Frugal Living... Nettles and yet more Nettle recipes..

Frugal Living. Nettle soup version two.




Well, I’m sorry I don’t seem to be finding much time lately to update this blog, its obviously getting into our busy time for the land work and I just don’t seem to get round to this much these days.

Everything is steaming away, growing like mad, and sadly the weeds are growing the fastest of all. At the mo, I’m trying to spend at least a couple of hours every day down there weeding, plus I’m picking tons of broad beans, podding them and freezing them, and of course trying to keep the weeds around the cottage and guest area under control so it all looks pretty and welcoming for our guests…

So we are living on easy cook stuff at the moment, and soup seems to be high on that list…and as we have a nice big patch of nettles that I keep trimming the tops off to keep them growing and fresh… nettle soup is top of the list…



Rick and I generally disagree on soup… I like mine blended and smooth; he likes what we call ‘big soup’ which is good and chunky…

This is my version of nettle and chorizo big soup.



I am lucky I can buy a kilo of cheapy and quite bland chorizo on our market for 2.80 euros. And for that I get 8 chorizo, and I only use one at a time for soup so it’s very economical. The rest gets bunged in the freezer.

The night before, soak a large handful of dry beans… I use black-eyed beans

Cook the beans in fresh water till soft.

Peel and chop a large onion, chop a couple of carrots into regular chunks, a couple of cloves of garlic, put in a large pan and sauté in a dollop of olive oil. Add a couple of large potatoes, diced, a good handful of shredded cabbage, keep stirring to prevent it all sticking, add more olive oil if needed. Slice thinly the chorizo sausage, add that to the pan, then add a good colander full of nettle tops and stir well. Cover all with water /stock and simmer till veg is soft, if you use water, add a stock cube, I added a couple of chopped tomatoes as I had some leftover…plus the cooked beans, let it all simmer till the veg is soft and the potatoes are ‘falling’.

Serve with chunks of fresh soda bread…. Yummy.



I made nettle and chicken and Parmesan ravioli the other day… it was gorgeous, I’m using the nettles in anywhere that I would use spinach… or cabbage …



Make the fresh pasta as normal, and for the filling I just, put in a pan some chopped cooked chicken, just a handful, some chopped stingers (nettles) make sure there is plenty, a little chopped onion, a knob of butter. I then sautéed it all together, added the grated parmesan at the end when it was all nicely mixed, shoved it in the pasta and cooked it… with a homemade tomato sauce it was delicious…



You could replace the spinach in a lasagne with nettles too…