The message
from Sacha contains these words:

I'm hiding: next door has his cassette player out and has set Tranny
Whine-ette, Jim Reeves and all their fiends on me. So, despite it being
a good day to be in the garden, I'm in here, drinking tea, cooking a
meal and reading newsgroups...

In the very faint hope that we actually get some sun before the Longest Day
is upon us and it's all downhill towards Christmas, I'm passing on a
delicious recipe a friend gave me last year:

90 heads of Elder flower, picked at mid-day

6 sliced lemons

9lbs. Preserving sugar (Caster will do but Preserving is better)

Modern preserving sugar may contain pectin, and a lot of it certainly
contains citric acid, so beware!

7.5 oz. Citric or Tartaric acid

I dislike citric acid with other flavours - fine with lemons, limes,
oranges &c, but I find it too overpowering, especially with
elderflowers.

Just not to my taste, mind.

Put all the ingredients into a large bowl or clean plastic bucket. Add 7.5
pints boiling water.

Stir night and day for 5 days.

If you have a husband, you can set him to stir day and night for five
days, likewise, if you have a wife. However, in the latter case, you
might not get 100% compliance...

Or get the kids on it of course. Stirring for that length of time is
best done in shifts (or at the very least, petticoats) or you will be
*VERY* tired at the end of the job.

Strain, squeezing the lemons. Put into
plastic bottles and deep freeze. Take out only when wanted, and refrigerate
as it won¹t keep out of the freezer for more than 5 to 7 days.

More seriously, though, I freeze these cordials in ice-cream tubs now,
and you can scoop out as much as you need: the sugar stops it going
rock-solid.

Saves on ice-cubes, too.

Dilute with water to taste.

This makes a very refreshing drink in hot weater.

Undiluted, it¹s also good on gooseberries or over fruit salad.

I'll post my (well, actually it was Lord Louis Mountbatten's) lemon
cordial recipe, and its lime derivative, and my orange squash one which
makes a cordial very like the MoF [M] stuff we wrinklies would remember
from wartime and just after.

I've even got one of the bottles, but corks are getting difficult to find.

[M] Ministry of Food for you youngsters.

--
Rusty
Open the creaking gate to make a horrid.squeak, then lower the foobar.
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/