Elderberries

Back in May I ordered dried elderberries to make elderberry syrup to put on my yogurt. I can’t remember why – it must have been recommended to me by a friend, or maybe I saw something on the internet about its health benefits.

Elderberries are a fairly classic medicinal used for immune health, pain relief, as a laxative, anti-inflammatory, etc. Maybe you have some elderberry syrup on your shelf with your cold medicines, or maybe if you’re young, your mom or your grandmother has it in their medicine cabinet 😉

Something probably made me think elderberries had some anti-cancer properties. I don’t remember. All I know is it sounded like a good idea at the time!

Elderberries can’t be eaten as-is. They need to be made into a tea, jelly or syrup. Instead of simply buying elderberry syrup, I thought it would be fun to make my own.

I followed an elderberry syrup recipe online, adding cinnamon, cloves and ginger to the elderberries and cooking it all in my instapot and then straining it when it was cooked. I thought I took pictures of the process but I can’t find them. Maybe that was back around the time my old iPhone took a walk in the swimming pool, taking everything I hadn’t downloaded into the watery depths. Or maybe I just forgot to take pictures!

My first batch of “elderberry syrup” turned out completely liquid, like dark purple water – I had wanted something a little bit thicker. I tried thickening it with corn starch, which worked perfectly while it was still hot, but it cooled into the consistency of jello, which then separated into jello and liquid as it sat in the refrigerator. I stirred it up and I ended up with bits of jello in liquid. It looks almost like there’s berries in there, but there’s not. It’s just jello bits.

Around that same time I had a week of unexplained migraines and I wondered if it was the cloves. I’ve suspected certain spices before. For example, I love this Good Earth tea but I think it sometimes gives me migraines. It could be one of the spices, or it could be the orange (another suspected food item), or it could be that this tea doesn’t cause migraines at all.

It’s hard to figure out what causes migraines – it’s never clear and consistent. Various items may increase the likelihood of getting a migraine, but the final result depends on so many other variables. And the lag times vary, making it even harder to pin anything down.

Anyway, I decided to leave out the spices on my second batch of elderberry syrup. And this time I thickened it with flour and butter (like you would a classic white sauce), hoping to not end up with lumpy jello. It came out smoother, but still firmer than I had in mind. I wanted something that would flow thick and smooth.

I was considering making a third batch, and wondering how to get a syrupy consistency, when I suddenly wondered if elderberry was a nightshade. I don’t know what made me think of it, but I was just all of a sudden, wait – is this a nightshade? I know that some nightshades can trigger my migraines.

Potatoes and tomatoes do for sure. I’m not sure about eggplant or bell peppers. Hot peppers do not seem to trigger migraines, although maybe I’m just not willing to believe they do!

I googled whether elderberries are a nightshade, and the internet didn’t seem to be in agreement with itself on that questions. It sounds like probably not. Plus, even if I’m sensitive to some nightshades, that doesn’t mean I’m sensitive to all of them. I don’t know the particular chemical – it could be a chemical in a variety of foods, including some nightshades. Who knows.

I don’t know how accurate this website is, but it’s a handy reference to what foods are related to other foods, which can be a clue to help guess allergies. This site has elderberries listed as not related to anything else.

https://maacallergy.com/food-families/

Regardless of food families, what I do know is that I had a rough week and a half while experimenting with elderberry syrup, even after I had moved on to the second batch with no spices. Since I no longer remember why I even thought elderberries were a thing to try, and I now suspect they cause migraines, I’m going to abandon the project. Anyone want an entire (expensive) bag of dried elderberries? Lol.

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