Jun 12, 2007

Too much time

What do you do when you have too much time to spend after work when the boys have gone to bed and the house is spotless, the laundry done, freshly baked bread in the kitchen, up-dated your blog, finished all the UFO's and pigs are flying outside? You make syrup out of spruce shoots :-)

It's really easy to make. Well, this is the first time for me and so far it looks easy. You just need to find a spruce in the spring with lovely spring green shoots, pick a liter of them (ask for permission of the land owner if you don't own the tree; luckily we have two in our yard), give them a rinse, layer them with sugar in a glass jar, give it a gentle shake (I shook it quite much, just for the fun of it), and put it on the window sill for a month (north or east facing). Not remembering the recipe I put my jar on a south facing sill, but I guess the end result is just the same. Some recipes talk about boiling, but IMHO it would boil away all the goodies (vitamins etc.). So I won't boil it after sieving it. Lovely before-after pictures IMHO!
Sugar and spruce shoot in the jar May 31.

Honestly, this should be very healthy!!! The jar the next day, June 1.

Looking better on June 12.

2 comments:

Melanie said...

"Too much time"... Those are 3 words that I've never put together before. I don't think I know what too much time is! My "to do" list is always getting longer no matter how much I get accomplished during the day. The syrup looks lovely though! I wish I could come over for breakfast!

Laura said...

Well, did you see the pigs flying?!?! My "to do" list is so long that I do my best to ignore it and concentrate on fun stuff, like this syrup. It is intended to be cough medicine, not necessarily for everyday use. But you're welcome to come over for breakfast :-)