SC - figs

[Stephen Bloch]

In a message dated 97-10-02 11:25:08 EDT, you write:

<< 
 Hallo folks!
 
 I tried this on rec.food.historic, but no one had any ideas except tea and
 modern jelly for me.
 
 I have a large number of wild rose hips growing, and I'd like to harvest
 them and do something.I've been bitten by that "preserve for the winter"
 bug. Someone once lent me a source that had "A Tarte of Hyppes" in it, but I
 can't track it down now. Do any of you have any other ideas? This sounds
 like a Ras or Esko question, but other answers are good, too.>>>>

      Hummmm, the one time I tried this with the wild roses growing on the
edge my parents land, I didn't have much luck. They had tiny hips, that were
mostly seed. They never softened a great deal despite long boiling and
certainly never gave up enough flesh to do anything with. The best that those
would be useful for would be tea, or making jelly from the juice. That said,
yours may be a different strain and work well, although I seem to remember
that there was one rose variety in England, at least, that was prized for
it's big hips (Dog Rose, perhaps?), and was probably the most-used for those
recipes.
      Another idea, though, might be to dry the hips and powder them in a
spice grinder, then sneak the powder into various things. It would probably
work well as a fruity, sour note in a number of dishes or even baked goods.
But Vitamin C is easily destroyed by heat or exposure to air, so powder it as
needed, and cook it as little as possible to preserve as much of the
nutrients as you can. How about rose hip lemonaide? Mix the powder with the
lemon juice, sugar and water and let it steep a few hours before serving. If
you can dry the hips quickly but gently enough to preserve that red color you
should have a pretty pink lemonaide. 
 
 >>>It's my sneaky way of getting vitamin c to my cold-ravaged kids. It was
28
 degrees in my front yard this morning, here in the
 Northern-Poconos-meet-the-Catskills area. We've already had more than our
 share of school-transmitted colds and flu (not to mention the kid who gave
 us chicken pox). If I tell my little girls I'm making something out of
 roses, they'll go wild! Corinne might actually eat it (a miracle in itself).
 She loves foraged food, for some reason.>>>>
 
      (Grin) In that case you might even be able to get her to drink the
lemonaide if the color *isn't*  as nice as you might wish! On the less period
front, you might try giving them echinacea tea or extract to boost their
immune systems. It's not generally recomended for continual use, but in small
amounts you can take it for several weeks at a time, take a few weeks off,
then take it again. It's been studied a good bit, and has been shown to be
effective. Of course, there are plenty of Vitamin C tablets out there that
taste awfully good........... ;-)

>>> And, by the way, can I plant the seeds in the spring? These are genuine
wild
 climbing roses, not domestic roses gone to seed. 
 
 Thanks in advance.
 
 Aoife.
  >>
        Sure! But if you want fragrance and hips, I'd go for some of the
period varieties instead, at least if your wild roses are similar to mine and
are scentless with small hips. There are a number of companies that sell old
roses. My favorite is Heirloom Garden Roses, in Oregon, I think. I loaned my
catalog out to my aunt, unfortunately, so I can't give you the address, but
you should be able to find an ad for them in gardening magazines. They give
the dates of origin or first mention by each variety, and have an amazing
number that are period. I've got a couple, an Apothecary Rose and another I'm
blanking on at the moment, that are wonderful!  
      I also happened to run across a website yesterday on old roses that you
might enjoy. It's at:

       http://www.halcyon.com/cirsium/rosegal/welcome.htm

   Ldy Diana, whose hot buttons include old roses and their uses......... ;-)
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