Just a quick update to add to the photo collection… some great photos of Sambucus mexicana, or the blue elderberry found in warmer climates (I’ve seen Mexico and California specifically mentioned; not sure where else exactly). Also called the Mexican elder, and sometimes lumped in with Sambucus canadensis, the North American elder. Note the hazy color of the ripe berries… if they were a bit larger, I’d say they were a dead ringer for blueberries!
The Mexican elder’s a smaller version of the other more popular elders, growing only to a meter or so - meaning it maintains its shrub designation while the canadensis and nigra tend to grow into more of a small tree. I’d link to a place to buy Mexican elder, but frankly, I haven’t found any yet.
Tags: growing & harvesting
Whoops - I totally meant to post photos of that second elderberry 
pie I made, and forgot! Here’s a closeup… I heartily recommend adding the tapioca instead of just using flour, which is what I did in that first pie that ended up so runny. The tapioca held it together much better, added a touch of sweetness and helped to even out the gritty texture of the elderberry seeds. The recipe I used for this one was the one listed as "Grandmothers’ favorite" in the pie recipes. 
Tags: food & drink
Reading this post on Intelligent Nutrients products got me excited thinking about being able to buy elderberry beauty products. On their official site, they say that we should never put anything on our body that doesn’t have nutritional or protective properties. Makes sense to me, but of course, there’s nothing on the site that actually gives a clue as to what “coming soon” means. :/
Tags: creative uses
March 17th, 2008 · 1 Comment
So a few more elderberry pies for those interested… after seeing this post, I decided that I could do a better one (better than my first one, that is). This time I used a combination of frozen elderberries (the rest of the batch I’d gotten from Ulrich in Oklahoma) and dried elderberries, which I ordered online from Herbalcom and heated in water to get them plump again.
I used a new recipe, found in this article, which called for no flour, but rather tapioca instead. It was a much better fit… it firmed up the texture and was a little sweet. The flavor of this pie wasn’t as rich, but I figure that’s probably due to the berries being frozen and dried. My ultimate verdict? Still a little gritty due to the seeds. I think next time I’m going to try something different… maybe soak some apples in elderberry syrup for a while, then make a pie out of them. I’ll bet that would be delicious!
Tags: food & drink · recipes
February 27th, 2008 · 1 Comment
I don’t have a lot of commentary on this article by the LA Times about elderberry’s mixed performance as a flu med, but I wanted to post it for its references to two studies. In these studies - and here’s where the ‘mixed record’ comes in - elderberries didn’t necessarily prevent people from coming down with the flu, but they did cut the duration of sickness by up to two thirds versus a placebo. Still nothing to sneeze at! (Forgive the pun.)
Tags: health effects
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
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 · 3 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 · 2 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
