Thanksgiving is just over a week away, which means one of my absolute favorite fruits are now being sold fresh in bags – often on half price sale – at grocery stores everywhere. For Thanksgiving I use just one of those 12-ounce bags to make my famous Crackberry Sauce (regular whole cranberry sauce with a bag of frozen blackberries added). But I buy as many as I can afford when they go on sale so I can dry them as “craisins.”

I’ve written quite a bit about how much I like drying food from the garden rather than canning. Which is a hot and expensive way of preserving things. But this time of year my handy-dandy home-made solar dryer is fairly useless, there’s just not enough hours of sun to make it work. So I use the oven, which can also be a relatively expensive proposition. Still, good craisins are expensive from the store in those little brand name bags, so it works out fairly. Even better, if you make your own craisins at home you can do some pretty spectacular things with them flavor-wise.

This year I’m doing the “Double-Dry” method for orange flavored craisins. It’s easy enough – just dry the craisins in single layers on flat baking sheets in a barely warm oven – I use the lowest setting, 150º – and keep the door propped open a couple of inches to allow the moisture to escape in natural convection. Takes awhile, and many of the berries retain their size and shape until they’ve cooled completely and wrinkle up into the ‘usual’ raisin-like form. I put these into a glass bowl and cover them with hot orange juice. Then cover the bowl and let the berries reconstitute. Then dry them again.

You could use any type of fruit juice to flavor your craisins, even wine or brandy if you want. Just be sure to label the containers you put them in so they don’t get mixed up. They are wonderful additions to holiday cakes, breads and cookies, or just as handy snacks. If you want your craisins to be sweeter, just thoroughly dissolve a tablespoon or two of sugar or honey in the reconstituting juice, it will get absorbed.

It’s cranberries this time of year, but drying and double-drying fresh fruit works any time of year, whenever the local harvest has big lots at the farmer’s market. I haven’t yet double-dried apples, as dried apple slices go so fast as snacks around here that it seems the hoards just stand around drooling to get them as fast as they can be produced. But if ever I did happen to have dried enough for, say, a Thanksgiving pie, I’d probably reconstitute them in spiced juice (mulled cider or even wine) just before putting them into the pie crust, using leftover juice as part of the filling. Just add sugar and corn starch to thicken.

Cranberries don’t grow in my locale, but blueberries sure do. I’m planning to dedicate several terraces on the upper yard slope to the ridge to blueberries, once I find a good source of thinned bushes I can get for free. Say, 4 100-foot rows of good producers, which works out to ~25 bushes per row spaced at 4′. Good producers will return ~5 pounds of berries per bush (some will give 10, but I’m being conservative here). Once they’re producing at that level, I’ll be getting an average crop of 500 pounds a year! That’s big enough to supply my family and friends as well as the local munchy market. Besides, blueberries come in high summer, which would let me use the sun instead of expensive electricity to do the drying.

I have no nut trees on my property other than the oaks from which I get acorns in the fall, and hickory nuts that you need a hammer and rock to crack. But my son-in-law has four walnut trees on his property, from which I collect sacks of walnuts both in the summer (when they’re green) and in the fall (after they’ve fallen).

So in case you’ve a source for green walnuts, I thought I’d offer a recipe for walnut ketchup that can’t be beat!

Walnut Ketchup
About 100 immature walnuts, shelled and crushed
2 quarts cider or malt vinegar
1/2 cup kosher (non-iodized) salt (can substitute 2/3 cup dark soy sauce)

Put these ingredients into a crock and cover, stir it daily for 8 days. Sieve out the liquid and put into a large pot with…

1/4 cup blackstrap molassas
1/2 cup fresh grated horseradish
1 large sweet onion, chopped
1 clove chopped garlic (or more if you love garlic as much as my family does)
1/2 tsp. each mace, ginger, nutmeg, whole cloves, freshly ground peppercorns

Cover pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 45 minutes. Cool and process in a food processor or blender until smooth. Ladle into clean pint jars and process 10 minutes in a water bath with new lids. Makes about 3.5 quarts. This ketchup can substitute for Worcestershire sauce in any recipe calling for that condiment, or can be used AS such a sauce straight on steaks if you eat steaks.

Basic [Secret] BBQ Sauce
1 white onion, finely chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup home made sweet ketchup
1/4 cup home made walnut ketchup (or Worcestershire sauce)
1.5 cups cider vinegar (or 5% wine vinegar)
1/3 cup local raw honey (or blackstrap molassas)
1 tbsp. chile powder
1 tsp. chipotle pieces or powder
2 tbsp. virgin olive oil

Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium, add onions and garlic. Cook until onions are clear, add ketchups, vinegar, chile powder/pieces. Reduce heat and simmer slowly until the sauce has thickened slightly (about 20-30 minutes). Process in blender or food processor until smooth. Ladle into clean pint jars, adjust caps and can in water bath for 10 full minutes.

This sauce can benefit (depending on what you’re cooking) from a bit of white wine, a little extra chipotle or a dollop of your home made spicy mustard. Thinning with wine, bourbon, or balsamic vinegar turns it into an excellent marinade. For extra sweetness to complement the tart, try adding your favorite chutney, fruit preserves or jam, a cup of home made salsa, a shot of brandy or some extra spices (ginger, cinnamon, cloves), what sounds good to you? You can easily turn the sauce into something more-than special by putting a few tablespoons into a saucepan and adding your thinner (basalmic or wine), then slowly heating to make a gravy (with the usual flour and milk). Toss with pasta or serve over baked chicken, or create your own dish!

Everybody’s tastes are different, and different recipes call for different sauces (especially for great barbeque cooks!). So you might want to make the basic, then reserve some for your exotic additions, then can them in the water bath together. Be sure to label your jars carefully so you’ll be able to find what you need quickly.

Oh… and be sure to keep your recipe in a wall safe, nothing’s more impressive to guests (or to give as gifts) as your very own Super-Secret Barbeque Sauce!

I’m sure most people as as glad as I am that “Standard Time” was shortened significantly this year, having never quite made the adjustment to early darkness in the first place. Springing the clock forward early just puts us back where we were anyway all the dark winter long. Easter’s early this year too, and as my mother used to say, you can’t be sure it’s really spring until Easter.

Of course, last year we suffered a hard Easter freeze in mid-April that ruined the fruit and mast crops irreparably – even fooled the dogwoods that were in full bloom! So while garden preparations are proceeding apace with the march of March, and potatoes, lettuce and peas have been planted, we’re not ‘safe’ to really get things in the ground until late April.

Despite this, the daffodils are in glorious bloom along with forsythia, the crocus have come and gone, the lilies are growing fast and everything’s budding. All I can do is hope the fruit and mast aren’t ruined this year by another late freeze, but there are many things growing right now that a homesteader can make good use of just because it’s there. All of these goodies are packed with vitamins and serve to help prep the system after a long, slim, dark winter.

First and foremost are the new dandelions and wild onions. These are everywhere, tender young dandelion greens and soft wild onion chives make a great addition to spring salads. There’s hardly anything as nutrition-packed as dandelion greens, but the older they get the more bitter they become. The new ones aren’t bitter at all, so gather as many as you can. Toss them in with the first of the purslane that greens in the garden, some young violet leaves and flowers, and any sheep sorrel growing along the fence. Toss it with virgin olive oil and a little of last season’s wine vinegar, some early mint leaves just now appearing among last year’s dried stems, and garlic. Cut in a bunch of fresh wild onion chives and toss well, eat hearty!

Other excellent spring tonic offerings are the buds of tulip poplar trees. These aren’t yet present at my elevation, but will be in a couple of weeks. Because spring is windy, the buds fall regularly from my 100+ foot trees when the wind blows. And spring is always windy. I like these raw, some people like to marinate them. Purely a matter of taste. Spring is also a prime time for puffballs and early oyster mushrooms if you’re certain you can identify them. When the tiger lilies start budding, they’re delicious sliced into a salad, eaten straight off the plant, or battered and fried (if you like fried food – I don’t).

If you like your tonic to be formally ‘tonic’ go ahead and take a swig of the now-filtered vodka-based tonic you made last fall from ginseng and goldenseal roots, dogwood berries, rose hips and sassafras bark. It’ll give you a vitamin, mineral and flavonoid-packed pick-me-up good until dinner! Or, if you’re like me and are busy rough-filtering last fall’s oaken-aged basalmic wine vinegar, take a spoonful of the must while you’re working. This will not only help you gage how well it’s aging, vinegar and the grape must are seriously good for you!

Mine’s been in gallon jars with big oak chunks (to give it the oak flavor since I don’t have any oaken barrels). Once it’s rough-filtered it’ll be returned with fresh maple chunks. After another 6 months the maple will be replaced with poplar. Each time I’ll skim a small bottle off for use in the kitchen. Don’t forget that this increasingly aged wine-with-must vinegar is a great home remedy as well as spring tonic. When your family gets the inevitable spring cold, use it liberally on fresh wilding salads (or just give ‘em a tablespoon full). Cuts phlem, eases coughs, soothes throats, energizes digestion.

Take care of yourselves, and happy spring!

“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of Elderberries!”
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail

In The Homesteader’s Medicine Chest we broached the subject of cultivated and wild medicinal herbs like black cohosh, ginseng and goldenseal. In this late fall period it’s time to harvest one of the most useful medicinals that mother nature offers for free… Elderberries. Sambucus canadensis.

Elders are shrubby trees that grow to about 12 feet tall on the edges of rural clearings and farm fields. They produce flat sprays of lacy white flowers in the summer, sometimes a foot across. In the fall these bear clusters of deep purple berries that are hard to miss. Also called the “country medicine chest,” elder flowers and berries have a history in folk medicine and folk lore going back to the Stone Age.

Elder flowers make a sweet-smelling wine, an aromatic tea to treat colds and sore throats, and impart a savory flavor to foods. The fall berries produce the famous port-like elderberry wine said to be a perennial favorite of fairies, elves, leprechauns and gnomes. The Egyptians applied elder flowers to improve complexion and treat burns. The Russians and English believe that elder trees ward off evil spirits, planted them for luck near their houses. Sicilians believe sticks of elder can kill snakes, and they’re probably right. Most any stout stick can be used to kill a snake!

Elderberries contain the most vitamin C of any herb other than rose hips and black currants. They are also rich in vitamins A and B, as well as cartenoids, amino acids, flavonoids, tannins and sugar. Elder leaves, flowers, berries, bark and roots all have traditional medicinal uses. Elder has been shown to contain anti-viral properties and preparations make effective cold medicine, cough syrup and flu remedy. Elderberry wine makes a fine base for tinctures and any elderberry preparation (juice, tea from dry berries, wine, vinegar) makes a good general health tonic to boost the immune system.

Flu season is almost upon us, so it’s a good time to stock up on elderberries. Recent research from Israel and Panama has demonstrated elderberry juice (as a syrup) directly inhibits the influenza virus. Flu virus forms tiny spikes that are laced with an enzyme that helps the virus penetrate the cell walls of a healthy organism. Then the virus sets up reproductive shop. The active ingredients in elderberries disarm the enzyme within 24-48 hours, halting the spread of the virus. In a double-blind study against placebo, those taking the elderberry syrup recovered from flu symptoms twice as fast and also demonstrated higher levels of antibodies against the virus in their systems. This effect was demonstrated against 8 different influenza viruses.

There are a host of recipes for elderberry, from jellies and jams to catsup and fritters. One can follow one of the many recipes for elderberry wine or simply purchase straight juice or wine from specialty wineries like Nuyaka Creek or Wyldewood Cellars.

In light of recent FDA actions to take over the counter children’s cold medicines off the market, there is renewed interest in elderberry as the traditional remedy, a safe and effective alternative to those synthesized drug and alcohol concoctions that too many people use to put the kids to sleep more than ease their discomfort. And which harbor a host of not-fun side effects.

Elderberries can be dried, juiced and/or frozen. A syrup concentrate can be added to vodka for a stronger tincture base, in which sassafrass or black cherry barks give up their qualities, making a stronger by-the-spoonful cough and sore throat medicine. There’s great information out there on the web, so check some of the links below and see if you can find some elder trees in your area that can help get you through the winter!

Links:

Harvesting the Elderberry

Herbal Information Center: Elderberry

Alternative Medicine: Elderberry

Prodigal Gardens: Elderberries