#100HappyDays :: Day 73

After I posted looking for more ideas about what to do with our currants, Julie said that they had been making Italian Cream Sodas from cordials this year.  It just so happened that I had picked up some heavy cream anticipating making raspberry scones this weekend!  I picked another batch of currants and made up a quick batch of cordial and voila, ready for soda.  Sidney said it was like drinking clouds;  I'd say that is an endorsement!

Currant Cordial

A batch of currents, de-stemmed (as much as you have patience for, a few stems won't matter)
1 C Water
Sugar
Lemon

Wash and mostly de-stem your currants.  What is nice about cordials, is that you measure ingredients based on your volume of fruit juice, not the volume of fruit.  So pick as much as you can.  Yesterday I had about 5 cups.  Place currants and water in a pot on medium low and simmer about 15 minutes or until the fruit is very soft and breaking down.  I place a sieve over a large measuring cup and pour the hot fruit into it.  Smash the fruit in the sieve until all of the juice has been extracted.  Add the juice of one lemon.  This left me with 2 cups of liquid.  Place the liquid and half that volume of sugar (1 Cup)  back into the pot and cook until the sugar has fully dissolved.  Bottle, cool, and refrigerate.  It should last 6 months, but I doubt it lasts that long!

For the cream soda add cordial to taste (I normally do about 2" in the bottom of a glass of ice), pour in soda water, top with cream and mix it all up.  Fruit cordials are a big summer favorite around here and very easy to make, try it!

A Little Bit of Summer Bliss

Last fall we went foraging for elderberries when we made our first batch of wine.  It is coming along nicely and we are excited to bottle it this coming fall.  In the last couple of weeks the elderberry bushes have been full of flowers.  We decided to scope out locations of the plants now, because the flowers really make them stand out.  This way when we head out this fall, we should be able to find them more readily.  Since we were out anyway, we took a large brown paper bag and filled it with elderflowers.  I have heard so much discussion about how elderflower cordial is amazing, and since I'm in the cordial making kind of mood, we did just that. 

This was a great task to get the whole family involved with.  Since the stems are mildly toxic, we needed to remove all of the flowers.  This process was surprisingly easy and we found they brushed off quite well.

What we ended up with was just over eight cups of elderflowers.  We began by making a simple syrup in a stockpot of 5 cups of sugar and 3 quarts of water.  We cooked it until all of the sugar was completely dissolved.  While that was happening we transfered the flowers into a small crock and combined the grated the zest of one lemon and juice of three.  We were winging it on this recipe due to the volume of flowers and several of the recipes we found all had different techniques.

What is different about making this cordial as compared to the fruit cordials that I have been pumping out, is that instead of  cooking, macerating, and then straining the fruit into beautiful cordials, this one steeps like a tea.  Once that simple syrup was completed we poured it over the flowers and citrus, covered the crock and let it steep for three days. 

At the end of that time, we strained it and transferred it into quart jars that are now in the fridge and ready to use.  It was a little sweet for our taste so we added some of our acid blend (that we had on hand for wine making) to it.  This could also have been accomplished by adding more lemon juice.  We included these cute little jars in this weeks farm bags. 

One thing that I am loving about this cordial is that a little goes a long way, therefore allowing the amount we made to last longer.  I have found with the fruit cordials, I use more of them to get the desired taste/effect.  With the elderflower, we use 2 (me) to 4 (B) Tbsp. to 8 oz of liquid.  So seltzer water for soda.  I'm looking forward to trying it as part of a martini, maybe this evening.  This refreshing cordial tastes like elderflowers smell and that is a little bit of summer bliss.

Preservation Sunday's Return

A few years ago, I began a series of posts called Preservation Sunday.  It just seemed that was the time when much of our food storage would take place.  Today as the temperatures are beginning to soar and I am in doors from the garden, I decided to take care of some of this weeks harvest.  On Friday we harvested about 10 pounds of Rhubarb.  Today, in the spirit of the wonderful cordials that I began making last year, I made a rhubarb cordial...and I must say it's amazing!

I started with a bunch of rhubarb, this was just under 4 1/2 pound.  I cleaned it, trimmed the ends, then gave it a large chop and tossed it into a big pot. 

Then added 1 3/4 cups of water, brought it to a boil then reduced the heat and allowed it to simmer for 30 minutes.

 At this time I strained all of the rhubarb, carefully trying to catch every last drop until I was left with this amazing pink liquid. 

I returned the liquid to my big pot and added 1 1/2 cups of sugar.  Once again I brought it to a boil stirring frequently, and then simmered it for 5 minutes. 

 During this time I skimmed off the foam.  Once done,  pour it into sterilized bottles, refrigerate, and enjoy!  A little time consuming, but very easy and with great rewards.

You add one part cordial to two parts liquid.  It is as simple as mixing it with a little ice water, or a great additive to lemonade or soda water.  My personal favorite is to add some to a glass of white wine.  So many uses, and never enough cordial.  It always disappears much too fast, but I guess that works out, because I'll soon be on to all of the berry cordials. 

A Remarkable Season~ Garden Update

This has been truly a remarkable growing season for us.  We began with cooler than normal temperatures all through June, only to be thrown into almost two months of warmer than normal temperatures.  We have had next to no rain, the irrigation in the garden has worked great and we haven't had to mow near so much, yet the grass looks much like mottled, fresh cut hay.  Then, this week we had our first light frost on September 14th!!!  Let me put this in perspective for you.  We typically have our first frost right around Halloween.  It seems every year we think we are going to get cold and then have a lovely Indian Summer.  Then just as we approach a time when the kids are going to be trick-or-treating, they have to have coats on over costumes.  This week our highs have averaged in the upper 50's!  There are hints of sprinkles in the forecast, as well as a return to more seasonal weather (low 70's) for a couple of days.

What this all means??  Well, we have seen throughout this season that the garden has run roughly two to two and a half weeks behind schedule.  We normally process the bulk of our tomatoes during the last couple of weeks of August and first two weeks of September.  Just as our vines, heavy with fruit, were starting to ripen, it turned cold and everything seems to be in a state of pause.  Because of the extreme variations in weather, I stopped doing weekly newsletters/inventory lists on our farm bags.  I am varying their contents slightly from person to person depending on what has ripened that day.  The weather has been great for fall crops and this weeks farm bags consisted of Leeks, Beet Greens, Kale, Green Beans, and a few partially ripe tomatoes to be put in warm windows for a few days. 

Take a look at my post over at a sustainable life, where I discussed our first adventures in wine making.  This in mind, B and I spent several hours yesterday taking a country drive and foraging for elder berries and wild grapes along roadsides and ditches.  We came away with a 1/2 bushel of each and enough to start a five gallon barrel of wine.  For my purposes, I am stealing about 2 pounds of the elder berries to make some cordial.

This property once had a working orchard on it.  Sadly, after decades of neglect there are only a few gnarly trees remaining in various states of deterioration.  The apples are bumpy and nothing to look at, but this year (probably because of the drought) seem to be intensely flavored and amazing.  We collected a volume of fallen apples cut away the bad, kept the good and canned some amazing applesauce yesterday!  Adding to the homestead to do list...we are researching taking cuttings of these old trees so we can re-populate the orchard and one day never have need to go beyond our backyard.

I'm off to de-stem elderberries, and simmer some cordial!  Happy Weekend!!