Sumac Lemonade

We've been making a little project here of eating fresh and local. What could be more fresh and local than finding wild food and making it delicious?
Wild sumac lemonade has been on the list for a while. Our bees definitely enjoyed the sumac flowers this spring. Now that they've gone to seed, it's our turn.

See the seed heads up there? Pinkish brown spikes.

Jason bringing some over. The limbs are very soft, so it's easy to bend them down and pick them.

Here's an up close look. We just filled a big bowl, poured cold water over the top, closed the lid, and let it steep for 2 hours.

Then strain the water off and sweeten to taste. We used sugar syrup. This was really tasty and refreshing! Yumm.

Fresh, summery, quencher.

Raspberries

It's raspberry season. We finally made it to the pick your own farm for the final days of summer berries and the beginning days of fall berries. Pick your own farms are HUGE in Connecticut.
We brought home 6 pounds of berries. Enough for jam and some to eat.
The berry juice stained my wedding ring. I think I could get behind a pink diamond.

Berries reserved for eating.

Boiling jam

This jam is so good that I could turn into Joey Tribiani and take a jar to the movies with a spoon!