Tag: foraging

Elderflower Cordial time again!

Elderflowers

Paul and I had the day off work today, and the first thing we did was go for a little walk around the lake and pick some elderflowers. We’ve been watching them open for weeks, and today there were just enough to fill a bag and bring them home.

After a quick trip to the supermarket for sugar, lemons and limes, we now have a big saucepan full of ingredients just waiting to turn into cordial. The nicest thing about this recipe is just how simple it is. Combine ingredients, ignore for 24 hours, remove bits, drink cordial! I think the hardest part is waiting for it to be ready.

Here’s the recipe that we use.

I have a sneaking suspicion that we picked enough flowers for two batches, but I’ve put them all into a litre and a half of water, the same as we did last year. Hopefully it won’t be too strong – although as it’s cordial, I suppose we can just keep diluting it until it tastes nice!

Harvest Festival

Harvest Festival

Over the weekend Skycarrots hosted a harvest festival!

A small group of us got together and brought masses of food and drinks that we’d grown, foraged, brewed and baked. All of the salad and vegetables were from Sarah’s allotment, with the addition of my cherry tomatoes. The big square pie is pumpkin and feta, and the quiche at the bottom right is tomato and ground elder. The only cheat was the bacon quiche which Paul baked. He may have made the quiche himself, but he foraged for all the ingredients at the supermarket. 😉

If you click on the photo it’ll take you through to Flickr, where you can see some notes about each item.

There were also drinks a-plenty. Mark and Kath had made wine, which they’d nicknamed “wynamite” because of its strength! There was also Sarah’s beech leaf noyau, some cherry-ish brandy, and the remains of our elderflower cordial – now rather fizzy, and probably pretty alcoholic by itself.

Half way through the evening we went on an impromptu foraging trip to a nearby tree, and we all ate raw almonds for the first time. Almonds are related to peaches, so you get a fuzzy fruit with a stone inside it that looks like a peach stone. Crack it open, and inside is an almond! Very exciting.

Our next food mission is to go out sloe-picking, so we can start getting some sloe gin ready for bottling at Christmas. We first made sloe gin two years ago, which was so well-received that people gave us back the bottles asking for a refill! Unfortunately there were virtually no sloes growing locally last year, so we had to disappoint everyone. Thankfully this year there looks to be a bumper crop, so we should be able to make enough for everyone.