Nature's Magic….Elder Flower Cordial, Champagne & Elder Lemonade!

Herbs are natures’ gift to us – they are the ultimate healer, delightful food and in complete harmony with our body’s needs. They are perfectly balanced and practical, in every way. A herb knows what to do within your body, and your body knows how to use the herb what ever the needs may be….

Of course there are so many to choose from….but really, we only need to be familiar with a few that grow locally around us during the various seasons and we can work with these to our hearts delight for healing and many wonderful seasonal eats.

Right now we are nearing the end of the elder flowers….many of these mythical trees have bloomed already and are well on their way to become the berries I look forward to each year. But, I love the blossoms too and look forward to them like nothing else.

The energy of the elder is quite something – it’s is different from anything else in the forest with a quality unlike other energy forms. An elder tree is a guardian, rooted and standing in place – willing to anchor and connect mortal time to eternity.

With this in mind (yikes!) each summer I pick a few elder blossoms to make our cordial and of course to dry for my herbal teas. In years past, I have tried making cordial without using sugar, replacing it with honey or apple concentrate to varying results.

But this year, with my newly 'healed and sealed' gut (after doing the mother of all cleanses/fasts/detoxes for the last 2 or 3 years) – I decided to try making my cordial with sugar, this time around, using a very traditional recipe…..

Basically, I took about 30 heads of elder flowers (a large bunch) washed them off under gently running water to get any bugs. In the meantime I boiled about 3 liters of well water and grated 4 organic lemons to get the zest, then I sliced them thinly.

Once the water was hot, I poured in about 2kg of sugar and stirred until it was dissolved and allowed this to sit about 10 minutes or so. Then I added the lemon zest and the thinly sliced lemons – it was smelling lovely already!

Last – the magic ingredient, all of those elder flower heads went into the big pot – this was stirred very gently and left loosely covered overnight. These old recipes often have varying lengths of time for leaving this concoction to steep, but I like longer time if possible. So I leave it for at least 24 hours or so.

Then, the liquid is strained off through a muslin cloth and placed into clean bottles….in a couple of weeks I will taste each of my batches….but I do remember from my childhood that we were still drinking elder cordial well up into Easter the following year!

This makes a thickish syrup which is great diluted with fizzy water, wine or fruit juice. Nothing else smells like summer to me, then when the house is full of elder flowers (right now I have cordials brewing and flowers drying as well)!

So far, so good - bring on summer!

April

Nature - An Endless Buffet is Summer

These last couple of days were spent fasting….after all the rich food on the weekend, I needed the break and a little breather from eating! Not to say that food has been far from my mind however.

I have carried on with my yogurt making (after so many years of not eating it!) I now have a jar in the house each week. And I am loving it. Perhaps I am just very late getting into the many health benefits of eating yogurt but…

Some of which are - it's easier to digest, it is know to promote energy production, is a natural anti-inflammatory, contains selenium, helps in the absorption of minerals....and it tastes good. 

The one thing I do know is that nothing compares to making your own yogurt and especially the stuff made from raw goat’s milk. This is seriously good food. I can sense it ‘changing’ my internal workings (gut health) after I eat it.

And, I must say, I love experimenting with it even more. In a way it’s a bit like the cheese making – only with yogurt there is less to do. However, today I did let some of my yogurt thicken into curds and whey and then I strained out the whey…

Of course I ended up with the nicest creamed goat’s cheese I have ever eaten, which was even nicer after I stirred in some fresh thyme from the garden and a little sea salt. It was a nice way to break my fast.

Besides my new adventures into making yogurt, I have also been playing around with my Butterfly Juice – adding in different flavours to see what we like and to create some new and different tastes.

Over the weekend I made my juices using the same basic ingredients of nettles and dandelions but also leftover juice from cooked mixed berries, some juice from carmelised apples and cinnamon and banana.

It was the most delicious juice weekend we have had so far – everyone loved it and there was still the same energy buzz from the concentrated nettles that we get with my regular Butterfly Juice.

Ah…nature – an endless buffet is summer! 

April

Goats in the field

Lessons in Cheese Making....Let Nature Get Involved

Sometimes we don’t plan on creating a masterpiece…it just appears out of nowhere, as if the conditions are ripe for it. This word (masterpiece) is not used lightly either….I am seriously pleased with myself!

During the past week I had saved up my 3 liters of milk from our goats with the grand plan to make some cheese for the weekend. One morning I proceeded to take it out of the fridge and then forgot all about it until late that night….

Because I was going to make cheese with it, I just left it out and thought I would get it sorted the next morning. It’s been busy this past week or so with the garden, goats and market - and you know how time just slips by.

So, the next morning, I got the milk into a pot and inoculated it with the bacteria (once it was at the right temperature) and then waited and waited and waited…until another 24 hours had passed and nothing.

The milk did not curdle into curds and whey. But by this time it was starting to thicken and go a bit sour….so I thought, oh well….just throw some rennet in there and hope for the best?

That is exactly what I did. Only I added such a tiny amount of rennet (because less is always more for me!) it might or might not work to separate the milk into curds and whey…..

After about 5 or 6 hours I checked the pot and I had a nicely formed thickish yogurt like curd. I had read somewhere that this might make a nice cheese…so I scooped it out and let the whey drain off for a few more hours.

Even as I was scooping it out – I was thinking how I liked the texture of this and it smelled wonderful! I let the liquid whey drain out for the next few hours or so and then placed the cheese into a dish, salted it and as an after thought, added some cranberries….

24 hours later, we tasted it – the best cheese I have made so far! It has a lovely texture, wonderful flavour and is better then anything I have ever bought from a shop.

Lesson for me here….let nature get involved….don’t push things because we are running short on time or want to hurry things along. The milk had already grown it’s own bacterial culture, adding the few grains of rennet just gave it a little boost and voila –

Beautiful cheese!!

April

Homemade Chevre on wholegrain toast....Yumm!

Spirit Of Nature – Wild Food Foraging

This spring (and most springs) I do my best to use the local, fresh wild foods growing around me – it’s one of the main reasons I choose to live in the country. There is an abundance of clean water as well as lots to harvest at any time of the year.

This weekend is the May Day holiday – for me it has been celebrated already with a fire ceremony on Wednesday – but the weekend will be nice too. The way I am choosing to honour the spirit of this month of Bealtaine this year is to….

Bring more of the Spirit of Nature back into our bodies – and I plan on doing this by completely wild foraging our greens for the next few days. I actually have next to no vegetables in the house right now and will not be buying anything…..

They are over-rated anyway!!! LOL But, I am quite serious here….

So….as you may have guessed, I have been foraging quite a bit already this spring. Finding nearly anything and everything that is edible around me (nettle, dandelion, wild garlic, sorrel) – both in my garden as well as growing wild.

I am now hoping to take this a little bit further afield so to speak – and see what else I can find close by that will fit nicely with our meat or fish over these coming days.

Basically the challenge is to find enough greens (wild) to accompany meals for 4 people, 2 dogs and one ‘I’ll try anything once’ (just once) cat. The rest of the animals are already great at foraging out in the back garden…

Besides, the birds do it – and they manage. You can even raise a fully grown horse on grass and pasture…so at the very least, we should be able to find enough for a few days to supplement our meals, and make a tasty diversion!

Either way… eating like this has got me thinking (once again!) about this entire vegetable growing/eating, get your 5-a-day mentality. If we were eating wild harvest, even some of the time – you don’t need 5-a-day….

These plants are so rich and abundant in minerals, vitamins, phytonutrients, energy and spirit – we hardly need anything else. It’s no wonder we are all so depleted – eating vegetables and fruits grown in hot houses, under plastic, and devoid of nature is not, well, natural.

Our guts are not designed for that kind of lifeless food (it’s not really living is it?) and our tissues are waiting in hope for something real, natural and wild. This leaves a whole lot to consider with regards to this supermarket lifestyle we are encouraged to follow…

April

Does she look like she is smiling to you?? Me too!!

Eat Like A Pagan - For Everything There is A Season

Today I have taken some raw milk from our goats and am starting my own yogurt/buttermilk/cheese culture. In an effort to do things as naturally and simply as possible I am not using anything other then the normally occurring bacteria in the milk itself.

To do this is simple – pour the raw milk into a glass jar, cover it loosely with a lid and allow the jar to sit out at room temperature for 24 to 30 hours until the mixture thickens and clumps into a culture.

Shake the jar once or twice and then pour off the cultured milk into an ice cube tray and freeze. Each cube then becomes a starter and can be taken out – placed into some fresh milk – voila – instant meophilic bacteria to start a batch of cheese or some other delicious food.

This week because we are fasting (some of us) there will be a little extra milk – so the plan is to attempt different kinds of cheese and perhaps yogurt. SO, I can’t wait to have enough milk saved up to give it a go!

Milk has become such an important part of our diets and lives – but not because we drink so much of it. Quite the opposite in fact. It has become important because we are connected to where it comes from, and we enjoy interacting with and raising our goats.

What is quite interesting is we have adjusted our eating, diets, lifestyle to enjoy what we have when we have it – if it’s a little amount of milk, that’s what we use and we budget for it. Sharing out the milk for cereal, baking and cooking. It’s the same with eggs, vegetables and meat.

When there are an abundance of eggs, we all eat eggs (more often and in more things). When we have a celebration of some sort, an animal such as a turkey, young goat or duck might be killed for our meal – but only what we need.

However, we also prepare for leaner times by preserving some of the extra foods when they are harvested. Thus my interest in making cheese (preserving milk), drying herbs, honey and raising animals for food. 

Last week we had lots of greens sprouting (leaves, sprouting broccoli, spring onion) and herbs to be harvested in the garden – salads and fresh herbs were added to our food and meals all week. But some were also made into meals that were then frozen. 

What I am finding is when you live your life following the natural rhythms and cycles of nature – you eat what is available, when it is ready and in the quantities you have - thus creating less stress on your digestive processes (and your budget).

You are also learning to wait for your food, to be disciplined in your eating and then to really enjoy all that you are given. It’s not Christmas everyday – but there are enough feasts and reasons to celebrate throughout the year, which are well worth the wait.

It really is true – for everything there is a season.

April 

Herbs in jar for vinegar!