Ginger Rhubarb Cordial, for summer patio fun

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability. – Sam Keen

We are most definitely in the depths of summer, so some laziness must be called for. Speaking of laziness, here’s one I’ve been keeping in the hopper for quite a while, and I apologize. I made this about a month ago.

You can probably still find rhubarb in the vegetable department of the grocery – most certainly in the freezer section. You may even be able to rustle up enough from your back yard, if you haven’t let your rhubarb go to seed.

Rhubarb is an easy-to-grow backyard plant. Many homes in city, town and country have a small patch somewhere. Some patches are decades old.

There’s even ornamental rhubarbs that can make quite a dramatic statement in the flower border. I wouldn’t recommend using an ornamental rhubarb for this recipe. Probably would be very dangerous. They’re relatives to garden rhubarb, not siblings.

Speaking of danger, there is one about the garden-variety rhubarb, too. Never eat the leaves. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid, which in larger doses is poisonous. This means pets, too, so if fido or fluffy develop a penchant for rhubarb leaves call the vet (just to be safe).

I have posted a recipe for rhubarb liqueur in the past (2011), but this is for a cordial syrup. So for all you tea-totalers, you can easily add summer sparkle to soda and ice. 

If you’ve had a particularly stressful day or week, serve over ice with gin or vodka and soda.

You may want to double the recipe. It’s pretty good stuff...

Ginger Rhubarb Cordial

Prep: 10 min  |  Total time: 30 min  |  Yield: about 700ml

1-3/4 lbs rhubarb stalks (weigh them)

1-1/4 cups white sugar

1-1/4 cups water

1 lemon, zest and juice

3” piece of ginger, sliced

2 tsp citric acid

Wash and trim the ends off the rhubarb stalks and then cut into 1” pieces. Place in a pot with a well-fitting lid. You don’t want the liquid to evaporate away. Then add the sugar and water.

Cut the zest from the lemon and add to the pot, then squeeze in the juice. Don’t worry about seeds as the mixture will be strained later... Slice the unpeeled ginger into strips and add to the pot.

Place over high heat and bring to a boil. Cover the pot, reduce the heat to medium and let cook for 10 minutes.

After cooking stir to ensure all the rhubarb is mushy and broken up. Stir in the citric acid and let sit until cool enough to handle. The citric acid extends shelf life.

Place a sieve lined with doubled cheesecloth over a mixing bowl. Squeeze the rhubarb through the sieve, pressing down to extract as much juice as possible. 

If you’re over-zealous and some rhubarb pulp makes its way into the strained liquid you can re-strain or leave it. It will add some “texture” to your drinks (like orange juice with pulp...).

Discard the remaining solids. Pour the juice into a sterilized bottle and refrigerate. Use as you desire in mixed drinks with soda or tonic. 

The cordial will safely last for one week, refrigerated.

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The Small Garden: Update 1

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. – Robert Louis Stevenson

This is the main garden, with the tasty things that deer like to nibble.
Hence, the fence. (I'm a poet and don't know it.)

It’s been a while again, I know... Hopefully this will assuage my guilty conscience. And what better way to do it than to talk about what’s growing in our small garden. Our veggie garden.

Whoever plants a seed shows faith in tomorrow. If we had no hope we would plant no seeds. Nurturing takes time, like a garden, and the benefits of your spent love and devotion might not be immediately evident. But day by day the seeds you plant will grow, until you reap the harvest.

Left, radishes that need thinning; right, peas starting their reach for the sky.

Planting a garden, physically or metaphorically, is a balm for the soul, and not strictly in a religious sense. The attention we pay to what or who we care about will come back to us ten-fold. To grow we must nurture, ourselves and others.

But back to plants... You might say that you don’t have room. Hogwash. If you have a sun-lit patio you have room.

This is the other smaller bed, containing herbs in the front and
veggies in the back. They have just started to sprout.

Luckily here in the country we have a little actual ground. Not much, but enough. This is the second year we have put seed to soil here, and will apply last year’s lessons to this year’s garden. My spouse and I planted our patch 13 days ago today. There has been activity, plus a couple light frosts.

So what did we put in? I will forget some things so bear with me.

Kale, cucumber, tomatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, radishes, rainbow chard, salad greens, peas, beans, pumpkin and squash. I am forgetting a couple.

We also have a perennial herb bed consisting of sage, chives, two thymes and oregano. For tender plants we put in Italian parsley, cilantro and rosemary. Tarragon and basil will follow in a couple weeks. There is nothing better than running outside to gather enough basil for a pesto. Nothing.

We have several fruits growing. What you see above is unripe
haskap berries. We also have blueberries, raspberries and
blackberries. Some grapes are on trellises as well.

If you think about what we've planted you can understand when I say that last summer the only thing I bought at the store was meat, eggs and dairy. I usually make my own bread.

Growing your own vegetables is not a difficult thing to do, and it is not too late. I know friends who are just thinking now is the time to plant. Some don’t until after the Strawberry moon (the full moon of June 12-13), after which all risk of frost is supposed to be past.

I’ve looked at the 2-week forecast. We’re hovering around 10°+ overnight. So I’m glad we didn’t wait. As it was, I knew we were planting later than my father ever did. I could even hear his voice.

Since we planted, there were two instances when we had to cover the squash, pumpkin and tomato plants to protect them from frost, but they came through.

If you don’t want to start seed, now is the time to get to the garden centre. There are tons of plant “sets” probably further along than anything in our garden. So if you’re willing to shell out the cash, you can insta-garden this year.

Regardless of how you do it, you should really take part in your own food security. The cost of a few packets of seeds (or some plants) is far surpassed by the bounty you will harvest.

Back left is the herb bed. We haven;'t invested a lot of real estate for the
amount of food we get. We did cut back on the tomatoes this year.
Last year I was running out of ideas to deal with them.

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How to hide a drilled well pipe

I have come to accept the real me. I have come to love the real me. I now celebrate the real me. – Charice Pempengco 

Lilies, shasta daisies, poppies, gentian, bleeding heart, hosta, anemone,
sweet peas ...all rescued from the digger.

That quote holds a lot of significance for me. There are some things we all have to accept and build from there. It's like Don Quixote trying to joust with a windmill. It ain't gonna happen.

It also has the word “celebrate” in it, which makes sense to use as an intro because I’m going to talk about something no one thinks to celebrate. I wish I had seen this post before I wrote it. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it.

What I mean is I wish that the info in this post was available to us when I went looking for solutions to a un-celebratory property problem: the drilled well pipe. You know, the pipe that sticks at least 18” out of the ground after you water well has been put in.

A lot of people want solutions to hide it. Luckily, after a well is drilled, the ground for yards around is fair game. It’s obliterated. Unluckily for us we had to run our pipe to the house right.through.our.flower.bed. Yup. Half of it – gone. 

And we only had recused it from the weeds this year. Sigh...

If you go looking for solutions to hide this metal and plastic monstrosity you don’t find much that’s – shall we say – classy. There’s hollow windmills to put over it, or fake wishing wells, or even hollow fake plastic rocks. Shudder.

10 feet at the widest point.

You have to be careful what you do to it because you can’t just bury it. And whatever you do has to have ready access or can be easily removed. It has to be available for servicing if the pump ever needs replacing.

So what do you do? Well fear not. Here’s a solution that not only hides the blasted thing but also makes it a feature. If you have a pimple, put some eyeliner on it and make it a beauty mark.

Our solution? Make a low rock wall around it, fill it with dirt and plant it. Its a simple as that. It won’t hide it four-seasons if you’re in our climate, but it will for the length of time you constantly use your yard. It also serves as a "distraction," giving you something else to look at.

Fo ours, I made a nautilus shaped spiral out of “found” rock about 10-12 inches high with the dirt a few inches lower inside. There’s still plenty of pipe above ground. Over the pipe I put a metal garden trellis where I have planted perennial sweet peas. So not only will the pipe be covered, but it will be in full flower.

You don’t have to make a spiral. Make a circle, oval or square, or whatever shape you want. Tie the rock into something existing. The point is to have plants growing up around it to make it less noticeable.

This is the sunny side. I moved five lavenders to a position against it.

Interestingly, this little structure also creates a slight microclimate. So if you have any borderline zone plants tuck them up against the rocks where they’ll appreciate the shelter and extra heat. I moved out lavender to the sunny side of the wall.

The pictures of my creation are a little sad because the plants are what we salvaged before the well digger came in. They have been sitting in water for over a week. They needed planting. In a few days I expect to see either some life or new growth on many of them.

Cost? I scavenged the rock, the dirt was out back and the plants were saved. I tally that as 0 dollars. A little sweat equity, but not much.

So there’s my solution. Don’t hide it. Celebrate it. It's better than trying to fight something you can't.

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Summerfresh Corn & Ham Chowder

When I was having that alphabet soup, I never thought that it would pay off. – Vanna White

This isn’t alphabet soup, but previous actions on our part certainly will have some payoff for this recipe. I’m talking about the vegetables used in it, and soon they will be from our own garden.

I made this before our harvest of corn, tomatoes and onions but it’s such a nice chowder I couldn’t wait. Truth be told, I had some tomatoes and fresh corn I previously purchased that needed to be used. Waste not, want not.

If you can, cut the kernels from 2 fresh ears. In a pinch,
you can use canned, but it's not as tasty.

The day I made this it was a bit cool and overcast so turning on the stove in the kitchen wouldn’t make the house unbearably hot. I like the odd day like that. It’s a nice break from the summer heat. 

Before anyone brings it up, chowder usually contains fish, but doesn’t have to. The main characteristic is the use of cream. There are many variations.

Creamy soup/chowder certainly hits the spot on days like those. At the same time, you want something that goes together quickly, like this one does. When our corn and tomatoes are in full swing I’m sure this dish will make an appearance again.

Gardening isn’t rocket science and can be done on quite a small scale if you want to try your hand next year. You can even successfully grow in pots on your deck. We have a couple small plots, probably totalling no more than 350 square feet. That may seem like a lot, but it's not. We wish we had just a little more...

We’ve been watching a fair number of BBC gardening shows via YouTube lately. They’re great sources of information for small scale gardening that we didn’t know, or have just discovered, over the past few months. 

The information certainly will be an influence next year when we plan and plant. From the amount of different  programs it seems the British are significantly more interested in small gardens than we in North America.

It’s nice to see so much available for folks ready to jump on the bandwagon of a little more self-sustainability. I do know that it’s a great pleasure to step outside and pick something fresh for on your plate. Once bitten...

The sage seems to be quite happy alongside our basil.

We’ve harvested quite a lot of fresh vegetables so far, and have even successively re-sowed some early greens, like lettuces and spinach. They are certainly impacting our bottom line. We’ll be in real trouble in a couple weeks when the tomatoes and cucumbers fully ripen. The only things we’ve had to buy are those items we can’t produce ourselves, like meat, cheese and dairy.

One major success we have had is our herbs: sage, basil, oregano, thyme, parsley and rosemary. They’ve grown by leaps and bounds. On BBC I learned they actually benefit from being constantly trimmed. It appears dried herbs will be off the shopping list through this winter. We currently have a significant amount of sage drying and what we harvested hardly made a dent in our single plant.

It’s nice to have fresh herbs to cook with. They’re so much tastier than dried. They're also a star attraction in this dish.

This soup is fast, and very fresh tasting. Corn cooks in minutes. Many people over-cook it. If you do it gets tough and looses some of its sweetness. The same is true of most other vegetables, too.

If you find yourself in the mood for soup on a cool summer’s day, or a rainy one (like today is supposed to be), why not make soup?

It’s a nice way to use some of nature’s bounty and remembering that the sun and warmth will come back tomorrow...or the day after.

Summerfresh Corn & Ham Chowder

Prep: 10 min  |  Cook 10 min  |  Serves 4

Sautéeing the sage helps release the oils
in the leaves.

1 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 garlic clove, chopped

1 tbsp fresh sage leaves, sliced thinly

2 cups fresh corn kernels

200 g smoked ham, sliced

3 cups chicken stock

1 firm, ripe tomato, diced

150 g gouda cheese, grated

1/2 to 1 cup whipping cream (32%)

salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a stock or soup pot.

Sauté the onion, garlic and sage over medium heat in the oil until softened, about 3-4 minutes. Cut the ham into strips about 2” long. Add the corn, ham, stock, tomato, salt and pepper.

Bring the soup to a gentle boil and let cook for about 4 minutes. Stir in the gouda and cream and let heat through until the cheese is melted, a further 2 minutes.

Taste for salt and pepper and then serve with more grated cheese on top, if desired.

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Sweet Basil Corn Salad

You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same. – Jonathan Davis 

All raw... all delicious.

It’s August 8 today. Where is the summer going? It seems to be evaporating before our eyes like a puddle in the hot sun.

Fear not. There’s plenty of wonderful weather left this season, or there had better be. We have lots of garden plants with great potential ahead of them before harvest time. Hopefully plenty of barbecue opportunities as well.

There are some real advantages to having a small (or large) vegetable garden. The most obvious is that you get good things to eat for quite a low cost and fairly little effort. We have not been out constantly pulling weeds.

Another is the sense of self-sufficiency and satisfaction it gives you. Nothing beats the feeling of running out to the garden and plucking something from the vine to bring to your table. Talk about fresh.

One of our purple beans.

If you plant lots of different vegetables you also get ripening overlap, so several are ready to eat at the same time. This recipe used the very last of our peas, and close to the last of our beans. If we had put out tomato sets a week earlier we could have had those, too.

We planted two kinds of beans this year: regular green beans and purple beans. Purple beans are interesting because when raw they are a dusky purple colour. But as soon as they cook the beans turn green. That’s kind of a waste of beautiful colour.

Since I was looking for visual interest and contrast I opted to use them instead of green ones. But use whatever you can get your hands on that’s good quality. That's important – good quality.

If you don't have a garden you should be able to find everything at a local farmers market.

When one thinks of “garden salad” the usual tomato, carrot, onion, cucumber, radish and greens springs to mind. If you’re on your third one in a week – because you have to eat what you planted – it can get sort of boring. Variety is the spice of life.

So look for variety everywhere and in everything. This one’s definitely a garden salad. I can vouch that it came from our garden. But it’s deliciously different. All raw, the sweet snap of the vegetables coupled with the sugary vinegar makes for something completely different.

Have you ever eaten fresh, raw corn kernels? They have a sweet creaminess that is difficult to describe. They’re a perfect addition with beans and peas. And the basil? Oh...the basil!

If you're not an onion fan, don't worry. The marinating time removes much of its sharpness.

One of the main challenges with barbecuing in warm weather is to serve interesting side dishes. Traditional garden salad is a stand-by, as is potato salad, but it’s always fun to serve something a little different.

If you can get your hands on fresh corn, peas, beans and tomato I strongly suggest that you try this one out. It takes no time at all to make, and keeps out out of a hot kitchen.

The weekend is coming and it sounds like Saturday will be barbecue weather!

Sweet Basil Corn Salad

Prep: 10 min  |  Serves 4-8

1-1/2 cups fresh corn kernels

1 cup fresh peas, shelled

1 cup green beans, snapped

12-16 grape tomatoes, halved

1/2 cup onion, thinly sliced

1/2 cup torn or chopped basil

3 tbsp balsamic (or cider) vinegar

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cracked black pepper

Remove the husk from the corn. Cut the kernels by slicing down the side against the cob. Place in a bowl.

Shell the peas and add to the corn. Stem the beans and snap into thirds. Halve the tomatoes and add. Using a mandolin, thinly slice the onion. Tear or roughly chop the basil. Toss all together very well.

Mix the vinegar, oil, sugar, salt and pepper in a small jar. Shake vigorously, pour over the top of the vegetables and toss well. 

Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for about 1/2 hour. Toss again just before serving.

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Questions? Comments? Derogatory remarks? Just ask! I’ll answer quickly and as best as I can. If you like this post feel free to share it. If you repost, please give me credit and a link back to this site.

Poisonous plant, Wild Parsnip

There is poison in the fang of the serpent, in the mouth of the fly and in the sting of a scorpion; but the wicked man is saturated with it. – Chanakya 

Wild parsnip. Like a lonely hitchhiker standing beside the road. Don't pick it up.

Foraging for wild parsnips has quite an allure when you think about it – if you like parsnips. I do, actually. Although this plant is edible, I think I’ll stick to ones I grow myself, or buy from farmers markets or grocery stores.

This is Queen Anne's Lace.
Similar flower to wild parsnip, except
the latter is yellow.

Pastinaca sativa – the European wild parsnip – is an invasive plant native to Europe and Asia. It was most likely brought with settlers and planted in gardens as a vegetable. It has now escaped and is considered a problem plant.

The wild parsnip has two problems associated with it. First, it's invasive, although I haven't seen much evidence of that on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. It’s from its other property: photo-dermatitis caused by the chemical furanocoumarin.

I didn’t know what this plant was and after I spotted it I had to come home and do some investigation. It kind of reminded me of Queen Anne’s Lace (wild carrot) with a touch of poison hemlock about it. Lovely, eh? Queen Anne’s lace is edible; poison hemlock is a very nasty customer.

This plant was solitary, standing on the shoulder of the road all alone. I didn’t see another one anywhere around. So not so invasive where I found this one...yet.

Wild parsnip going to seed. Aphids must like the sap, because there
were several ladybugs on the plant.

What is photo-dermatitis? 

Photo-dermatitis is an unpleasant, abnormal reaction of the skin to sunlight, to be precise UV light. The sap from the wild parsnip can/will react with your skin and cause rashes, blisters and burns after you come in contact with it.

In this way it’s similar to wild hogweed, poison ivy and poison oak. All cause dermatitis reactions. So add this plant to your “touch me not” list.

Furanocoumarin is not contained in the root, but is in everything above soil level. So if you want to go a-foraging for roots, wear lots of protective clothing. I think I’ll err on the side of caution and leave it in the ground.

What does the plant look like?

Typically, wild parsnip is a biennial. The first year it grows a low-to-the-ground rosette of leaves while it develops its parsnip root. The second year it sends up a thick stalk, branched with flowers, goes to seed and dies. (Cue The Lion King “Circle of Life” music here.)

There’s a few distinctions you can easily observe between this and Queen Anne’s Lace, in particular. Queen Anne’s Lace grows on spindly stalks with a single, white umbrel on top (that’s fancy-talk for a flat bunch of flowers all together). Wild parsnip is far more robust, multi-branching and yellow flowered.

Wild parsnip can grow as tall as 4+ feet; Queen Anne is usually about 2-3 feet maximum. Queen Anne leaves are more feathery like dill, whereas wild parsnip are substantial and look like celery leaves (sort of). They’re easy to tell apart.

Apparently wild parsnip is now growing in all Canadian provinces, save Nunavut. It is also throughout the USA.

This stalk looks nothing at all like Queen Anne's Lace.

Getting back to looking but not seeing, on a trip to Halifax the other day I had occasion to be walking behind the Canadian Tire on Quinpool through to Windsor Street. Right along a paved pathway there were at least five or six of them.

Obviously they’re everywhere – country or city. Wild parsnip is certainly pretty enough to be of interest to children as well as adults. So be on your guard.

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Questions? Comments? Derogatory remarks? Just ask! I’ll answer quickly and as best as I can. If you like this post feel free to share it. If you repost, please give me credit and a link back to this site.

Kalopanax – Prickly Castor Oil Tree

Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come. – Robert H. Schuller 

About bloomin' time. Young kalopanax flower buds.

Some plants make you wait. If it’s a perennial, you sometimes have wait a year for it to really get going; if it’s a bush, you wait a few. If you plant a tree, you have to have some patience. You’re in it for the long haul.

Nothing is truer than our experience with this tree, the kalopanax, otherwise known as prickly castor oil. Last year we had one flower cluster. This year we have several. Thank goodness. The thing is about 20 year old and 30 feet high.

This tree comes well armoured. Those are hard, strong spines.

Evident from my past blog musings,  you’ll already know that I tend toward the exotic and somewhat unusual in my plant choices. This tree is no exception. It was two stalks probably no more than 2 feet tall when I bought it. It has well and truly reached its late adolescence now.

A bud in springtime.

Kalopanax is a difficult tree to find in Nova Scotia. I don’t think I can remember ever seeing it for sale after I bought it. That’s a shame, because it’s beautiful. It may be a little easier now. Over the last two decades garden centres seem to have embraced the exotic a little bit more.

Kalopanax septemlobusis a deciduous tree in the family Araliaceae, the only species in the genus. Deciduous means that it loses its leaves in the fall. It is native to Asia. 

Araliaceae is a large group of plants known as the Ivy Family. It never ceases to amaze me how plants under the same family (like ivy) can have such amazingly different forms, but there are usually some similarities, if slight. 

For example most plants in the species have flowers that are born in large “panicles,” or dense clusters, of flowers – just like the kalopanax. The sort of nondescript white flowers are followed by brown seed pods,that are supposed to be a favourite of birds and squirrels. Good luck to any squirrel that wants to scramble out the thorny branches to get at the fruit. The flowers are borne right on the end of the branch.

This is our tree this summer.

This is not a small tree when fully grown, reaching upwards of 60 feet. Its most distinguishing characteristic, besides the leaves, is the spines that cover the trunk and branches. 

They are hard, woody and sharp and can be about 1/2 inch long. There are only two other spines on trees in Nova Scotia I can think of for you to compare in your mind: locusts and hawthorne. They're shaped like locust and tough like hawthorne.

The leaves are “palmate,” which means they are divided into lobes. To me, they look kind of like maple leaves on heavy steroids with serrated edges. They are attached by a stem that is about 12” -14” long, and the leaf itself can reach that width. As you can imagine that makes the tree quite dramatic in a breeze.

The leaves are green through the growing season and then turn yellow in autumn before switching to dark brown and dropping off. Every year we get a pile of them. I’ve actually framed a few. They’re very interesting.

Kalopanax is an excellent shade tree to grow if you’re looking for something a bit tropical and exotic in appearance. It is extremely cold hardy and can withstand temperatures down to -40°F. That’s cold, when you think that in Nova Scotia we usually don’t exceed -25°F.

The plant is supposed to grown very quickly at first, but I found that mine took its own sweet time to begin to branch out and become what one would call a “tree.” In some areas of the USA it is classified as invasive. No sign of that with mine.

One word of caution. Be careful of it when you mow. Those spikes can really be a surprise if you inadvertently bump your head on a branch.

Beautiful large leaves that toss in the breeze.

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Questions? Comments? Derogatory remarks? Just ask! I’ll answer quickly and as best as I can. If you like this post feel free to share it. If you repost, please give me credit and a link back to this site.

Homemade Raspberry Wine Vinegar

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike. – J. K. Rowling

The vinegar after infusing, but before straining out the solids.

We used to have a beautiful straight row of ever-bearing raspberries in our backyard. “Used to” are the operative words. My neglect certainly has done them no good service. It's difficult to maintain everything in a yard when you're only there 2 days out of every 2 weeks. That's no longer the case.

Pretty sad looking... Hopeful for next year.

Over the years my beautiful raspberries were taken over by wild rose and goldenrod. I couldn’t have done them any more harm if I had been working actively against them. But I do like them. Quite a lot actually.

So early this summer we cleaned out the patch, now “spotty” and about four times as wide as it was, to give them room to come back. I have my fingers crossed. There's also logan berries hiding in there somewhere...

If you have a small place in your yard I highly recommend purchasing raspberries. They come in an “ever bearing” variety. So if you have enough canes you can have a steady supply for quite some time. 

Raspberries fruit on second year wood. That means the new green stalks this year will give you fruit the next. After fruiting you can cut out the old, dry brown stalks. They won't fruit again.

Unfortunately for me – this year – I’ll have to rely on the grocery store. either fresh or frozen. Frozen are available year-round and are more than acceptable for making fruit vinegar, but they can be a little sour. 

Image: Wiki CC

If buying fresh berries be a little careful, especially if they’re on sale. When raspberries go on sale it means one of two things: either the raspberries are tasteless, or they’re about to go mouldy. In my experience it’s usually the latter. Check the bottom of the package.

“On sale” means you should get them either into you, or into a preservative or jelly within 24-48 hours. Infused vinegar is a great way to extend your enjoyment of  these delicious summer berry.

Raspberry vinegar can be drizzled over a salad “as is” or mixed into vinaigrette. You can also add it to sparkling water for a deliciously different summer refresher. Sprinkle it over melon or other berries, or use in marinades for pork, poultry or fish.

The only concern in making fruit vinegar is the overall acidity of the finished product. It has to be acidic enough to preserve whatever natural flavourings you have introduced. Raspberries have a pH about 3.2 to 3.6. The other ingredients affect the final pH as well.

The closer you get to 7 pH (neutral) the faster your vinegar needs to be used. For example, fruit may potentially lower the pH a little because juice is introduced; herb vinegars probably do not.

There’s a useful online guide that shows the pH of many common foods. Look here if you want to try other fruits in vinegars. You can find it at

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/food-ph-d_403.html

Natural raspberry flavours fortified with white wine and white wine vinegar makes this a delight both in the mouth and under the nose.

Homemade fruit vinegar also makes a really nice gift. I use small bottles available at any wine-making store. They’re 375 ml and very affordable. This recipe filled two bottles with enough for me to try it out. If you want to enjoy this outstanding vinegar more than a few times, or gift it, you may want to make a double batch.

Raspberry Wine Vinegar

Yield: 2 x 375ml + a little extra

1 cup white wine, dry or sweet (about 4% acidity)

2 cups white wine vinegar (6% acidity)

1/4-1/3 cup sugar, depending on berry sweetness

2 cups fresh (or frozen) raspberries

Bring all the ingredients just to a boil in a saucepan. Place in a sterilized 1 L Mason jar and let sit for 7 days.

After it sits, strain out the solids through a sieve lined with cloth or a jelly bag. I extracted a lot of vinegar by gently squeezing the cloth. Too much will force pulp through the cloth and cloud the vinegar a little.

Bottle and keep in a cool place out of direct sunlight. This vinegar will last at least 6 months.

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Can you eat carrot tops?

One is not exposed to danger who, even when in safety is always on their guard. – Publilius Syrus 

“Can you eat carrot tops?” Sounds like a simple enough question. The answer depends on who you ask.

It’s also a relevant question to home gardeners, especially when you start thinning your carrots so the ones that remain can swell to their full underground potential. That’s a lot of waste.

If you do a web search about carrot greens you get a lot of conflicting and confusing information. Some say you can, others warn you to never eat them.

If you’re a small-scale gardener, and hate to waste what you’ve grown, you’ve probably eyed them with some interest. There does tend to be a lot of them.

What's in them?

Scientifically, carrot greens are rich in protein, vitamins and minerals. They contain six times the vitamin C of the root and are a source of potassium and calcium. 

For me, they’ve always ended up in the compost bin. I haven’t ever eaten them because, until this year, I have never grown them. Apparently they are quite bitter. Aside from all the good things in them, nature does have a way of telling you to avoid certain things. The bitter taste is because of the presence of nitrates and alkaloids.

Alkaloids are a class of nitrogen-based plant compounds that can have significant physiological affects on humans. Alkaloids include many drugs, like morphine and quinine, and poisons such as atropine and strychnine.

Nitrates have been used for a very long time to treat heart conditions. They have the ability to reduce the absorption of oxygen in the blood. Infants are particularly susceptible to this action. It’s called “blue baby syndrome.”

Although the toxicity of modern carrots is apparently not as strong as the wild version, they still do have alkaloids and nitrites. But nowhere have I found the actual levels of these compounds in modern carrot greens.

Are you sensitive?

I suppose there's no way to really find out unless you expose yourself to alkaloids and nitrites. But is that wise? Would you go walking in unknown water to discover if there's broken glass?

I have read that people with sensitive skin can actually break out in a rash if exposed to carrot tops. If ingested by sensitive people, they can also experience side effects ranging from a burning sensation in the mouth and throat, increased heart beat, elevated blood pressure, agitation and possibly even death. 

According to the University of Idaho extension office, the risk of death by nitrate poisoning is highest in pregnant women, young children, and individuals with immune disorders. I do believe, though, that it is very rare and has to be in pretty high levels.

I have a sensitivity to quinine. If I drink tonic water I have what feels like a panic attack, including increased heart rate and agitation that results in a feeling of anxiety. So no gin and tonics for me. If I take penicillin-based medicine I break out in welts. So it seems I am one of those who may be sensitive to carrot tops.

There’s also the fact that commercial producers often spray pesticide on carrot tops because they are so (very) seldom eaten. This woudn’t be the case in a home, organic garden.

Counter to all the doom and gloom, the Carrot Museum in the UK (yes, there’s a carrot museum and they are online) strongly promotes carrot leaves as not only being edible but highly nutritious. In blog posts, the New Your Times (anti) and Smithsonian (pro) have also waded into the issue.

Other varying sources note that the greens from carrots are fine to eat and that they can be  added to soups and casseroles, or even made into pesto. I would say pesto would be quite a high concentration. You can quickly find hundreds of recipes.

It’s interesting to see that carrot tops spur such lively debate. Who would have thought.

Since the jury is so firmly out, there’s no recipe today. In the interest of safety (not least my own) I think mine will continue to go into the compost.

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You know, I really like comments... I really do.

Questions? Comments? Derogatory remarks? Just ask! I’ll answer quickly and as best as I can. If you like this post feel free to share it. If you repost, please give me credit and a link back to this site.

Old Fashioned Perennial Sweet Peas

They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast! – Dr. Seuss

We have some old-fashined perennial sweet peas (Lathyrus latifolius) in our back yard that have been growing here since shortly after our house was built in 1957. I remember them from when I was very, very young in the 1960s.

If family history is correct, my Great Aunt Nettie (one of my two aunts who built it) brought them with her when they retired and moved home from Boston. They came from the garden of one of her “practical nurse” patients. If true, those same seeds have been coming back in the same spot – year after year – for the past 56 years.

That’s what I call a self-seeding perennial. It’s always a welcome sight to see the familiar pea-like stems breaking the ground and starting their reach for the sky in mid spring. It's like a physical connection to my childhood.

It’s interesting how nature, in all its diversity, seems to like certain forms and repeats them over and over again.

A good example is the flower shape of sweet peas. It’s an unbelievably common shape, for all it’s beauty and uniqueness. It is borne on amazingly diverse plants, all seemingly unrelated unless you look them up. They’re all members of the very extended legume family, Fabaceae.

It doesn’t take long to find examples. There is our Lathyrus, and just feet away in our vegetable garden we have its close look-alike, garden peas. We have been eating our peas for a little while now, but sadly that will be soon coming to an end.

This is vetch.

Another member we can find in our yard is a weed. Vetch grows in ditches, fields and pretty much anywhere else it wants to. It is by far the most delicate looking of my examples. My memories of this plant go back to when elementary school used to close for the summer. It always used to be blooming at that time. 

Although historically used as food I have read conflicting information about toxcitity, so don’t pick yourself a bowl to eat. They’re really small, so it would take you quite a while anyway.

American Groundnut (Apios americana) is a vine in the village and is actually a food source. It grows along our riverbanks and is quite rampant. It has tight clusters of pea-like flowers in an interesting combination of maroon and oxblood. To me they smell like raspberry cheesecake ice cream!

The flowers of groundnut. They should be in bloom soon.

I’ve written twice about groundnuts, not for its flowers but for its use as a food. At the end of every vine is a tuber that natives used to harvest and eat as a valuable source of dietary starch.

There’s also locust trees. Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is fairly common in our village. When I was growing up there used to be many more than now. 

In mid spring the entire tree is covered with sweet scented blossoms. You used to be able to catch drifts of scent when a breeze sprung up. When the blossoms fall off it looks like it’s snowing. Don’t eat these either.

So that’s four plants all with similarly shaped flowers, blooming at different times through the season, that I can count just by walking in my yard and up the road a short distance. And all have links to the main branch of the pea family.

if you love pea flowers but don’t want rampant weeds, or trees, a good option is to plant perennial garden sweet peas. 

Black locust. Photo: Wiki CC

Lathyrus latifolius is native to Europe is an introduced plant in North America and Australia. They can reach 6 feet or more by means holding onto supports via twining tendrils, but without support sprawls on the ground. So give them the support they crave, and lots of sun.

After the flowers pass, they are replaced by long, skinny pea pods that turn from green to brown. By the end of the season the pods split open and curl, flinging out the seeds.

Perennial sweet peas are often confused with annual sweet pea, Lathyrus odoratus. Perennial sweet peas are not as highly scented as the annual variety, but not having to buy and plant every year certainly has its advantages.

A slight disadvantage is the colour is far more limited and the scent not quite as strong. But I can live with that. The ones we have growing are beautiful.

Try getting your hands on some seeds of this dependable plant. It will reward your minimal effort with a show of flowers every year.

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You know, I really like comments... I really do.

Questions? Comments? Derogatory remarks? Just ask! I’ll answer quickly and as best as I can. If you like this post feel free to share it. If you repost, please give me credit and a link back to this site.