February 24th, 2008 · 2 Comments
This thread on timebomb2000 is full of great info on elderberries and various elderberry health products. The thread itself is actually a discussion on elderberry as a weapon against the avian flu in case it should spread between humans, but like many threads do, it wanders a bit. Some highlights interesting to me:
- Sambucus canadensis (the American elderberry) is said to have slightly more flavorful and healthy fruit than its European counterpart Sambucus nigra, but the nigra variety is easier to grow in commercial ventures, which is why it is more commonly found in products for purchase
- adding a slight amount of alcohol to elderberry syrup can help act as a preservative, allowing it to be kept longer
- if echinacea is taken long term, it can lose some of its immune-boosting effects (relevant to me because Sambu Guard, one of my favorite elderberry syrups, has echinacea in it)
- Sambucol, one of the most popular elderberry syrups, has recently changed its formula to include sodium benzoate as a preservative, and “raspberry extract” has been replaced with “raspberry flavor.”
There’s more, but I’ll let you read it. In addition, this thread from the same board has a recipe for elderberry syrup and great discussion of what kind of berries to use for syrups, what kind of alcohol is best suited to act as preservatives, how long tinctures and syrups can keep, etc. If you are someone interested in making syrups and tinctures, I highly recommend giving this last thread a read!
Tags: growing & harvesting · health effects
February 21st, 2008 · 3 Comments
The pie had its minor issues (too much juice, couple missed stems), but there was still the elderberry syrup to save the day. I used 
the elderberry cordial recipe from Christmas Matters, and it was simple and easy. MUCH easier, in fact, than the pie, since there was no tedious de-stemming needed. I tossed the berries, stems and all, into a pot, covered with water and boiled until soft (in this case, that didn’t take too long since these berries had been sitting in their own juice a while). Then I strained the juice into a separate pan, using — don’t laugh — a mesh 
bag made for washing lingerie. (Hey, not everyone has a straining cloth, and the lingerie laundry bag worked great.)
Not wanting to waste anything, I squeezed out all the juice, leaving nothing but compressed seeds, stems and skins, which I tossed out. (Actually, my son begged to plant a clump of them in the front flowerbed, which I let him do. I’ll let you know in a year or so how that goes.)
Once I had all the juice strained out into a smaller pan, I added the sugar. The amount of sugar called for was a little surprising, 
seeming a bit high, but I went with it. (As a note, there’s a syrup in the recipe section that uses honey instead of sugar, so if you don’t want a LOT of sugar in your syrup, I recommend trying that one. I’ll probably try it myself next time, or maybe split the recipe to use half the sugar, and using half honey instead.)
Next I added the cloves, using ground cloves instead of the whole cloves in the recipe - and in my estimation, I overdid it somewhat (ground cloves are powerful stuff). Then, after simmering for another ten minutes, I poured it into a glass bottle and put it in the fridge. The bottle unfortunately doesn’t seal very well, so sadly I’ll probably have to toss what I don’t use in a week or so, since it won’t keep without being well sealed. But it’s not a major loss, since I really did overdo it on the cloves, and like the pie, my next syrup will be better. (This one’s good mixed with apple cider, though!)
Tags: food & drink · recipes
February 16th, 2008 · 5 Comments
Today was a fun day… last week, I ordered some elderberries from Ulrich Young, who posted here a while back that he had elderberries available in Oklahoma. They arrived in great shape yesterday and were screaming to become a pie, some syrup, and some elderberry jam. The pie and syrup berries got their wishes today, but the jam will have to wait until tomorrow. I started by shining up the kitchen and laying everything out. (Let me add here I’m NOT a cook. I love to eat, but that enjoyment has never seemed to translate 
into cooking skill. I’m working on it, though.)
My first project was an elderberry pie. I went with the Autumn Fruits recipe since it looked simple and traditional, and since I didn’t feel like trying to make a pie crust. The first step was cleaning and de-stemming the berries, since there were still some small stems in the batch. I’ve read that the best way to get berries off 
stems when they’re fresh is to use a fork and gently comb them off like hair, but with these stems being so small and soft from having been in the juice so long, it was a slightly more painstaking process. And did I say messy? It was a MESSY process. So messy, in fact, that I decided to get creative with all the juice as well and tie-dye a shirt with it. The shirt’s not done yet, though, so I’ll save that for another post.
The pie itself was easy… 
fill the crust with elderberries, then pour sugar/flour/salt over that, add some lemon juice, put a top crust on, and bake. Of course, I say easy, but when you end up keeping way too much of the juice as I did, you end up with a very runny pie. Note to self and others: the extra juice will not simply cook away, so be sure to strain berries well before adding them to the pie. Otherwise, you’ll get… well… you’ll see in the photos. (In my defense, this was my first pie.)
First I noticed that the pie oozed a lot of juice as it baked. It smelled good, but didn’t look so pretty, and I had to put a tin pan on the oven rack underneath it to prevent my oven from becoming a sticky, smoky, burnt elderberry mess from the drippings. On the inside, the pie was almost completely liquid. It had a good flavor, but it really wasn’t pie, so much as a fruity syrupy crusty berry thing that went well 
with whipped cream (my other failure emerged here when I realized I’d forgotten to buy vanilla ice cream). The texture of the pie was intriguing, as elderberries do have tiny seeds. The seeds are fine to eat, but they keep enough of their crunch to create an almost gritty feel when eating them. With this in mind, I’m betting an apple-elderberry pie would be delicious, using just enough apple to make the texture smoother.
I made elderberry syrup today too, and that was an entertaining experience as well, but I’ll save that too for another post.
(One last thanks to Ulrich of Oklahoma, who provided the elderberries for my recipe attempts. He has more and will ship, so contact him at robcrkranch@hotmail.com if you’re interested in ordering.)
Tags: food & drink · recipes
On a tip from blogger Liz, I decided to give Windows Live Writer a try as a method of posting and adding photos. And you know 
what I discovered in this very first post? Attractive photo borders, and a drag and drop interface, straight from Picasa into my blog post. Be still my beating heart!
So for your viewing pleasure, and my first test post with Windows Live Writer, I present you the result of last weekend’s trip to IKEA (well, all except the Sambu Guard, which came from Vitacost.com). Go figure… I spend months poring through every natural and organic grocer in town to find almost nothing, and then stumble onto an elderberry bonanza at a Swedish furniture store. Who knew?
Tags: about this site
February 15th, 2008 · 4 Comments
I love learning about the many uses for elderberries, and today it’s tinctures. My first stop was Wikipedia, which describes a tincture as “an alcoholic extract or solution of a non-volatile substance.” Hmm. Okay, so that wasn’t as explanatory as I’d hoped. Here we go - WiseGeek has a better explanation, describing it as an “an alcohol-based derivative of a fresh herb or other natural plant material, used primarily as an alternative medicine or dietary supplement.” It also goes on to explain that in the early days of medicine, powdered herbs tended to lose their potency rather quickly, so alcohol was used to add stability to the chemicals in the herbs, keeping their medicinal properties intact for far longer. So there you go!
So what made me so interested in tinctures? I found this post today and just loved it. It has a great closeup photo of just-cut berry clusters, and a tantalizing description of making elderberry tincture for medicinal use, using nothing but elderberries and vodka. Although the post suggests to keep the tincture, shaking once a day for three months as opposed to the two weeks in the WiseGeek article… I can only assume that the longer the steep, the more potent the tincture? It sounds like it would be fun to find out. 
Tags: health effects
February 13th, 2008 · 2 Comments
Cedar fever hits me HARD every year from December through February. The scrubby green Texas cedar trees turn a distinct orange with seed pods, and simultaneously I get stuffy, congested and fatigued, for about two months straight. Sometimes I can hardly tell whether it’s still allergies or I’m getting sick, and I usually do end up with a cold or mild flu at least once every winter, presumably because my immune system is upset with me for being so stupid as to live in a place crawling with cedar when I have such a strong reaction to it.
So in an attempt to ease the yearly pattern, I’m taking my elderberry vs. colds research (for example, this article from Herbal Remedies, this article from Myrtle Beach Online and this article on Sambucol from WebMD) to heart this year.
The results? Since mid-December I’ve been taking a dose of elderberry almost every day, and while I can’t say I’ve been allergy-free, I’ve definitely stayed sickness-free, which is a good thing. Finding elderberry products in Texas hasn’t been easy though. I found the Sambu Guard I wrote about earlier at a small pharmacy called “People’s Pharmacy,” but when I searched HEB, Randalls, my local drug stores, I found nothing. Even at Whole Foods, an organic and natural foods grocer, I found only the same Sambu Guard and some elderberry extract in pill form. (But who wants to waste the yummy taste of elderberries on capsules?)
Speaking of that Sambu Guard, by the way, it was $12 a bottle at the pharmacy, and $16 a bottle at Whole Foods. In a vitamin store in Canada, it was $23 CAD! I found it online here, though, for just under $10 a bottle, and with a flat $5 shipping fee for the whole order to Texas, that turned out to be by far the best deal. (And no, they’re not paying me to say this. I wish they would!) The bottle says to refrigerate it and use it within 8 days, but the pharmacist assured me that as long as it stays in the fridge, it can last longer than that.
I also ordered a larger bottle of Sambu, which is basically just the elderberry extract without the echinacea and other flavorings. I expected it to be somewhat bitter, but I found it quite good. Much thicker and syrupy and less sweet, but a good addition to a hot herbal tea with a bit of sugar or honey.
And as another note, Terry from Stuff I Feel Like Writing About is embarking on a similar route to herbal health through the mystical elderberry. I look forward to seeing how it works for her too.
Tags: health effects · uncategorized
February 10th, 2008 · 1 Comment
During my recent trip to Canada, I had the opportunity to try the Elderflower Presse drink I’d posted about, and it was quite good. I could definitely taste the elderberry in it, which was surprising since I’d thought the berry extract would taste much different than the elderflower. But then again, my Sambu Guard does have elderberry fruit and flower concentrate, so maybe I’m tasting the flower in both?
The nutrition facts for Elderflower Presse are as follows (8 oz. serving): 50 calories, .5 g fat, 12 g carbs as sugar, and 10% of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C. Sweetened with cane sugar, and has no aspartame or phenylalaline. The drink is clear and sparkly, and comes in large and small bottles. I believe the small bottle (250 ml) was around $1.59 CAD, and the large (750 ml) was around $2.99 CAD at Shoppers Drug Mart in Ontario.
It’s mild and refreshing, and not too fruity. My only issue with Elderflower Presse was that it seemed a little sweet, but as someone who has drunk diet soft drinks for 25 years, my taste is so acclimated to the diet sweeteners that anything with natural sugars tends to seem overly sweet to me.
My personal taste in elderberry sparkling drinks still leans toward my other favorite concoction, which is Sprite Zero and a dash of Sambu Guard.
Sprite Zero has no sugar, carbs or caffeine, but it does have aspartame and phenylaline, which may have some health drawbacks, depending on who you ask. Sambu Guard’s nutrition info is as follows (1 tbsp. serving): 20 calories, 5 g carbs as sugar, and 80 mg (135% of the recommended daily allowance) of vitamin C. So with this one, you get fewer calories, less sugar, more vitamin C, and in my opinion, a less sugary taste… plus you can adjust the amount of fruity flavor by just adding more or less of the Sambu Guard.
To sum up - Elderflower Presse is more natural and probably less likely to cause cancer in lab rat tests. Sprite Zero/Sambu Guard is less fattening and has more vitamin C. Which is better for you? Probably the one without artificial sweeteners, but since a) it’s not available where I live in Texas, and b) I’ve already resigned myself to a diet soda addiction, I’ve been happy to at least replace my old standby of diet coke with the Sprite/Sambu combination.
Tags: food & drink
In compiling some more recipes for the site, I found this product, made by Kraft: Sure Jell fruit pectin. I didn’t think too much of it, other than to work it into a new page of jam and jelly recipes for the site, but when I read the customer reviews I couldn’t help but get excited. In case anyone out there is jelly-deprived (and cooking-impaired) the way I am, this looks like a good shortcut to elderberry jelly!
Tags: food & drink · recipes
This post on berry bushes in New Mexico gardens lists out quite a few varieties of small fruit, including tayberries, currants, gooseberries, elderberries and bush cherries, along with some basic growing info on each. Not much here I haven’t seen before, but they refer to the American elder, or Sambucus canadensis, as the “sweet elder,” which was a new reference for me. (After a bit more research, it seems that’s a common nickname for the canadensis, so into the “about elderberries” page it goes!)
Also of note in this article in the reminder that even if I get my elderberry bushes planted this spring, which I’m hoping to do, they won’t flower for a year or more, since fruit is usually produced on the limbs that are 1-3 years old. Bummer…
Tags: growing & harvesting
February 6th, 2008 · 1 Comment
I had a request as to whether elderberries and Queen Anne’s Lace were the same thing, and I have to say I thought that too when I was in the Missouri Ozarks a couple years ago, even to the point of snapping a photo to check it out later.
But as shown in the photo above, Queen Anne’s Lace is a cluster of tiny white flowers on a long, spindly stem with small leaves, while elderberries are a large, full bush with multiple clusters and many long, pointed thin leaves. (For a bit more detail on Queen Anne’s Lace and its relation to the carrot, try this link.) Below is a photo of elderberries taken from the same area (note they’re also slightly dusty from being next to dirt roads) before the flowers have fully bloomed, making the clusters seem slightly flatter than they can get at their prime.
Tags: growing & harvesting
