Baby bunnies learning to eat their greens!
One of our winter activities is pruning the elderberry to make more plants. This year we have a huge one that was planted by our local birds right in our front window. It’s actually been there for 3 years and I’ve been meaning to move it. Not it’s huge and can’t be moved so we have made it all into cuttings to enlarge our elderberry orchard and also to have cuttings and potted plants to sell in the spring! We usually do this around the end of February, but this year the poor plant thinks spring has come already! It doesn’t realize it’s only January. So we got our pruners out yesterday and started chopping! It’s good timing since I am fighting a cold and need some elderberry syrup! I’ll be making a batch of that later today with the berries we have in the freezer.
Have you ever made your own syrup? It’s not hard and I should have been taking some already to prevent the cold, but I hadn’t made enough last month. I like to freeze my berries on the clusters and then once frozen they can be shaken into a huge bowl to make the berries fall off and discard the stems. When making syrup I cover the berries in water and heat, bringing to a simmer for about an hour. Or you can do this in your instant pot. I also like to put ginger, cinnamon, and cloves in with it for a more powerful syrup. Oranges or lemons are a nice addition too. When I am satisfied that the herbal properties are extracted I strain the herbs out and add raw honey to the liquid. And there you go, a nice cold and flu prevention syrup! It keeps in the freezer for a year or the fridge for a few weeks. But remember, it doesn’t do you good in the bottle, so drink up!
This week we are munching on comfort foods, we did hand cut steak fries last night with potatoes. We just massaged lard onto them and salted them and roasted at 400 until crisp. What a treat! We are also going to have some cubed sweet potatoes done the same for this evening. Nice warming foods for cold days! We make hamburgers with ground beef and ground pork sausage mixed to go along with our fries. We usually skip the buns and serve with salad and kraut and finish with a cookie! I figure no bun means room for cookies! We also are having mustard greens sauteed with onions and sausage tomorrow night. Oh and the greenhouse mix! It’s mainly arugula and so mild this time of year! Super yummy with feta cheese on top and we made some crispy sunflower seeds. Sorry I didn’t measure, but I took some butter a little honey, cinnamon, salt and just stirred the seeds over medium heat until crisp. What a fun salad topping!
Enjoy your week!
Blessings,
The Bakers