Dormant Gardens, Frugal Heating, and an Oregano, Celery Stick and Mushroom Salad

Today I visited family in Brandenburg, at the outskirts of Berlin, and received permission to forage in the garden.

Laid out by my late aunt in honour of nuns' kitchen gardens, it is now a natural landscape of firewood, rain-drenched grass, one or two orange-hipped rose bushes, blossoming herbs, Canada goldenrod spires, and nettles.

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BEHIND THE GARDEN, the walnut tree is carrying plenty of nuts. 

My uncle explained that, given the acorns and other supplies of food in the area, the squirrels in the area hardly need the walnut tree. So I was relieved to find that nobody was chattering frantically and bombarding me with gnawed fragments of husks from the branches of the tree.

A few walnuts are now drying on the unused coal stove in my room.

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I also found sorrel (Sauerampfer) and dandelion (Löwenzahn) leaves, but aside from two leaves of sorrel, I left them intact.

Oregano
Photograph by Christian Bauer, 2004
Found on Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 2.0

In the end I made a plain salad at home. It was inspired by the purple-blossomed oregano from the garden.

Agaricus campestris
From "Twelve edible mushrooms of the United States",
by Thomas Taylor (1893)
Found on Wikimedia Commons

The mushrooms and celery are, as far as I recall, German produce. Wild mushrooms are especially abundant in the forests of Brandenburg now; but they should of course be picked with caution as they may be toxic.

Oregano, Celery and Mushroom Salad

• 1 medium mushroom
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 2 to 5 sprigs of oregano
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 3/4 teaspoon aceto balsamico vinegar
• salt
• pepper
• (optional) cayenne pepper

1. Quarter and slice the mushroom.

2. Pluck the oregano leaves from the stems.

3. Assemble with the diced celery, vinaigrette, pepper and salt.

4. (Decorate with celery leaves if you like.)

Serves one

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A Note On Vegetable Oils

Olea Europæa, sylvestris = Olivier d'Europe, sauvage. [Wild olives]
From the

Traité des arbres et arbustes
que l'on cultive en France en pleine terre

(1801)
Found on Wikimedia Commons

If olive oil is produced by an agricultural operation that relies heavily on tilling as well as artificial fertilization and irrigation, it harms the environment.

Writing in the Guardian food section, Clare Finney links to an academic study about these risks, but also notes that

Traditional small-scale methods of olive oil production have very little environmental impact, however. Olive trees can grow in areas of mixed land use, promoting biodiversity, and require very little water compared with other crops

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MY UNCLE had turned the gas heating low in his house in Brandenburg. My family still hasn't begun heating with coal yet in Berlin either. (My ballet teacher also sent around an email this past week and mentioned the trend, saying that we could warm ourselves up in her Monday class.) So when eating a cold salad like this during early October in an unheated home, I'd suggest following it up with a hearty bowl of soup.