Elderberry Preparation and Preserving

I have already written before about elderberry tincture and you can easily make it into a cordial, elixir, shrub etc. and benefit from it's wonderful healing and health properties. Remember to follow directions, remove stems and strain the pulp containing the seeds as both stems and seeds have an emetic effect. A number of blogs are failing to advise this important step.

Due to popular demand within the family and friend circle I have harvested three times as much as in previous years. One day this week I spent 5 hours in total removing the berries from the stems and usually the staining washes off but this time the deep purple has remained quite stubborn around my nail areas. I now have about four kilos of berries macerating in vodka.

Pick them at their peak when heads are heavy and full of plump healthy berries. I harvest into woven baskets and let them sit a while somewhere cool, this allows the critters time to escape and find new lodgings. I always give them a good swishing wash in a sink full of water to remove any webs, dust and bird poo. You will have a couple of days window of opportunity to de-stalk but I have found the sooner you do it after harvest the better they pop off the stalks. Some people use a fork to rake the berries from the stems but I'm a bit fussy. 

The rest pictured above are washed and drying. on teatowel covered racks. Once they loose a bit more moisture I will hang them in a calico bag to completely dry off for emergency dry stores in case we run out of tincture. Once dry the stalks are easily rubbed and winnowed away and they can be re-hydrated. 

Home Foraging

This weekend it looked like the field and woodland fairies had visited my kitchen.

The calendula has started flowering its head off again and I find so many uses for this flower. It is wonderful for skin healing is the basis for many of my salves and soaps.

A friend visited and swapped some magnificent field mushrooms for some kombucha SCOBY and milk keffir grains.

I gently dug some more solomon seal roots/rhizome for another salve I am making for ligament, tendon and cartilage. 

I found some lush plantain, also good for skin salves.

And I am still collecting pocketfuls of delicious cape gooseberries.

Lots of the simple things that make me feel abundant.

Autumn Preserves

Summer preserving is a mad time but I would have to say that autumn is the same, if not, it at least comes a close second. In the autumn my preserving comes from some cultivated crops like chillies, lemongrass and various herbs both culinary and medicinal but it also comes from foraged plants too like rosehips and hawberries and plantain and late red clover.

When I moved into my house nearly 30 years ago, there was a hook in the corner of the ceiling in the dinning room. I suspect it was from a macramé hanging of the 1980's and rather than deal with a hole I left the hook and painted it inconspicuous white. I'm so glad I did and I can't tell you how often I use it. Once I got past the "my home should look like the pages of Home Beautiful" stage and actually started to live in my home, I started drying my herbs here because the heating tends to get a bit trapped towards the ceiling here and it makes it perfect for drying. At the moment I am drying large bundles of wormwood in flower. If you can get hold of one of these old fashioned onion, shallot, garlic keeping hangers of collapsible hanging baskets do so; currently my beans are finishing off here for dried beans but I use it often for curing my soaps too. 

Here I am stripping and storing previously hung wormwood. This will be made into nesting box potpourri for the chickens and also insect repelling sachets for the linens and storage cupboards.

The jar behind contains the rose hips that I foraged the other day. Having them dried and stored means I can use them for salve making or tincturing or cordial another day when they are needed. I might even use them hot glued on a Christmas wreath!

I'm collecting seeds and podding dried beans and making dried teas. Above is the head of a Giant Russian sunflower and the purple king beans dried and ready, also a bunch of dried lemongrass that has been air drying. The lemongrass has been chopped in the Thermomix and is now ready for herbal tea blends and adding to tub teas.

The dehydrator is great for small herbs and holds the colour beautifully. I'm drying oregano, calendula, mint and parsley. These ingredients will be used when needed for meals, salve and soap making and herbal blends for bath, body and chickens! There is still so much to be gleaned and harvested.

Drying

another important preserving technique.

Market Discoveries - Damsons

Growers Markets are a great source of seasonal fruit seldom seen in the big supermarkets and even in little fruit and veg shops. Just last week at the ut si cafe growers market shoppers were spoilt for choice with four different apple varieties, nashi, quince and plums. 

The blood plums on the left are a delicious juicy eating plum and though they were also put to good use in a pumpkin and plum chutney, they really shone in the upside down plum cake post here.

Let's not overlook the Damson Plums though!

These are seldom offered in supermarkets and I wonder if that's because it is more of a cooking plum and people are less inclined to process their own food now. 

They are the size of a small egg and very ovoid in shape with a distinctive dusky deep blue skin that can be astringent. The flesh inside reminds me of greengage plums in colour but the flesh is much drier.

Most people make Damson Jam as they contain good pectin for setting and when cooked the flavours sensational.

My friend Lee tells me that she loves to make Damson Gin with hers. She covers whole Damsons in gin and leaves them to sit in a cupboard for about four weeks and decants. She assures me the flavour is even more luscious than sloe gin.

As for me, you know of my love affair with my dehydrator, especially when I am busy hands on with tomatoes at this time of year, I'm making prunes.

I simply wash and halve, remove the stone and pop them into the dehydrator till they are dried but still slightly moist and gooey then I store them in a jar in the fridge.

Chewy, jamy, almost figgy, with a tiny bit of sharpness but not too sweet.

These make great snacks for afternoons and pre-dinner hunger pains. Very welcome additions to warming porridge on autumn mornings. What about adding them to a gorgeous robust loaf or treacle cake.

Sourcing seasonal specialities at local markets ensures you are getting not only nutritional variety but provides flavoursome textural additions too. Sweet, bitter, salty, sour, are all part of the digestive stimulation and if we keep breeding our food to be only sweet it will be to our peril. Crunchy, soft, chewy, sticky, crumbly, all textures help stimulate our appetite as we start the mastication process and exercise jaw muscles and send signals to our stomach for digestive enzymes.

Last Saturday was the final market day for us for this current season and we will resume when daylight savings begins again. Do chat with the sellers at market because they know so much about the food they produce and can give you lots of ideas for use so you get so much more from your purchases.

Living Better in January-Apricots

Our Living Better With Less group met up again last week and it was good to see everyone after our Christmas break. Unfortunately the Workers Club has let us down yet again so we are on the hunt for a new venue. I will post the new details soon.

The Living Better With Less group is a free interest group for people wanting to live a better life with less money, chemicals and "stuff". We focus on gardening, housekeeping, foraging, preserving and net work together for a simpler but richer life. We meet on the last Thursday of every month except December from 7-9pm.

We focus on seasonal activities and right now in Tasmania, apricots are ripening right now.

If you are able to get hold of some nice firm just ripe apricots they are great for bottling using a water bath method but if they have turned the corner and started to become soft then you might like to consider stewing and then freezing or blending to a thick liquid and dehydrating to a fruit leather.

Fruit leathers can be done in your dehydrator on the solid sheets or you can cut baking paper to fit the trays and this works well too. After a few hours when the leather has become a sticky firm sheet it can be rolled in baking paper and stored in a cool cupboard for lunch boxes and snacks.

We also talked about drying apricot halves in a dehydrator. This can take many hours up to one or two days depending on the size of the fruit. I rotate my shelves from bottom to top to try to get even drying and inspect from time to time removing any ready fruit.

It's important to note that home dried fruit in this way is sulphur free and therefore looks different to the commercially prepared ones. Instead of glowing orange orbs, they are more like burnt umber and have some darkened spots where the concentrated fruit sugars have cooked.

After passing around taste tests they were found to be every bit as delicious.

I have become a big fan of dehydrating. It reduces the size of your crop significantly allowing you to fit kilos and kilos into just a couple of jars. You can opt to solar dry but I find the electric one is very quick and draws very little energy and maintains a lot of colour, especially in herbs. It is a great alternative to freezing where space is often at a premium. I believe in spreading food storage over a number of methods; if anything were to happen to your power supply at least you would not lose all your stores.

And of course, having dried apricots on hand is a must for my most asked for recipe

The 

Apricot and Pumpkin Seed Cake/Loaf

One thing is for sure, there is no time to lose when you get your hands on a case of apricots from the market or a couple of buckets from a friend, apricots will ripen in a matter of a day or two so be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get them saved for some treats in the winter months to come.

Hydrating, Saturating and De-hydrating

Actually it is more than just re-hydration of the beans. I'm following the theory and method from the Nourishing Traditions book. I'm soaking the beans which contain phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors in order to deactivate these properties and avoid digestive stress and allow protein assimilation and absorption. The beans are so inexpensive and nutritionally packed but they do need to be processed properly. I know some books don't even suggest soaking the beans and certainly the cooking time is usual given as "till tender". According to the Nourishing Traditions book it is suggested the beans are soaked for 12-24 hours and some in acidulated water (lemon juice or whey) and then simmered for 4-8 hours.

Here is a high definition photo of the beans soaking showing them covered in tiny air bubbles. (Looks similar to the pencil drawing of Richard Klekociuk) I've tried eating dried beans without soaking and simmered till tender and although they are certainly edible, the stomach "discomfort" and "wind" is not pleasant. I tend to soak the beans and then cook them for several hours in a slow cooker as part of a meat casserole. In summer after a good long simmer, I rinse and refrigerate and use in salads.

I'm also dehydrating. Can you guess what they are?

Blackcurrants.

These currants are so tart not even the birds touch them (well almost never) but they are full of pectin which makes them great to mix with other berries and fruit that may be low in pectin required for jam and jelly setting (more about pectin here). They are rich in vitamins and anti-oxidants and also make delicious cordial but instead of making cordial this year with them I have decided to dehydrate them.

While they are fresh and plump and round, just one can make your lips purse tight and your cheeks contract hard over the teeth but when dehydrated they seem to concentrate their flavour and though still "tangy" they are quite delicious and incredibly tasty in a pumpkin and cous cous or quinoa salad with some mint and maybe a honey/chilli dressing. These could also be used in place of the dried currants in the Beetroot and Carrot Salad with Pomegranate Dressing 

All very good reasons to include easy growing black currant bushes in your garden.

Can you guess what these are? They are not marshmallows...

Daikon

The long white radish.

I'm pickling these in a natural fermentation method same as we did for the beetroot (in this post) and cucumbers (this post here).

In the one on the right I have also added a modest amount of my home grown caraway seeds. Lee from Killiecrankie Farm Nursery has warned me that growing and using your own caraway is much more potent than the shop bought seeds so I am being conservative with the amounts.

After a couple of weeks saturating in the brine fermentation should be complete and my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

So we are still keeping busy waiting for summer to arrive in Tasmania and filling in the days before the tomato glut processing. 

What are you preserving at the moment?