Eating nettles

We have a LOT of nettles, so nettle soup came to mind as a good idea.
I have never tried making it and have always been very suspicious of it. Probably because all the recipes I have seen, seem to be some other soup (leek, potato, veg etc) with a couple of nettles chucked in to make it green. This one strikes me as being rather more nettle intensive.
However we haven't given it a try yet, mainly because the blender is 'lost' somewhere in the millions of boxes - plus there isn't really anywhere for it to go at the moment even if we went to the effort of finding it.

You need a lot as they cook down

Anyway back to the point of this entry which was to say that we tried eating nettles as I have seen suggested many places as a veg (like you would spinich). They were reasonably tasty and picked up the butter well. It was a bit of a hassle as you need a reasonable number and apparently you should only eat the growing tips (ie not when they get big and dark green or gone to seed). Apparently they are best in April/May.

They still look like nettles and are a little furry - no sting!