Keeping your snails while you're away

What a lot of questions! I hope the answers will help others as well.
Loads of young can hatch from one mating pair, plenty for several meals once they’ve grown up.
To leave them while you’re away:
For the snails to be active they must be kept moist. When it’s too dry for them they aestivate, which is like hibernation but in summer. So keep them in shade, with plenty of water to keep the environment moist. Growing food plants will last them longer. They like grass.
They can dig themselves down into the ground, that’s where they lay their eggs. I'm not sure how deep, but pushing some slate, sheet metal or glass down a foot deep would surely keep them in. I believe the French dig them a pit, which is cool and moist.
In winter outdoors in the UK they hibernate. I let them do that. If you want to them keep active and feeding they must be kept warmer.
I hope this helps, good luck!

A SPRING WEED MEAL

Yesterday was sunny and dry again, and though the news said some planes were flying, we saw no sign of any. Lovely!  Spring is very late this year, and we’ve had a long spell of lovely sunny weather, though often there is a chill breeze off the sea.

            I went wandering around to enjoy the wonderful spring growth bursting forth everywhere.  It all looked so temptingly succulent I went back to fetch a collecting basket and started picking.  Nettles first, just the opening leaves at the top, I wore washing-up gloves not to get stung.  Then lots of ramsons (wild garlic), it is getting close to flowering now, and the big leaves are getting coarser.  I picked the young ones from the centre of the plants.  They’re so abundant here I don’t have to be too careful.

All the time adding various odds and ends of edible leaves.  The cow parsley is showing a few leaves in places.  I only took one or two from each plant, ribwort plantain is beginning to grow, cleavers (goosegrass) is good to eat if cooked before it flowers.  I read that recently in my new book “

I also read there that primrose leaves are good to eat too.  I gather a few from the wild meadow and more from the garden, where I have scattered seeds from wild plants.  Silverweed has just started coming into leaf, I took that from my little rock garden where it’s too abundant and would like to spread further if I gave it chance, so I was weeding at the same time.  Sorrel too is a great addition to a weedy meal, it’s acidity adds a nice piquancy, and it’s nice leafy now before the flower stems start shooting, though that doesn’t stop using them through the summer too.  Some young dandelions from the centre of the rosettes went in too.

Alexanders has been green all winter and always available, but I feel since the Romans were keen enough to bring it here with them it’s bitterness must have value, so I picked a generous handful of younger leaves, and noticed I had a flower bud too. 

Then I went to boggy stream and picked a few water parsnip leaves, but they’re not big enough yet to be worthwhile, the same is true for the watercress.  Both I gather regularly throughout the summer, but I always soak them for a while in salty water to get the tine snails (and any other creatures) to drop off, and cook them thoroughly for fear of liver fluke, as cattle graze there and drink from the stream.

I had a large mass of weeds to take home for supper, but they cook down to a much smaller amount, so you need a lot.  I chopped all the weeds up, which takes ages, (I had a brief fantasy about food processors) and threw them in the pot as I did them.  I tried to put those that take longest to cook in first.  That’s plantain, nettles and any that have thick stems, though I cut off the thickest usually.  I made sure the water weeds got well cooked too.  The goosegrass and ramsons went in late on.  I actually kept some of the ramsons back to add at the last minute because the garlicky flavour gets lost after just a little cooking.

I hadn’t put much water in the pot, and I tasted the dark liquor to decide what spicing I should add.  None!  The flavour was rich and almost meaty, it tasted better and as strong as any stock cube.  Amazing!  We had with some mealymeal (ground maize cooked to a porridge, the staple in southern Africa.) 

A mass of cooked weeds like this can be used in many ways. 

More recipes tomorrow!

See the March 09 archive for details of preparation and recipes

Eat snails now, no trouble. And More TV

Autumn is a good and easy time to gather snails to eat straight away. The French do this traditionally. The snails have grown and fattened up throughout the summer, and are now hibernating. This means they have purged themselves and are dormant, but have not yet lost much weight. All you have to do is find them, and kill them in boiling water soon after gathering. Don’t keep them in a warm damp place first or they might wake up again.
If you’re ready for a snail meal, you can freeze or bottle them after boiling in stock. See the March 09 archive for details of preparation and recipes.

Another TV film crew! This time it’s for S4C, the Welsh channel, and particularly for teenagers. Since I can't speak Welsh I was not allowed to contribute any pearls of wisdom or scraps of knowledge directly to the show. I dread to think what the angle is, but I heard a lot of laughter.
Now I think: What a ridiculous thing to be famous for, eating snails. I can't really understand what’s so strange and fascinating about it. There are far more interesting things in my life.

Autumn 2009

I decided to empty the vivarium of snails for the winter.
I picked out a few of the biggest to keep overwinter, hibernating in a bucket in the shed.
The rest, including some quite small, but mature snails, I cooked in a weed stock. They are in the freezer for future use.
The babies that bred in a bucket I think are too small still to overwinter successfully, but I'm keeping them and we’ll see what happens in the spring.

15.6.9 I meant to cook snails tonight!

I had decided to eat the runts and small but mature snails. I gently felt the lip of each one in the vivarium, any that were soft are still growing, so I left them. There were several which looked quite small, but had a hard lips, indicating maturity. I wouldn’t want to breed from those, so I could either release them to the garden or eat them. Since there are still plenty around the house I decided to eat them and put them in a dry purging bucket to aestivate, which they did. Following my own instructions I washed them before plunging them in boiling water. As I washed them in a colander under the kitchen cold tap, they started emerging from their shells! It’s been very warm weather, so I suppose they were only waiting for a drop a water to get going. You can still kill them like that, but I don’t like the idea and would rather they were dormant, believing they suffer less. So I cleaned the aestivating bucket and put them back in. (we ate pizza instead!) They’re washed now, so in another few days I will kill them in boiling water without further ado. I think 3 days from today will be OK.
Next time I'm going to wash the snails thoroughly before putting them to aestivate, then only clean them up dry by hand, before killing them. When they’ve been killed I throw away that water anyway and then pick them from their shells. After that, I wash them very thoroughly, particularly to remove slime from the foot. I think this might be partly at least the mucus operculum, which when dry is a bit like sellophane. I actually cook them in good stock, with weeds in. and then bake them in the oven with butter sauce. There are others ways to cook them of course. There are a few recipes on this Blog, more ideas from you, dear Reader, will be posted too.

Other snail websites

I found an interesting website, from the US Department of Agriculture. It’s about raising snails commercially for food. It’s also got good information on their biology.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/AFSIC_pubs/srb96-05.htm#Introduction

Winter hibernation: they can bury themselves up to a foot deep.

I had previously found a good blog by an American malacologist (snail scientist) called Aydin Örstan. You can see a PDF published by the American Malacological Society, written by him on Rearing Terrestrial Gastropoda. His blogsite goes well beyond snails, and is fascinating and fun:-- http://snailstales.blogspot.com/