Preparing the veg beds may well have been rudely interrupted by a shower of hail, yes, HAIL at the weekend. But that still doesn’t detract from the fact that spring has sprung. The songbirds are chirping their way into our early mornings, the lambs are gamboling across the fields and, much to our household’s delight, the nettle tops are just high enough to be cropped for soup.
My family used to be horrified at the thought of nettle soup and once upon a time I guess I would have been too. But now I wait for that magical time, that first real foraging opportunity to come around and I’m out there, grasping the nettles – sometimes with gloves, sometimes without, depends on how defiant I’m feeling…
Last year I made a short doc for BBC Scotland showing you how to make fabulous nettle soup. You can find it here: www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/health/spring_detox.shtml