Elderflower Season: Making Cordial, Baking a Crumble and Overcoming Perfectionism
This week I have been picking Elderflowers, making cordial, baking an apple and rhubard crumble with the delicious flower juice and trying to overcome perfectionism.
Hannah Eve
6/30/20265 min read
Beautiful, fragrant Elderflowers in my garden
It's time again to pick the Elderflowers
After straining the liquid through a cloth the next day, the flowers are ready to be heated gently with 4 lemons and in my case a 500g jar of lipa honey. Most people use sugar which acts as a preservative also, but we try not to have much sugar in our house, prefering to use honey, stevia and xylitol alternatives. This means the juice may not last as long, so can be kept in the fridge or steam seal the lids once you've made it all. I sanitised the bottles in the oven for 15 minutes
Every year, I am very eager to get into the garden come spring time and pick the aromatic elderflowers as they cascade down the garden borders. Though every year, I have to catch myself to not get distracted for as soon as they bloom, they very quickly become brown and start to turn into berries and I kick myself for not picking some to make cordial, which is basically flower juice for want of a better name. I struggled all my life with not seeing things through and was not really able to ever finish things. I didn’t know that I was ADHD all my life so that obviously makes it pretty hard to finish things but now as I journey with God in this, I pray for his help and He gives me the power I need to finish things, though I am still not great at it, I am getting there. One of the biggest issues for people when they struggle to complete tasks and do what they set out to do, is the problem of perfectionism.
And right now, with God’s help I am coming into a very liberating time in my life, that I am finally overcoming that crippling problem of perfectionism. I could never finish anything I put my hand to because it was never good enough and having that perfect standard just isn't productive in any way, in fact it is the most counter productive thing that we could have. Learning to do things as well as I can and not fretting over each minute detail has been very freeing and I have finally been able to start finishing projects. Making elderflower cordial might seem a little trivial in the sense, but it was part of a much greater work that God has been doing in me. It was always my hope each year, when the pretty blooms started to cover the Elder trees in the garde n that I would make some lovely cordial to put it into cakes and crumbles, but most years I'd just leave it too long and they would turn into berries and then there after I would leave it too long to make Elderberry jam, but not this year. I have set my mind to it and with God's mighty grace helping me, for I would be hopeless without it, I have, made my first batch of Elderflower cordial. This year too, I have used the cordial to flavour an apple and rhubarb crumble which was 'cottage-core taste heaven' on a gingham fabric place mat.
Now a little useful information about elderflowers and how to make the cordial:
Elderflowers are said to be good for your immune system and can help with symptoms of cold and flu. I mostly just enjoy them for their amazing floral taste and delicate aroma in tea. In this video, I am making cordial with Lipa Honey, lemon and elderflowers.
The 30-40 flower heads are steeped in filtered water overnight, then strained through a cheesecloth or tea towel to get any little critters still hanging around. It's good to leave the flowers on the side for a few hours beforehand to let any insects and ants crawl out themsleves. You don't want to hit the flower heads too much as it is the pollen that gives it the delicious floral taste so it's best to keep them as undisturbed as possible.
at around 150 degrees celsius (without fan). The lids were steeped in boiling water for ten minutes also.
Once you bring the water to a boil, add the honey, lemon juice and let it simmer for a little while so the honey can mix properly. Bottle the cordial into your sterilised vessels and drink to your heart's content. Or, if you are feeling fancy, make an apple, rhubard crumble like I did. It was very delicious and lovely. Check out the full video here:
When I finished my elderflower cordial, bottling them up nice and neatly, I went about to make a decent photograph for my adjoining youtube video, and after a hour or maybe two, I finished editing an overly polished, photoshopped extravaganza of a thumbnail image and changing my mind I decided to use my original, rather unpolished quickly-mashed-together picture. So the almost two hours of photo work was pointless. And here is where I took a deep dive into that thinking on perfectionism. You see, I had been slowly crawling out of it for many months, in realisation that it was something holding me back more than anything. Spending hours overthinking every minor detail, I would often just end up not do anything because the perfect standard I was vicariously holding, in my mind only, was just too high. With God's help, I started to let this view go and see that all I needed to do was to do something as best as I could with what I knew at the time and that my work is in a process and if I never make the smaller less successful steps then I'll never make it to the bigger successful ones, the ones when I finally get it right. Perfectionism is a problem of lacking self worth as well as having unrealistic aspirations. You must get the 'thing' whatever that 'thing' is just right because the 'you' underneath doesn't feel right and maybe if you can make the things on top perfect then you could finally feel better about yourself. When I started to see my worth now through my relationship with God coming through Jesus and what He did and not what I do, then my self worth is not even to be a calculable measure. That is the beauty of perfection that we as perfectionists would thrive from knowing deeply, that it is only Jesus Christ who was and is perfect, in all His doing and all His saying, and all His way, He is perfection. We can try our best and do things with an excellent spirit but at the end of the day, we must let go of the striving for perfection, it is a prison and creative productivity needs freedom. We could all get twice as much done in half the time if we just let it go and made things that were good and stop fussing over everything obsessively. I am learning this now, this is where I am walking along the narrow path with my beautiful, perfect Lord. So, stop over thinking it and get something done, it's probably more than good enough!