What We Did With Rosehips: Part One

This weekend we fell to the task of dealing with the rosehips we had picked. Our first project was to make rosehip syrup, which was a popular use for rosehips in WWII era England as a way to get vitamin C. In fact it appears that everyone is still using the WWII recipe. We used this version.

Since we don’t have a food processor we took the stems and flower ends off by hand and then chopped them. We put them in boiling water, let them sit and then filtered them through our jelly bag. We also did the second filter as the instructions advise, adding more water and letting it sit more, although I’m not sure it was necessary.

We boiled the resulting juice down to the recommended volume and then added sugar and put it into canning jars and bottles. The canning jars we actually processed but the regular jars are just going into the fridge since (as a result of its high sugar content) it will probably keep for quite awhile in there.

Unfortunately our syrup didn’t come out the bright red color I had expected, probably because some of our hips weren’t quite ripe. After tasting it I don’t think I’d put it over ice cream but I can see sweetening my iced tea with it or making a soda with it and seltzer.

And on a completely unrelated note: today we had a new visitor. Mom found this tiny snail on our compost bin (I know it sounds fancy but it’s actually just one of those big Arizona ice tea jugs with part of the top cut out where our compost lives until it can be carried outside). I’ve never actually seen a snail anywhere on our property so I can only assume he hitched a ride here on something.

He was so cute that I didn't mind him leaving a slime trail across my hand as I transported him outside.