This week’s theme:
HYDE PARK SOURCE TAKEOVER – Nature Nearest You.
Fact of the day:
Gathering wild leaves or food such as berries or nuts from green spaces (verges, fields, parks or hedgerows) is really fun and is called foraging.
Resources list:
Plastic bag to collect wild leaves and flowers you find. Bag of bought salad leaves or lettuce you have in the fridge. Any of or some of these: radish, celery, apples, tomatoes, cucumber, red onion (bought from shop or home grown – it doesn’t matter, just whatever you have in or available!) Pick edible wild leaves and flower petals you can definitely identify. Bottle of clear lemonade, pack of strawberries, half a cucumber, good handful of fresh mint leaves or lemon balm leaves. Jug or big glass. Ice cubes only if you have any in the freezer.
Our Daily Activities this week have been created by our friends at Hyde Park Source.
Activity 1:
Read, or ask somebody to read you this Fact Sheet about foraging for wild food and edible flowers.
Activity 2:
Make a wild colour salad!
Tips for ingredients to use for salad –
Flowers you can eat and for colour: Borage (blue), Marigold (orange), Rose (pink), Nasturtium (orange or yellow), Chive flower (purple)
Wild or garden leaves to pick: Dandelion, Sorrel, Garlic Mustard, Nasturtium, Sedum, Mizuna, Chicory
Salad leaves from garden or shop to use: Rocket, Lettuce, Spinach, Watercress
Add in for crunch and texture: cherry tomatoes, radish, cucumber, celery, apple.
Instructions:
Check what salad you already have in your fridge like lettuce, tomatoes, radish, celery etc plus an apple if you have one.
Pop into your garden or to a local green space where it is a bit wilder. You may have noticed dandelions growing there before and definitely recognise their leaves so pick a few dandelion leaves if you can.
If you have any herbs like mint, parsley or chives pick a few of those too.
See the tips list of things you can try and watch the video to get an idea.
Wash your all your leaves and flower petals gently first in cold water and shake a bit to dry. Place the leaves in a large bowl first and mix them up a bit.
After chopping them smaller – add in your crunchy stuff like radish, red onion, celery, apple. Notice all the different colours as you add them in. Add in chopped up tomato if you have any and this is nice to add red colour too.
Mix all this together gently.
Finally add the edible flower petals on top to decorate – just sprinkle on the orange marigold and rose petals and place the whole spicy nasturtium flowers on top for beauty.
Admire your Rainbow Salad and how much more fun to eat it looks than a plain green normal salad!
If you want to add a dressing – mix up 3tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp cider vinegar, 1 tspn mustard, half tspn honey and drizzle on.
Activity 3:
Make a tasty and very fruity pink summery drink!
Instructions:
Chop up a few strawberries (at least 5 or 6) into halves or quarters if they are big and put in bottom of a big jug or your glass. Chop up a third of cucumber up into 1cm cubes and put in the jug on top of the strawberries.
Wash your mint or lemon balm leaves, then tear them up a bit smaller (they will smell amazing when you do this!) and drop into your jug on top of the strawberries.
Now pour the lemonade all over your strawbs, cucumber and mint leaves! Stir gently and leave for 20mins or more for the flavours and colour to spread.
Hey presto! You have a beautiful pink summer drink that smells gorgeous too!
Pour a glass, add ice if you want and enjoy drinking yourself or share with a friend.
Cheers!
Why not take a photo of you completing today’s daily activities and share it with us? You can share it on our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or send it to melanie@purplepatcharts.org and we’ll put it online for you!
All photos taken by Claire at Hyde Park Source!