. Here was a focus on the power of Rosemary to aid memory. You could take away a sprig and write on the space something you want to remember. Then keep the sprig or make tea with it or pop it in a bottle of wine for a couple of weeks to infuse its power there.
At 3.30, a group of 4 adults and 6 children explored the Elam Street space finding yarrow, mallow and nettles in abundance, some kind of cabbage, lime flowers, wild rocket, plantain, dead nettle amongst others.
While over at Elam Street space we played ‘Pinging the plantain’ – a game where you loop over the stem of a plantain around the seed head and ping it off. It takes a bit of practice. After this, 2 of the young walk participants invented their own game of popping the bindweed flower out.
The summer fair was held in front of the playground, taking over part of the street, reclaiming more space for play!
Invisible food will be back at the Grove Adventure Playground over the summer for more play with plants and wild food. Thanks to all at GAP – Sonia, Tanya and Maureen + all the others whose names I don’t know – for all their hard work.
August 8, 2009 at 1:19 pm
We are doing 2 walking workshops with Grove Adventure Playground during their summer playscheme
Tuesday 11th August
Walk to wild herb garden between Loughborough and Angell Town estates, gather herbs for tea, using photos of plants to help participants identify plants, bit like a treasure hunt
Return to GAP, looking out for plants on way there and back. Taking photos if cameras available.
Draw plants for labels
Make tea with herbs on storm kettle. I’ll bring some jam and oat cakes to promote the jam making activity in next session
Wednesday 19th August,
Walk to Loughborough park to get mulberries for jam.
Return to GAP, looking out for plants on way there and back. Gather herbs for tea
Make Wild Berry jam with mulberries and blackberries (and apples)
Make labels for jam with drawings from last session (which I will have scanned and resized to fit the jars)
Make wild herb tea on the storm kettle and drink with our jam and oat cakes.
Everyone can take home a mini jam jar of jam with label
What skills can be learnt?
*Identifying plants and learning about their properties
*drawing plants
*reading skills; scanning and skim reading, using Invisible Food library of plant and cookery books for information about a plant
*writing about plants; writing recipes or plant information, poems, adverts for plants emphasising their specific properties
*map making (plotting plants on a piece of land or area)
*cooking jams, soups, cakes
*learning about and using carbon-neutral cooking equipment such as storm kettles and rocket stoves (in suitable environments)
*photography, tile painting