Summer Foraging

It is finally that time.  We have been waiting eagerly for the elderflowers to bloom, and as we were driving around last week, we knew that the weekend would be our prime opportunity.  I cannot remember a year when the elderflowers were so prolific.  I am not sure if they are just boasting that they survived our frigid winter or if the county simply has not gotten to mowing them down yet, regardless, it led to quite a bounty!

Elderflowers make our favorite cordial and Charlie especially has been asking after it since mid-March.  We drove the county roads and walked some railroad tracks and easily collected nine grocery sacks full of perfect flower heads.  After hours of separating them from their stems, the result was a five gallon crock full of flowers that are going to spend the next several days steeping in a simple syrup/acid mixture and becoming cordial.

We were just in a foraging kind of mood yesterday and we decided to hike back into the heavily wooded part of our property to the black raspberry bramble that was just starting a couple of years ago.  I am happy to say, that it has turned into a very large bramble that we traipsed through collecting four pounds of ripe berries.

Last winter while we were surviving the 'polar vortex', I came across an article about berry shrubs.  Then a couple of weeks ago I was reminded about them when julochka posted that she had just made some.  These fresh drink mixes were used primarily prior to refrigeration as a way to preserve an abundance of fruits and were drank as a precursor to soda.  The concoction is fresh fruit, sugar and vinegar.  There are several recipes out there, but we went for it a bit on our own.  We took quart mason jars and filled them to just below the shoulder with berries, then dissolved  2 cups of sugar in 2 cups of vinegar.  We did one cup apple cider vinegar, and one cup of our homemade red wine vinegar.  Poured the mixture over the berries to fill the jars, where they will sit for a week or so before use.

The four pounds of black raspberries yielded four quarts of shrub.  We did an additional quart using our first gooseberries of the season.  I can't wait to take a taste, I have a feeling that there will be many more shrubs made as the garden progresses!

Speaking of the 'polar vortex'  I hope this possibility does not affect our tomatoes ripening!

The Elderflowers Have Arrived

We were happy to see when we returned home that we had not missed the elderflowers.   In fact, they are just beginning and I think the blooms will peak over the weekend.  We spent about an hour today driving back roads and foraging and came back with 3 full pecks of them (3 of the above buckets)!

They are a little laborious to pick apart, but with eighty degrees and a soft breeze on the porch, it was just about perfect.

The simple syrup is being made, and these beautiful babies are headed in to steep.  We are using our recipe from last year, but winging it a bit because of the volume.  I am going to be researching some other uses and we will further take advantage of the bumper crop hitting the area over the weekend.    Happy Friday!

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.