Lapland autumn 2009 – 12th September

I began the day cooking breakfast and making a batch of pinn bröd dough

Teres was keen to help me ;>)

I cooked the breads on the top of my woodburning stove

My neighbours were at their cabin for the day and there grandson was collecting blue berries and threading them onto a grass stem.  Apparently many children [...]

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Making pinn bröd

There are four basic ingredients in Pinn bröd; flour, salt, baking powder and honey.  I like to add some curry powder for added flavour

To each cup of flour I add a pinch of salt and baking powder and some honey to taste.  The honey not only gives taste but helps to preserve the bread, keep [...]

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Lapland Spring 2009 – 3rd June

Sunny and 19 degrees first thing this morning.
I made some traditional Lapland bread called pinn bröd using the simple recipe  (more about that soon) that Anki had shown me.

Lacking a rolling pin to roll them out I improvised with a candle which worked just fine

I cooked them on top of the stove for less than [...]

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Primitive skills weekend – Part 1

Last weekend I attended a primitive skills weekend run by Will Lord and John Lord + some of their friends.  Here are John and Will exchanging tips on the hand-drill

I arrived early on Friday afternoon as food was being prepared for an evening meal

Once this rabbit had been gutted and skinned we made up a [...]

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Sausages in bannock

This morning I cooked sausages over the campfire
Once the sausages were cooked I wrapped bannock dough around the sausages and cooked them again.

An interesting observation for natural navigation today was this pond sedge.
The sedge having been regularly blown by the prevailing wind (coming from the south west) was pointing in a north easterly direction.

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To answer Treewrights question…..

I clear the embers away to expose bare ground and place the pot on the ground (the ground is very hot having absorbed heat from the fire), then I surround the pot with embers and also place some on the top and this creates an oven.

I find it takes about 30 – 40 minutes to [...]

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Reed Mace/Bulrush/Cattail pollen bread

Reed Mace (Typha sp.) are now flowering
The flowers produce large amounts of yellow pollen which can easily be collected as used as flour for bread making.
Bend the flower head into a bag (being careful not to break the flower stem) and give it a good shake to remove some pollen.
From only a few flower heads [...]

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Weekend gathering

I hosted a gathering this weekend at my woods for a friends 50th birthday party.
The plan was to practise skills and to do some green woodworking, but we seemed to spend most of the weekend eating and drinking!
I made a chocolate bannock by using a cooking pot as an oven.
Here’s the end result.
Although I had [...]

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