70g of Hens and Chicks brewed up and drunk. Feeling pretty nice
It's not really obvious how to approach making a tea from these bastards, because they are quite complex, structurally.
Here's a picture:
Mother hen sits surrounded by her chicks. I'm using dried pods so they're brown and the chicks are a bit shrivelled.
The problem: I don't want seeds in my tea as they make thing taste foul. Also I always crack poppy pods open to look, and smell, for mould. Well, I'm screwed if I'm cracking the chicks open and looking inside, that would take forever.
So my strategy is to assume that a mould-free hen is a strong indicator that her chicks are healthy too.
- take one hen, and her chicks.
- Break off all the chicks into an empty container.
- crack the hen open and empty the seeds into a jar
- examine for mould. if there is mould, chuck the lot. Otherwise...
- remove the stem and the really hard bit at the top of the stem and dump in a bowl, on kitchen scales.
Repeat until I've got enough material for a brew, (I started at 35g today but felt a top up was in order so had 70g in total) then brew as normal (pop into a juicer, add 70°C water and lime juice, blend to a soup, leave for a minute or two, pour into a mesh-type strainer and squeeze all the liquid out into a glass. By that time the tea is cool enough to chug back. So I chug it back.
I found surprisingly few mouldy hens today, I discarded only one pod out of about 20. Odds are much better than with Giganteum.
Now I have something to plant in my garden. When's a good time to plant poppies?