New knife finished!-Capuchadou le original!;-)

Soooo, this is a new one I am quite fond of. It is some 85mm x2,5 mm with quite a shallow blade, made from 240 layers of rebar, spring and file steel, with a selective temper. There is a predecessor of the famed Laguiole folding knife, the Capuchadou native to the French region of Laguiole. While currently there is a folding knife currently marketed as such, peasants of the region carried a small, light fixed-blade knife for all the odd little everyday life of a farmer or shepherd before the venue of the folding knife, which was influenced by the Spanish Navaja. Et Voilá, le Capuchadou...;-). The handle is genuine rose wood, meaning rosa canina wood, which I really love for its wild grain and deep colour nuances. The ferrule is ball-peened copper. The knife has soon become one of my favourite kitchen knives. It is a cinch for dicing onions and vegetables, for cleaning carrots and peeling apples, and a great snack knife, too. I am therefore rethinking my stance towards thick spines in knives. Okay, I would not want to carry a bush beast with a flimsy 1,8 mm spine thickness, but, provided the temper´s right, I guess you can live with thinner even in the woods. Just look at Mora knives... guess there will be more like this one.

Harvest!;-)

 I  am currently preparing ´shrooms and potions;-). The mushrooms are either just dried or salted and spiced and salted with...erm ... salt, thyme, sage and artemisia, weird, I know, but tasty;-). I even seasoned some with honey and sage, and dried them and what can I say... they are all gone already..;-) I tend to eat them as snack more often than cooking with them!

Those are gins and potions: Up front there is a very handy love potion, which is also a good tonicum against arthritis:

take four handful of nettle seeds,
four handfuls of dried rose petals (rosa canina)
0,2 l of birch sap
and honey to cover the whole mess
2 cl of Amaretto liqueur

let rest for three days in the sun, and three weeks in the dark, strain through a sieve and enjoy. 2 cl per day will suffice!

Behind that, a cough syrup.

take two handfuls of ribwort plantain (plantago lanceolata),  ten leaves of gravel root (Euparium) or Echinacea, one small and sharp chopped onion, cover with honey and let it rest for six weeks in the dark.

The big bottles: Sloe gin, with cinnamon spice, Birch sap and herbal wine with nettle seeds, sloe / birch sap wine, sloe / birch sap / herb wine. Jul feasting is accomplished!;-)

By the way, this is Willibald;-), a birch sap vinegar fungus that simply built up in a neglected birch sap bottle. I fed him with honey, and he prospers well. I have made birch sap wine with him and added a bit to bannock dough already... works!;-)