Rosehippy Syrup

Rosehips

Wednesday 24th October 2012
Is there anything out there?

For all I know there could be a giant flying saucer parked half a mile away in the middle of a field. It could have been there for several days and nobody would know. For I am beginning to question the existence of the horizon, let alone the sun.

There really aren't many outside jobs which are satisfying in this weather. I did spend a morning extracting thistles from the meadow. A couple of skeins of geese flew low over, though I couldn't see them in the low mist.


No. This is the sort of weather to be staying inside doing homely things such as finding ways of preserving hedgerow fruits.

Sue picked a bowlful of rosehips over the weekend and had found a H F-W recipe for turning them into a syrup, reputedly good for coughs or as a drizzle for ice-cream.


















After de-stalking, the rosehips were whizzed in the food processor. The great thing about this recipe is that you don't have to spend hours on the fiddly task of extricating all the hairy insides (does anybody else remember using this stuff as itching powder, stuffing it down the backs of people's blazers at school?!).

Then they were scolded in water twice and drained through a muslin jelly bag overnight.

Into the resulting clarified juice was dissolved a good wodge of sugar and the whole was boiled up and jarred.

Delicious, perfumey aromas pervaded the whole house. It somehow smelled of an autumn evening.

The finished product. You won't find this in the shops.