11.22.2010

Rose Hip Tea -Cutiepie Spacepop

We are lucky enough to have rose hips growing right outside of our house...wrapped around the mailbox...and ready for picking.  Why do a post about basically boiled water on a food blog?  Well, several reasons really...and the main one is that they were there...just sitting there...not doing anything much...until The Butcher called them out and as is his fashion...plucked them to their deaths...


Here is a little background on rose hips....first and most importantly, they are LOADED with Vitamin C...packed...super packed!  That is a good thing as the weather gets colder and we all start to sniffle and some of us even lose our voice...like me...The rose hip is formed after the rose has lost its petals and the seed pod grows.  When things got tough in the second world war...the Brits were said to have supplemented rose hips for their lack of citrus.  The plant we harvested from is a wild variety of some sort...not the prettiest flowers but its made up for that with the rose hips.  Since it is largely neglected it has some of the best rose hips around...no pesticides, no tinkering with in any way.

You can use the rose hips right away or you could dry them...its up to you really...just be sure to remove the seeds as there is some lore about their irritant properties.  It is so simple to make a cup of rose hips...crush the fresh ones and boil them...let them steep for as long as you can.  You can sweeten the drink, or not...its up to you.  I like strong, strong, strong tea...and while this is technically an infusion, we will stick to tea as it takes less time to type...  I have yet to make a cup from dried rose hips...but I have so much that I am sure the end of the stash will be dry enough in no time.  I've read its a good idea to de-seed when the pod is half dried...it is much easier to extract that way.  I will have to update you later with what I find.

I have had some excellent feed back from a lot of you!  My friends abroad, namely A Brilliant Life, have really made some great comments about the tone of ease when it comes to making the dishes.  She does not have available to her the items we have available to us here in the states...so she has expressed inspiration when reading about the "whatever you have on hand" method.  With this in mind I decided to throw in this incredibly simple, yet, for me, inspiring post.  To look around you...a little differently...you will begin to see that you don't necessarily have to be a farmer to reap bounty from the land...in this case...from the mailbox.

1 comment:

  1. lovely! one of my favorite things. i love rose hip jam also.

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