Making Elder Flower Champagne

Photo By Sharondippity of Davesgarden.com

The elderberry bushes are in full bloom around here, so I decided to pick some of the flowers to make Elder Flower Champagne.

The recipe I'm using is from Susan Weed, Director of the Wise Woman Center in Woodstock, New York, and author of New Menopausal Years, Alternative Approaches for Women 30-90 and Healing Wise (Wise Woman Herbal Series).

Elder Flower Champagne

7 large heads of elder blossoms
1 pound of white sugar, no substitutes!!
2 large or 3 small organic lemons
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 gallon water
4 liter-sized wine or champagne bottles and corks

Dissolve sugar in 1 quart of boiling water. Add rest of water. Slice lemons very thinly and add to water/sugar. Add vinegar and mix well.

Place elder flowers head down in a crock, large glass bowl, or non-metal pot. Pour liquid mixture over flower heads. 

Cover with a kitchen towel held in place with a rubber band. 

After 24 hours, strain through a fine cloth (I used a clean piece of butter muslin), bottle, and cork. 

Mature your Elder Flower Champagne in the dark for three or more weeks. It will be naturally fizzy when ready to drink, so watch out when you pop the cork!

Update 6/25

I walked into the pantry last night and got "shot" by one of the corks! Several of the ten bottles had already blown the corks, so I transferred the contents to one gallon jars and added an airlock.

6 Degrees of "Fermentation"

6 Degrees of Separation is a term is often used as a synonym for the idea of the "small world" phenomenon. It refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend" statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.

In my case, it's the small world of fermenting... and all ferments are connected within 6 steps or fewer, so to speak.

I hadn't given much thought to the connectedness of the food things I do (other than eat them) until I started learn to make charcuterie and cheese. Then it finally sunk in...  fermenting is the connection! I started to ferment breads (sourdough) 2-3 years ago, and over the last 2 summers I spent a lot of time learning and making lacto-fermented vegetables. Last fall, I started to re-learn fermenting wines and cider. Over the winter I have been learning to ferment sausages and salume with the hopes of eventually fermenting (curing) a ham.

Now, I'm also learning to ferment cheese. It seems to me that each new thing is a little easier because it builds on the related experience which is also connectedness, gained from the things I learned previously. The more I learn in each of these connected areas, the more I am beginning to understand some of the nuances of fermenting, with hopes of eventually mastering a few of them. Lactobacillus, common to ferments, is a very interesting bacteria and enriches my world by the fermentation of foods from chocolate and sauerkraut to merlot and Brie.

To make things interesting, Lactobacillus is like any other living thing (including us!)... it depends on what it eats, and what it eats affects what it does. Maybe that cow ate a few more blades of grass with higher Omega-3, so that one gallon of milk had a miniscule amount more butterfat and lactose than the other gallon I used. No two cheese wheels will turn out the same, nor will any 2 loaves of sourdough, or batches of beer... The bacteria and yeast in the air we breathe, on our walls and on our skin, are all working in addition to (or sometimes against) the bacteria and yeast we add from little packets into whatever we are making. 

Perhaps a slight puff of air from an open window flows over my pot just as I am adding the culture, bringing a tad more of my resident lactobacillus along with it... or maybe there were a few more grains of salt in one measured teaspoonful compared to another...or today the humidity is 2% higher than yesterday. SO many variables that all affect every outcome.

I actually find it very refreshing (although a little frustrating) to know that everything I make will NOT turn out exactly the same every time, even after I learn the basics and move into some proficiency. There will always be an element of surprise and discovery waiting in the wings, keeping Life interesting!

Am I a Foodie??

Do I think I am a Foodie? Or do I harbor a secret desire to be a Foodie? Oh LawdyMercy, NO!

I have to laugh at myself though... I am preoccupied by food much of the time. I have spent many hours, over many days, and many weeks reading some really interesting food blogs, but by no means do I consider myself a "Foodie", or even want to be considered one. Oh, I can (and sometimes do) make some of those fancy things, but that has not been my primary interest in foods for the last several years.

What I am interested in is learning the basics necessary to eat well now, and continue to eat well if and/or when food becomes more scarce and expensive than it already is... plus also learning to prepare foods that are not full of chemical additives. In other words, Real Food.

I don't mean that the Foodie blogs aren't real food, but far too few of the luscious-sounding recipes are ever made with ingredients from their backyards, or locally sourced and relatively inexpensive. At least it appears they generally don't seem to use the foods like those found in my backyard, or even local to me. I can only dream of the luxury of some of their ingredients if I don't consider the true cost to our fragile planet and resources.

Over the last several years my food budget has remained the same by necessity, yet it now buys far less than it did in 2004-2008. To be sure, a few items are more expensive today simply by my own choice in source and quality. For example, my local free-range ground beef is slightly over twice the cost of CAFO ground beef from the grocery store.

However, I am learning to augment my budget with less expensive cuts and/or other meat items (but still free-range). Some of them are not usually found readily anymore in supermarkets... like liver, shanks, hocks, heart, oxtails, tongue, short ribs, beef cheeks, sweetbreads... and more. In fact, I can get some items almost free because the local abattoirs and/or farmers don't know what to do with them.

Brining or salting cheap cuts for 24 hours in the refrigerator can turn an inexpensive cut almost into a prime cut, and braising makes some cuts fit for a queen.

I am slowly learning some basics, and also discovering a taste to foods just as they are grown or raised. I really had no knowledge before this year of what even a simple 'naked' food like hamburger with no seasonings or condiments actually tastes like. I now can taste the difference in ground beef from a free-range Red Devon vs. a free-range Angus or Holstein, and there really IS a difference! It was only when I embarked on my journey to free-range meats that I ever tasted naked ground meat, for surely that scrap stuff from the CAFO lots is not fit to taste by itself. I'm not even sure it's fit to eat in the long run, if you consider health in the equation.

Then there are other foods like vegetables and fruits. Green beans straight from my garden, or fruit and berries from my yard or neighborhood... they simply have some discernible taste of their own, unlike the mass produce that's trucked thousands of miles and lives in cold storage until someone buys it. All those local foods have a unique taste of their own, and are simply enhanced by the addition of seasonings or sauces, not disguised.

Eventually I hope to be adding more layers of taste; I already do quite a bit with herbs and spices. But for now, my focus is still on basics.

Last night I started carefully reading Charcuterie, The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. I really like that they have written this book with the home-cook foremost in mind! They build the how-to's in gradual steps, and every recipe and technique stresses that this craft evolved as a means of using and keeping the less expensive cuts of meat, and turning all the scraps into something edible and wonderful. 

I believe I can make nutritionally good use of inexpensive cuts of meat by making sausages, terrines and påtés, thereby adding increased variety to my meals. (Terrines can also be vegetable or fruit terrines; they are not limited to meat preparations.) So, sausages and other charcuterie are soon to be on my menu!

In December when I get my order of hog and sheep casings, I will start making more types of sausage. (I made some venison sausage last year, using collagen casings, and I was not happy with those casings. I still have several hundred feet new in the boxes.) Sausages loke Italian, bratwurst, chorizo, and kielbasa are not cheap around here, and I can make 10 pounds for under $30 using top-quality ingredients. Merguez (lamb) sausages on Amazon.com are $29.80 for 1½ pounds (plus shipping!) and I can buy free-range ground lamb locally for $5/lb.

I recently posted a scrumptious cranberry pear clafouti, but there are many clafoutis I can make that are savory (with vegetables and/or meat rather than sweet and with fruits) that become delectable, above ordinary fare. Technically, clafoutis is the wrong term, according to French language purists. "A clafoutis is only made with black cherries. Period." Any other filling makes it a Flognarde, or flaugnarde, pronounced "flow nard". I'll probably continue to call mine clafoutis, not being a purist and not speaking French either!

Whatever you choose to call it, they all include eggs in the custard/batter, which would increase my choline intake, just recently known to be essential for health. I don't eat enough eggs because I get bored with them... I can eat only so many fried eggs, scrambled eggs, or hard-boiled eggs! (Liver is also an excellent source of choline and there will be some free-range liver in påtés coming from my kitchen soon.)

Another food biggie for me is cheese. I love cheese, all kinds of cheese! (Well, maybe not Limburger and a few others I couldn't get past my nose!) The artisan cheese, including raw milk cheese, showing up in stores like Whole Foods cost over $10-15/lb and usually more for a quality cheese. I don't even want to think about what a good cheese costs in a specialty gourmet shop! One solution is to make my own.

An average pound of cheese takes around 5-6 quarts (10 pounds) of whole cow or goat milk to make, and less (~6 pounds) for sheep cheese. (Sheep milk has more fat solids.) I have no source for sheep milk, but I can get fresh goat and cow milk locally for $6/gallon. Any cheese I can make will be only marginally cheaper if I don't include my time, but certainly more readily available.

The nearest store with a decent variety of good cheese is over 100 miles away, and there's always expensive mail order... but either way, my real cost for cheese has to include travel or shipping. I know I can do better cost-wise by making my own cheese. I doubt I can make a world-class cheese, but surely I can make cheese that's tasty and nutritious nonetheless.

I have already made a few types of soft cheese, but an aged, hard rind cheese takes a special environment of humidity and temperature to cure. Luckily for me, a friend has just offered an old but working wine cooler that will do the job. I will have to fetch it, then make a cheese press, and order some molds and cultures with my January check, but that will be my Christmas gift to myself. Besides, any new endeavor is always entertainment for me!

Wine is not as much of a problem on my budget since I don't drink anymore, but I do use it in cooking, especially for marinades, and in a braise or stew. Wine is fairly easy and inexpensive to make, and I have several gallons maturing already. Some of the wine will get turned into vinegars, and I use a lot of flavorful vinegars on fresh salads from my garden.

All in all, my interest in making more of my own foods is very rewarding financially, emotionally, and health-wise.

Central to that interest, I am trying to grow what I can in my own garden, and when the growing season is upon us again there will be more gardening posts here. I fervently wish I could add some animals to my yard, like a good milk cow (pref. Jersey or Guernsey) or milk goats, plus a few chickens and ducks... but I'm finding that's not easily accomplished, having arrived at age 70 with limited resources and waning strength.

Hard Cider

I finally found some un-pasteurized apple cider to make some hard cider, which will ultimately become apple cider vinegar. I pay around $9 for a quart of Bragg's Raw Apple Cider vinegar, and I bought this gallon of raw apple cider for $7, plus I paid about $1.50 for the yeast to ferment it, so $2.13 for a quart of raw apple cider vinegar by making it myself.

After reading many recipes and forums online about making hard cider, I opted to use the yeast used to make a lager since the reviews were excellent. I could have used a wine yeast like a champagne yeast, but the lager yeast will do better in the secondary fermentation at cooler temperatures than a wine yeast.

The other fruit wines I started in my quest to make real fruit vinegars are now sitting quietly, and (hopefully) mellowing towards spring for tasting and bottling. They are in my pantry but I may move them to the root cellar to free up some space. Moving them to a cooler temperature will probably add a couple of months to the finishing time, but that's okay with me.

There is nothing more to post on this hard cider until spring, because now it just needs to sit and perk. I will do updates on all the fruit vinegars when they become ready, or become compost!

The Road to Real Fruit Vinegars

I've been fascinated by the few reports I have read about Real [Fruit] Vinegars ... those are NOT the fruit or herb flavored vinegars [other than Bragg's Raw Apple Cider Vinegar] we usually find in our stores in the US. Apparently there are a few stores who import these luscious vinegars from France, Italy and Spain where they are more commonly made, but the purchase cost is higher than a bottle of fine wine.

The process to make real vinegars from fruit is to first make fruit wine. Then you expose the wine to oxygen where the acetobacter convert the alcohol to acetic acid. Actually, the process to make any real vinegar is to first make the substance into a wine, then convert the alcohol in it to acetic acid. Quickly distilling GMO corn or corn by-products into vinegar may give you a good product to use as a household cleaning product, but there are far better options of vinegars for foods.

One important distinction besides the taste is the health benefits of the nutrients in the vinegars. When wines are bottled, sulphites are added to kill the bacteria and stop any residual fermentation, and act as a preservative. If you have bought Bragg's Raw Apple Cider Vinegar (or made your own vinegar) you will notice a "mother" in the vinegar. That's a product of the action of the acetic acid bacteria on the alcohol where no sulphites have been added to kill the good bacteria. It is harmless (but alive). Real apple cider vinegar retains all the nutritional goodness of the apples from which it was made,  plus it is fortified with the enzymes produced during the two fermentation steps. The same is true of any fruit fermented into real vinegar.

The photo above is blueberry wine on the left, and plum on the right. I made both of these from what winemakers call 'seconds'... that is, the second brewing of the same fruit pulp after the first batch has been drawn off. Not being a winemaker myself, it will be interesting to see if I have successfully made wine at all! Those bottles will be left to 'age' for several months, and then I will siphon the liquid into jars with a large mouth, and cover the mouth with cheesecloth to keep out dust and bugs but allow contact with oxygen to convert the alcohol.

In my freezer I have enough red raspberries to start fermenting a 3 gallon (or more) batch of wine from scratch, and I have higher hopes of success in making wine than with the jugs above. If I actually succeed in making a drinkable wine, most of it will be bottled for friends since I don't drink. The rest will get converted to vinegar.

I'm also hoping to find enough elderberries left this year to start a gallon of elderberry wine. I used all the elderberries I had picked to make an elderberry syrup for colds and flu before I thought to save some for wine.

I have an invitation to visit a cidery when apples ripen, and I'm hoping to buy some just-pressed juice to make some hard apple cider, which will ultimately become raw apple cider vinegar. I use a lot of Bragg's and it would be nice to make my own, but buying a cider press is out of the question financially.

One of the apples I hope to find for cider is an heirloom crab apple "Virginia Hewe's Crab" Thomas Jefferson grew in his North Orchard at Monticello for cider. Someone discovered one growing somewhere in Virginia several years ago and has been grafting lots of new crab apple trees from it. The old cider made in England and Colonial America was a mix of sweet and bitter apples; most of those heirloom apple varieties are long gone since cider fell out of favor as a beverage, and they did not make a good eating apple.