Kelp

I have found that no matter how determined you are to be a forager it is generally something that happens more by chance then by a plan. Take for example a recent trip to the beach. This beach just happened to have nice fresh long strands of kelp washing up (if you haven’t seen kelp, look it up, it is very impressive seaweed) and kelp just happens to be the seaweed that we buy to make dashi, and dad just happened to know this. So he snagged a few pieces of kelp as they washed up (because of their size a few is plenty.)

When we got home he washed the sand off of them and hung them on the porch to dry, which they did…for awhile. The only problem is that when it was particularly humid they reabsorbed moisture from the air which essentially un-dried them. So there they still sit…waiting for a dry stretch so we can store them for future use in Japanese food.

(Toaster the cat was included to give you an idea of the size of a small piece.)

We’re Greedy Little Bears

Apparently there is someone who likes foraging for pin cherries as much as we do…bears. Luckily we’re only had one black bear sighting in Rhode Island recently so we weren’t too concerned as we returned to our secret pin cherry patch.

With the help of a boyfriend who was less than willingly dragged along we managed to pick another three quarts of pin cherries (which hardly put a dent in the crop, it seems no one else, animals included, has really caught on yet).

Since we already had pin cherry syrup we wanted a batch of pin cherry jam. We used a variation on the recipes we had for natural fruit jams (as opposed to those which use liquid or powdered pectin) and are thickened and stretched with the pulp from tart apples.

First we made our pin cherry pulp by simmering the cherries with a tiny bit of water, squishing them through a sieve, simmering the leftovers and squishing those again. We ended up with 6 cups of pulp.

We then peeled five Granny Smith apples. I cut out the cores and then chopped the rest and it all went, cores and all, into a solution of ¼ cup lemon juice to 4 cups water. When it was all chopped and treated to prevent browning it got simmered just like the pin cherries and the smooshed with our ricer. This yielded 3 cups apples pulp.

We then combined the pin cherry pulp, apple pulp and 5 cups sugar and simmered until it was thick enough that we thought it would gel.

I could say that we then immediately put it into jars with ¼ inch headspace and processed them for 10 minutes…but that would be a lie. Because by this point it was growing rather late in the evening so the pot of jam went onto the porch overnight (it’s getting cool here) and the next day we brought it back to a simmer and canned it. Our yield was about 56 oz. It’s nice and tart and makes an interesting addition to our odd jam collection.


Since we actually invented this recipe here it is:

12 cups pin cherries (which should yield 6 cups pulp)
5 tart apples (yield: approx. 3 cups pulp)
5 cups sugar

(Keep in mind that I only did this once so the amount of pulp you get might vary, even if your ratio was different I'm sure it would still be good. Also, you could always add more sugar if you like it sweeter, although I wouldn't do too much less because I think that's part of what preserves it.)

More Foraging: Pin Cherries

This weekend’s hike turned into yet another successful foraging expedition. Although we had left equipped to forage (zip lock baggies) we only expected to find some more rosehips or possibly some bayberries, if even that.

Instead we stumbled upon something which Mom declared was a cherry, probably a pin cherry, before proceeding to eat some. I was a little more cautious and waited to see if she went into convulsions before trying one. They were juicy and tart with a small hard pit in the middle.

Since we weren’t positive what they were we only picked two cups before continuing on our hike. When we got home we did some research and as far as we can tell they most likely are pin cherries. And it’s a good thing we spit out the pits because they and the fall leaves apparently both contain cyanide.

Although we didn’t have enough to do much they were so delicious we wanted to do something so we simmered them with a tiny bit of water until they were soft and then squished them through a sieve (so we could discard the pits). We added sugar to the resulting pulp and ended up with some pin cherry syrup which went into the refrigerator for later use in tea and sodas.


We may go back to attempt to forage more but the birds may have already discovered our secret and it may be too late. In which case we’ll just have to get a pair of pin cherry trees for the yard, it's clearly the only other option.

What We Did With Rosehips: Part Two

Even after making syrup we had used only two fifths of our rosehip harvest so we decided the rest should become jam since mom had once before made rosehip jam and really liked it.

Although we consulted rosehip jam recipes and other jam recipes we ended up making up our own recipe. We started by preparing the rosehips the same way we had the last batch (taking off the stem and blossom end and chopping them). Then they went into a pan with a little water and simmered until they were all nice and soft. After a little time to cool we mashed them through a sieve with a spoon and collected the resulting puree in a bowl underneath the sieve. For good measure we took the pulp that had not made it through the sieve and repeated the process of simmering and squishing with it and got at least half as much pulp the second time around.

The pulp went into another pot to be simmered to a “jam-like” consistency but once we had added sugar we found it was already at the right consistency. How much sugar to add was a whole other matter though. The amounts given in some of the recipes we consulted just didn’t seem right so we used a ratio of sugar to pulp that seemed fairly consistent with most jam recipes in our canning book. We tasted it, decided it was perfect and poured it into sterilized jars and processed them.


From 3 pounds of rosehips we ended up with 2.5 eight ounce jars. Although this ratio seems pretty pathetic to me I just remind myself that since the rosehips were foraged the only real expenditure was time (and the negligible cost of sugar). And since we enjoy doing this sort of thing I’ll just have to think of it as a nearly free form of entertainment. (Otherwise I might go crazy thinking about the fact that I spent three days picking and preserving rosehips and all I ended up with was a few jars of jam and syrup.)

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.

Rosehip Foraging

The holy grail of frugal preserving is definitely something you can forage sustainably. For us one of these things is rosehips. Because Rhode Island has something like 400 miles of coastline, and rosehips love being on the coast, we have lots of them. It also helps that not many other people seem to be aware of their usefulness.

Rosehips are a great source of vitamin C and can be used to make tea, syrup and jam. Although we do have a native species of rose its hips are too small to be of much use so we pick from rosa rugosa plants which are actually an invasive alien species (another reason we don’t feel so bad about picking them).

Despite this we’re not sure of the legality of picking them in certain places so at our first stop today we had to be rather stealthy. This entailed climbing on some pretty scary rocky outcroppings to reach hidden bushes. This area (which shall remain unnamed) was too crowded so we only managed to pick 1.5 lbs and that took at least an hour.

On our way home we stopped at a parking area that allows you access to a path that leads (eventually) to the coast. Although we didn’t know for sure there would be any rosehips there we thought it was a pretty good bet and less likely to be crowded.

When we arrived at the beach we were greeted by a line of rosa rugosa plants heavily laden with ripe fruit. We rejoiced and then began filling a plastic bag with ripe ones.

As you know roses are thorny and these are no exception. So jeans, sneakers and gloves are recommended gear for picking. Of course I didn’t have several of those so I suffered in silence. (And by silence I mean that I yelped every few minutes when I’d get a particularly painful prick.)

Our new found site gave us a much bigger yield: we picked another 3.5 lbs bringing us up for a grand total of 5 lbs for the day. Not a bad haul considering the only cost was our time and a little gas money.

Look how big some of these are!

Check back soon to see what we do with all those rosehips!