Elderberry Juice.

[Durgan]

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?TPVRN 26 August 2012 Elderberry Juice
This year about 30 pounds of elderberries have been picked and processed into juice.About two pounds of berries make one litre of juice.The berries are not as prolific this year due to a long drought. To date 14 litres have been pressure canned. Annotated pictures depict the process.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?TPVRN 26 August 2012 Elderberry Juice
This year about 30 pounds of elderberries have been picked and processed into juice.About two pounds of berries make one litre of juice.The berries are not as prolific this year due to a long drought. To date 14 litres have been pressure canned. Annotated pictures depict the process.

How many elderberry bushes do you have? I planted 2 in My 2009. This is the first year I really got anything. I froze the berries. I can't decide what to do with them. I don't have a lot. Do they spread? It seemed like I had a small bush plus my 2 other ones. Also, I read on yor website - Objective is to avoid commercial processed food - have you noticed a difference in your health? I have been thinking of getting a juicer, but was not sure if juicing was the way to go. I have an American pressure canner and I water bath, made applesacue and things like that. I am planning on getting a dehydrator soon. Would you drink this juice or use it in other recipes?

 

[Durgan]

>How many elderberry bushes do you have? I planted 2 in My 2009. This is the first year I really got anything. I froze the berries. I can't decide what to do with them. I don't >have a lot. Do they spread? It seemed like I had a small bush plus my 2 other ones. Also, I read on yor website - Objective is to avoid commercial processed food - have you >noticed a difference in your health? I have been thinking of getting a juicer, but was not sure if juicing was the way to go. I have an American pressure canner and I water >bath, made applesacue and things like that. I am planning on getting a dehydrator soon. Would you drink this juice or use it in other recipes?


The elderberries are picked off trees in the wild alongside roads. In 2012 the crop was not so good. The year before I picked about 60 pounds. In a garden to have any quantity of elderberry fruit one would need some good bushes probably 5 to 10, and they take up a lot of space. Elderberry bushes do spread and the wood breaks easily and they can be considered ugly and scruffy by some. Elderberry fruit has many small seeds, which tends to make the fruit unattractive, hence my system of juicing. For all intents and purposes they can be considered as a small grape.

Any change in diet rquires about a month to see some effect. Apparent benefits are weight loss without being aware from 210 to 180 BMI 24 (four months to lose) and holding without effort. Seldom tired. Active. Full of energy. I don't have added sugar in its various forms. Meaning I rely on fruit and vegetables for sugar requirements.

Notice my preserving method. The products are not anyway similar to commercial juice products. The whole fruit or vegetable is utilized. I drink the juice, usually having four or five jars open and mix in the drinking glass. I ingest about a litre per day. This gives a quantity of plant food which gives me vitamins and minerals without the additives.

Juicing using my method is simple and effective. The conventional preserving methods are usually limited in scope and the finished product is often not used. The conventional methods are freezing,water canning, dehydrating, and smoking. Useful for a limited number of products.

Dehydrating is limited in scope. Now I use it for dehydrating vegetables to make soup, And to make some fruit leather particularly blueberries.

As mentioned my objective is to remove myself from the commercial food supply, which I consider defective, due to additives, and lack of nutrition for almost all the processed products. They all rely on sugar, salt for flavour. I have the time, interest and wherewithal to experiment. With half the population overweight, it is apparent to some that there may be something amiss in what were are eating.

 

[hoodat]

If you read the labels on prepared food you will see that just about all of them contain corn in some form (as corn meal, high fructose corn syrup or corn starch), soybeans (also in many forms) and canola oil. All of those are almost certainly GMO products and despite what the FDA says GMOs are NOT the same as normal food products. Remember that the FDA told us for years that ingesting DDT would do us no harm.

 

[Durgan]

My attack on the commercial food supply is based on HFCS, Glued Meat, Pink Slime and all sugar and salt laced prepared food. And additives to improve shelf life with effects seldom known. Probably affecting our health over time.

 

[digitS']

Your thoughts on home wine-making, Durgan?

I tried many different fruits & even some veggies 25+ years ago in an attempt to make palatable wine. Ended up back at the supermarket shelf. However, learned to make some good beer but partner bugged out and was unwilling to continue with the work involved . . . also, had a young child in the home and didn't want to adversely influence her.

Elderberry wine was one of my few successes. Might have been my only success if you discount rice and raisin which was so far from what I set out to do that it hardly counts. I've gotta say that making elderberry wine seemed to take none of the skill that I was trying to acquire - the simplest recipe and it just, kind of, happened.

Steve

 

[Durgan]

I made many batches of wine in the past, but don't even desire it now. Plain juice is made from the grapes of my five vines. No grapes in 2012, since a frost in early April killed all the beginning blossoms. March was very warm and the budding started too early in the season, which killed much, apple, cherry, grape, peach, pear. The bush berries survived.

Here is my 2011 effort.
http://www.durgan.org/URL/?AZQUW 16 September 2011 Concord Grapes
http://www.durgan.org/URL/?DKBJT 14 September 2011 Boca Noir Grapes
http://www.durgan.org/URL/?SASIO 31 August 2011 Niagara Grapes

 

[digitS']

I think I was rather foolish in the past. I never once tried to make wine from grapes . (The raisins were obviously grapes, however.)

My whole focus was trying to utilize other ingredients that were around me.

I have a Mormon neighbor who grows lots of grapes just to make juice. That seems to be almost 100% of his use for tomatoes, as well.

Steve

 

[hoodat]

I remember my grandmother canning jar after jar of blackberries one year. Something went wrong and they all turned into blackberry wine. It was months before grandma figured out why grandpa was spending so much time in the cellar.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I agree the elderberry are unsightly and I do not have the room for them either. I agree with all you said about the food and my parents did not have us vaccinated, so I did not have my kids vaccinated either. I was raised on raw milk. Later on though my mother did not really understand that margarine, corn oil, canola oil and those kinds of food were bad. My dad had a heart attack and died and I really believe it was the margarine and oil. I started reading and changed a lot of things, but would go back to eating whatever, feel bad, eat good, and never really change. I got married and my husband has Raynaud's an autoimmune problem. A doctor told him that if he ate 50% raw he could reverse it, but he won't do that. He is on the thin side and works all the time, Both of my kids are thin. I know they need to learn to eat right all the time. I tell them and they have found things out that what I say is true. I would not let them ever have artificial sugar and they were chewing some kind of gum and my husband and both kids had stomach trouble, but could not figure it out. One day my son was reading the ingredients on the gum. It was Juicy Fruit I think with aspartame. They realized when they chewed the gum their stomach hurt.