Raspberry Shrub

In the 1830 edition of The Frugal Housewife (Boston), there is a recipe for a drink concentrate called Raspberry Shrub.  It is mentioned as a good way to use the abundance of raspberries, although in other cookery books, recipes for shrub are often found using citrus fruits. 
 


As raspberry season is just starting, I thought it was a good time to try this recipe.   I used frozen berries though because of ease and they were on sale.   I used plain white vinegar but I think cider vinegar would have been nice as well.  It is sweeter and fruitier than regular white vinegar.   I've seen modern recipes using white wine and champagne vinegars as well.

I put the raspberries in a pot.  I poured vinegar over them until they were just covered and hadn't really started to float yet.   I heated them slightly, until barely lukewarm, so that the berries would start to thaw and meld with the vinegar.   After a few hours, I strained the now mushy berries through a jelly bag.   I squished it thoroughly, knowing that it might make the juice a bit cloudy.   I didn't want to waste any of the raspberry flavour and I was impatient to finish up this project.  When I had gotten as much juice out of the pulp as possible, I measured out the raspberry /vinegar mixture and added the same amount of sugar.   There was about 5 cups of vinegar so, I added 5 cups of sugar.    I heated it until the sugar was completely dissolved.   I poured it into sterilized mason jars and set it into the fridge to keep.

Raspberry Shrub - so pretty and tasty

When it was fresh, the vinegar was still a bit acrid.  The next day though, the vinegar was taking a backseat to the sweet raspberry flavour.  A week and a half later, the vinegar is hardly noticeable, but the raspberry flavour is outstanding.   Only 2 tablespoons are needed to flavour 500 mls of water.  It has a noticeable raspberry flavour, but not overtly strong or cloyingly sweet.   The vinegar is only tasted when you use way too much of the syrup.

I had some extra cherries so I tried a modern shrub recipe.   It uses equal parts of fruit, sugar and vinegar.   I pitted and chopped 2 cups of cherries and stirred in 2 cups of sugar.   I set them in a covered container in the fridge for 2 days before I strained out the cherry pulp.  I heated the cherry sugar mixture to dissolve the sugar and added 2 cups of vinegar.   It is a tasty combination as well.

Spinning and Dyeing, For Fun!!!

During the last part of the final day of the Master Spinner 6 class, I started spinning up some Polwarth leftover from class assignments, just for fun!   When I got home, I finished spinning up the bit of sliver that I had left.  When I wet finished it and hung it over the loom to dry, I realized that there were all sorts of skeins of white yarn just hanging there.   I dug out the acid dyes and coloured it up.   The blue is Navy, at two different depths of shades.  The pink is Fuchsia and ultramarine blue in an 80%/20% concentration and the grey is a .5 depth of shade in black.  It was the first time I'd tried the black and was quite pleased with the way the grey turned out.  It is a Merino, Cashmere, Silk blend and it looks like the silk took the dye a little differently than the other two fibres.   At anyrate, I kept the temperatures down to accomodate the silk, but cooked it a little bit longer to help the wool along.  The dye pot exhausted, so all was good.

Then I started spinning up a bit more of the Merino/Cashmere/Silk.  It's a mill end that I purchased at the Woodstock Fleece Festival.  The Black Lamb often has huge bags of mill ends for really affordable prices.  A friend of mine has some of this and was trying to figure out a way to spin it to make a shawl with.   I found it a little tricky to get consistent, so I played around different drafting methods both in the above grey skein and in this bobbin.   Re-carding didn't really work as well as I'd hoped.   In the end, I just took the mill ends, folded them over my finger to spin from the fold, using a point of contact long draw.   So far this seems to be both the most consistent for me as well as the fastest.   Since I was spinning more for fun that anything, I actually watched a movie while I was spinning - I will have to admit that Benedict Cumberbatch and Star Trek in one movie, works for me.