posted 2 days ago
I was just tidying a cabinet where I keep a lot of half-finished projects and materials for projects (I imagine some of you probably have a similar piece of furniture, where things just tend to end up?) Anyways, in there is a paper bag of nettle fibres. Not retted, but raw dried bark that I've pounded and combed to get rid of most of the non-fibre material. I think there are fibres in there collected both one and two years ago.
When I took this bag out of the cabinet, I caught a whiff of curry smell, so of course I shoved my nose in the bag. It did smell more or less exactly like curry powder. Since I was wondering if my nose had bugged (it does happen) I asked my brother to smell it. He confirmed that it does indeed smell like curry.
Now, this has me wondering. I don't want to eat nettle fibres obviously, but maybe you can do something similar with the leaves? Grind them into a paste, dry it in cakes, and let them sit in a paper bag for a couple of years maybe? And then grind it into a powder, add salt and something spicy like peppers? Or maybe you could use the non-fibre stuff in the bark, to get a bonus product out of your nettle processing? I find this interesting anyways, I like curry spice. Did anyone else notice this?