Waiting for nettles

My fellow foodblogger Kinna is on Easter holidays in the very south of Sweden and picked nettles yesterday! Read her post about it (if you know Swedish) or just admire the nice pictures. So now I have nettle cravings but I think I will have to wait a while. My new nettle picking gloves lies on the kitchen counter, ready to go.

Just outside the barn at my parents´ farm was a large bush of nettles when I was little. They burnt, we knew that, and cried bitterly when we accidently stepped in them. But in early spring we also knew that Mum would soon come in in the evening with the first tender, delicate nettles in a bowl and make nettle soup for supper... Just thinking about it, dark green with egg halves...aaah! And it just doens´t taste incredibly good, it is good for you. Lots of iron, lots of vitamins. Just remember to pick very very tender, new shoots and rinse in many waters so nobody says tasting it: "these hard and crunchy things, is that the iron?"

I don´t have a recipe right now but use any recipe for spinach soup, that will work fine. My goal every year is to pick a lot of nettles and prepare them for the freezer so I can have nettle soup whenever I want and also try new ways to eat it (you can have it in bread, with fish, with eggs and so on). But I have not succeeded this far! Maybe my new gloves will help.