Travels With My Cat

A few of my pets suffer from hay hay fever *achoooo*, and as we couldn’t source any local honey (said to be good), we thought we’d try to immune ourselves to elderflower pollen by drinking elderflower cordial.  We normally buy shop bought cordial, but this year, inspired by buddies like @waikikibunny, we thought we’d have a go at making our own.  We’ve used the recipe from the Woodland Trust. This is what you need:

Ingredients

• about 3 pawfuls of elderflowers -if you put them in a measuring jug, just by themselves, they should get up to about 1 litre.
• lemony lemon zest
• 350 g granulated sugar
• water
• 1/2 lemon

Here’s what you do:

1. Forage some local elderflowers – get pawmission from the owner if you need to – and don’t take any flowers from near the bottom of the bush.
2. When you are at home, give the flowers a good shake so that any insects can quietly make their way to the exits (located here, here, and here) and not get boiled.
3. Pop the flowers in a pan, cover with water, add the lemony lemon zest, and simmer for 30 mins with a lid.
4. Strain the mixture (the recipe recommended doing so through a muslin cloth, but we didn’t have one and used a fine sieve, but I’m not sure it worked so well, so try and get a cloth).
5. Pop back in the pan, add the sugar and lemon juice and simmer till the sugar is dissolved and you’ve licked any sugar that mysteriously got onto your whiskers and paws off your whiskers and paws.
6. Cool the mixture.
7. Pour through a funnel (and in my case miss a lot) and into a sterilised bottle (we also used a finer sieve again here for good measure) and seal.
8. Then, cool in the fridge and add to water or fizz and enjoy.

Paws up – I have to say, ours didn’t taste so wonderful – it had a funny aftertaste.  I’m not sure why, so if any of you know, then please send in your tips. It wasn’t as bad as the elderflower sparking wine we tried.  It fizzed up magnificently, but tasted of horrible vinegar (kitchen disaster).  But we will keep trying, and in the meantime, go back to shop bought stuff instead!  Cheers.