Elderberry Lozenges

Elderberry Lozenges

 

1.5 litres of water

Approximately 1.5kg elderberries

3 C sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp butter

1 tsp lemon juice

 

Combine water and berries in a large saucepan.  Bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.  Remove from heat, cover and let stand for approximately 30 minutes.

 

Strain, discarding berries and reserving the liquid.

 

Combine liquid, sugar and cream of tartar in a medium saucepan.  Slowly bring to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Cook, without stirring until mixture reaches 104˚C (220˚F).  Add butter, do not stir.

 

Continue cooking without stirring, until mixture reaches hard crack stage (150˚C - 300˚F).

Add lemon juice (do not stir) and gently shake the pan.

 

Pour syrup into buttered dish.  Allow to cool a little, until you can pinch off a piece without it being too sticky.  Roll into balls or spoon into moulds.  Cool until firm and wrap.

 

 

The original recipe said to mark in 1” squares and cut or break when completely cool.  I tried this the first time and ended up with a solid glass-like mass that would not break apart.  I had spent about an hour running the knife through to mark the squares and then couldn’t lift them out of the dish.  I had to reheat the entire batch and try again.  This is why I shape them into balls (which generally flatten) or pour into moulds.

 

If kept in the fridge, the lozenges do stick together a bit, but are easily pulled apart.  If stored in the pantry, they gradually meld together into a jar shaped mega-lozenge. I still have two jars of horehound candy waiting for me to reheat and reshape them.

 

I wrapped the most recent batch in gladwrap.  It made it a long and painstaking process, but they are magic for a sore throat so I feel it was worth it.

Any herb you may be wanting to use can be substituted in for elderberries.  

Simple Cough Syrup

Every year, I make a very simple cough syrup for my family.  It contains no drugs so there isn't a need to measure or worry about how much the children might be taking.

Mostly, I believe, the honey is the thing.  It coats a tickly throat and allows you to sleep.

This will help ease an annoying cough.  It should not be relied upon in place of medical treatment if you have a nasty hacking cough or an infection of some sort.

I use rosehips for their immune boosting properties.  Be sure to use rosehips from the dog rose as other varieties of rose don't always have the same vitamin C content or may have been sprayed.

I use thyme for it's antibacterial properties.  If your throat is slightly inflamed, there is an opportunity for bacteria to take hold and cause an infection.  Thyme also thins and breaks down mucous.

If you can get Manuka honey, it also adds a wonderful boost to this syrup.

I don't use specific quantities because I don't think they really make a difference.  My Herbs tutor always did units of measure as "some" or "a quantity".  As long as you have some of each in your syrup, the only real difference will be the taste.  Although, 100ml of decoction to 4 tbsp honey is a good consistency for a syrup.

Cough Syrup

A handful of chopped rosehips - fresh or dried.
A handful of thyme - fresh or dried.
Water
Honey

Simmer rosehips and thyme in water for ten minutes.
Strain, squeezing out as much liquid as you can.

Add honey to liquid and heat gently to dissolve honey.
Bottle, label and store in the refrigerator.

NOTE:  Do not boil the liquid as this can destroy any benefit you may get from the herbs.
Anything with sugar (honey) has the potential to ferment.

This recipe can also be made with Oatstraw to promote sweating (which is part of your bodies own defensive system), support the nervous system and lift the spirits.

Wild Blackberries

We have plenty of blackberries growing wild in patches all around our little farm.  We have places where there used to be thick gorse and now there is thick blackberry.

Last year, I asked a friend who grew up on a Berry farm, what the difference was between wild and commercial blackberries.  He said thorns.  The commercial varieties have been bred to be mostly thornless.  There was a disease called Dryberry introduced as an attempt to control wild blackberry.  It affects them sometimes and also affects the commercial varieties.  We saw a little bit of it in our wild berries last year, but not so much this year.

I went for a walk on Sunday to have a look at the blackberries.  I was quite surprised to see that there were some ripening.  I started to pick them, not entirely sure how much I’d find.  One berry from each bunch, just in one patch, gave me 240g of berries, which was more than I’d thought.

I decided to try making blackberry cordial and set out on Google to find a recipe.  The first 6 or 7 recipes all sounding truly yummy but contained vodka or brandy.  I wanted something I could give to Miss Seven.

I finally added the words “alcohol free” to my search terms.  I found one that was pretty straight forward.

Blackberry Cordial (alcohol free)

400g blackberries

1 litre water

300g sugar

Wash berries and place all ingredients into a heavy based pan.  Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 mins.  Strain and bottle.

It tastes very nice, we all liked it.

The alcohol based version was to soak the blackberries with cinnamon, cloves and/or allspice with sugar (half the volume of the blackberries - so 4 cups of berries was 2 cups of sugar) in 1 1/2 cups of vodka or brandy for 2 - 4 weeks. Strain and bottle.

I may yet try this one too - a grown up cordial and a child-friendly cordial.

Yesterday, I went berry picking again.  This time I picked half a kilo of wild blackberries.  I’ve made a second batch of child-friendly cordial - this time I added the juice and peel of one orange.  It’s a little sweeter and tastes better than the first batch.  I’m considering adding apple peel to the berries for my next batch.

We’re also considering growing the blackberries up the fences.  That would keep them controlled, more easily accessible and provide shelter in the paddocks.  Multi-purpose is always good.  I don’t think they’d require a great deal of care either.  They’re taking over the more untamed land we have quite successfully as it is, with no help from anyone.

My New Dehydrator

One of the things that has been on my wish list for quite a while is a dehydrator.  I usually dry things like herbs in my oven and while this isn’t particularly power intensive (and a whole lot quicker and cleaner than hanging) it can be quite inconvenient.

My credit card collects points that can be used as cash in some stores.  I had quite a bit saved up on my rewards and for Christmas I was given a voucher for one of the stores where I can use my rewards.  That was it, I was on a mission. 

I found only one type of dehydrator there and only one in stock!  It was meant to be mine.  With the Boxing Day Sale discounts, my Sunbeam Food Dehydrator was a steal at $105!

As soon as I got home I was determined to try it out.  Herbs went in first.  The booklet with the dehydrator said that on the lowest setting (approx 35 deg Celsius) they should take 2 - 4 hours.  I increased it to the second setting (approx 55 deg Celsius) and it still took more than the 2 - 4 hours.

Fruit Leather

I wanted to dry some apples.  Miss Seven likes apples, but often doesn’t get through them.  I had been drying them in the oven, but this was just as inconvenient (probably more so) than drying herbs as it takes longer.  I sliced up four apples which filled up 3 of the trays.

The dehydrator also has a fruit leather tray, so I thought I might as well give that a go at the same time.  There was some fruit salad left over from Christmas day so that went through the blender and just filled the tray nicely.

The apples took a little longer than the 10 - 14 hours in the book, but turned out just fine.  The fruit leather took even longer. It still tastes great.  A reread of the book has made me realise that I should have drained the fruit salad first.  We’re now trying nectarines that I had bottled with a little honey and cinnamon.  They’ve come out a little tart, but still quite nice.

I wanted to use up the bananas that we weren’t going to get through, but by the time the apples were ready, they’d already gone  bit far - the skins were mostly black, so they’re in the freezer waiting for me to start baking banana cakes and muffins.  I’ve since bought some more and sliced two up and dried them.

My Prolific Grapevine

The grapevine that was here already is absolutely covered in grapes.  It’s really quite amazing how much is growing there.  They’re green grapes and I don’t drink white wine, so I have no intention of making any (unless I make it for vinegar) but I can’t stand waste.  I’d been wondering what I could do with so many grapes.  While Miss Seven loves grapes, there was no way she’d get through the mass loads that are growing.

I’m hoping to use the dehydrator to turn these grapes into sultanas or raisins.  I don’t know if these grapes are seedless (the chooks ate what grew last year) so I’m sure that deseeding a lot of grapes will get old really fast, maybe it’s something that I can do in smaller batches on a daily basis.

Updates and Lessons Learned

There have been a few things that I’ve posted about that I thought it was worth giving updates for.  I toyed with the idea of making a note at the bottom of the original page, but I don’t know if many of my readers go back and reread stuff they’ve already read.

Garlic

When I first started this blog, I wrote a piece about preserving garlic.  I found after a week, that my little jar of chopped garlic seemed to be constantly forming bubbles and leaking oil, so I put it in the fridge.  I’ve done this to garlic in the past and never seen this happen, so my only thought is that it may be because it was imported garlic from the supermarket.

My cloudy creamy garlic

In the fridge, the oil became cloudy first and then changed to a soft cream-like consistency.  The garlic has yellowed a little too.  It still tastes great and smells even better.  If I leave the jar out of the fridge, the oil returns to a more normal appearance.

I’ve seen this before when I was making my own herb infused oils.  Rosemary infused olive oil goes very cloudy when it’s cold but clears when it’s warm.  It’s quite normal and still perfectly okay to use.  If anyone has followed my recipe and is worrying that they’ve made a mistake or something is wrong.  Don’t.

Onion Jam

My jar of onion jam came out at New Years.  It didn’t last very long.  One of the friends who was staying with us ate it straight from the jar and raved over it.  It was delicious and very well received - even by those who normally pick 90% of onions cooked or raw, out of their food (Hubby).  I will be making some more.

Things I’ve Learned Over the Last Month

Pigs take a lot longer shagging than cows or chickens.  We were quite thoroughly impressed by George and Darla’s stamina in this respect.  Hopefully, we’ll have our first piglets in a few months. Three months, three weeks and three days I'm told.

Clipping a hen’s wing makes absolutely no difference if she’s already figured out how to climb out of the run.  After herding Scrappy (the last of our original chooks) back into the run a few times, I clipped a wing.  We took her back down to the run and put her in, only to watch her jump and then climb up the netting and come back out.  We have a few schemes in mind to keep her contained.  We’ve got out of the habit of closing doors to keep the chooks out so I’ve had to clean up a few messes inside and she’s eaten all the cat biscuits on more than one occasion.

We really need nesting boxes in the chook house.  When we built this version of the chook house, we left it as a nesting shelf.  Mrs Wolowitz has gone broody and is currently taking all of the eggs to sit on.  At last count there were over 20 eggs under her (barely, she’s a bantam).  When she’s hatched however many she’s going to, I’m going to get rid of the other eggs, put in boxes and mark the ones that any future broody hen is allowed to keep.  With four hens I shouldn’t need to be still buying eggs.

When the septic tank needs emptying, get it done before it’s really full.  We had to cut an easily removable lid in the top of ours.  It had a large concrete slab that the previous owner used to lift with a tractor for the septic tank man.  We don’t have the facilities to do this, so Hubby had to buy and borrow tools to be able to cut through the concrete and steel to make a smaller lid.

The side effect of this wait is that the tank was so full that it blocked up the pipes.  Months later, we’re still dealing with blocked pipes.  Most drainlayers aren’t interested in doing this kind of thing anymore, they only do new builds.  Anyone who would do it AND come all the way out here is going to charge through the nose so we’re getting used to clearing sewerage blockages.

When you buy a new freezer, check that it’s working before you put food in it.  We bought a large chest freezer (as we'll need one when we start calling out the home kill for cattle) and emptied our smaller chest freezer into it because the older one needed defrosting and cleaning.  There were two bags of pork bones, some hocks and fillets, the five big bags of savouries and three pizza slabs for New Years Eve, some bags of ice and a few other bits and pieces.  On New Years Eve, Hubby went to get some ice and found that the freezer wasn’t working.  The smell was dreadful and the waste was heartbreaking.  Fortunately, Fisher and Paykel are going to pay us out for the lost food.  Apparently this is a fairly common problem!

The puppy should be called Houdini and is the most talented escape artist ever.  For summer, his kennel is in a good shady spot and we were chaining him to it at night.  He’s chewed up two collars - one was a decent, expensive thick leather collar - and has figured out how to slip chains and chokers.  Hubby has built a big cage around his kennel, he has room to move around without needing to be chained up.  We’re living in hope that this will contain him.  He’s a big puppy and only seems to be getting bigger.

When money is tight, handmade Christmas presents beat all. I spent a day baking biscuits for my parents, I made fudge and coconut ice for Miss Seven and crochetted a dolls dress that seems to be the favourite present for Miss Seven.

A few years ago, when I was pregnant with Master Fifteen, money was very tight and I made little hampers for everyone.  They were personalised with preserves, shortbread, russian fudge - whatever I knew that the recipient liked.  Another year I made bath salts and oils for my mother and my mother-in-law.  I’ve given cross-stitch pictures as presents.  The fact that I’ve taken the time to make something seems to have more meaning than buying the perfect gift.