badly infested with aphids<\/a> that that wasn’t an option.<\/p>\nThis year the situation was much, much better. A minority of the clusters of flowers (which, as I learned today, is called an umbel<\/i>) had a small number of aphids, but most were clear. I picked a whole bunch of them. Not enough to make the amount of cordial I wanted, so I supplemented with white ones from bushes in nearby parks – in fact the whites were in majority – but enough to make it feel like “mine” and hopefully also enough to give it a nice pink colour.<\/p>\n
Speaking of amounts and “enough”, the recipes for elderflower cordial are annoyingly vague. “25 to 30 large clusters of flowers”. How large is a large one? If I have small ones – which was the case for most of what I picked – then how many should I take instead? Why can’t they just provide the amount in grams, please.<\/p>\n
Now I’m taking notes with proper measurements, and next year life will be easier. 120 clusters of mixed sizes tending towards small rather than large, weighing 500 grams in total. 6 lemons of, on average, 130 grams each. 4 litres of simple syrup (made with equal volumes of water and sugar).<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3771_elder_2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Picked elderflowers to make cordial. I’ve been wanting to use the flowers of my own elder bush\/tree, but last time I looked, it was so badly infested with aphids that that wasn’t an option. This year the situation was much, much better. A minority of the clusters of flowers (which, as I learned today, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,745,768],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dailies","category-food_and_cooking","category-photography-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20733"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20737,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20733\/revisions\/20737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3771_elder_1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n