Rose hips!
That’s what those are — the edible fruit of the wild rose. The books say you should harvest in September, after the first frost, but the rose in our hedge ripened this time last year, too. In fact, it caught me off guard last time and I didn’t make anything more interesting than cups of rose hip tea.
This year, I caught them in time and I’ve candied a bunch. Mmmmmm. I love the flavor of rose hips — something between an orange and a tomato.
During the war, my mother-in-law and other young women were sent out to collect rose hips to make syrup. Shipping had been terribly disrupted, citrus fruit was in short supply, and rose hips are incredibly high in vitamin C. Like, forty times an orange or something.
Next year, I think I’ll make syrup. You can crush whole fruit to make syrup. To make anything else, you have to cut them open and empty the seed pod — a highly painintheassical operation. Besides all the fiddly little seeds, the pods are lined with tiny hairs — he only known use for which is making novelty itching powder. No fooling.
You know, I haven’t eaten so much shit out of the yard since I was raised by wild hippies.
UPDATE: oh, right…almost forgot. Tomorrow. Dead Pool. Six p.m. Weasel Blog Time. Be there, or somebody else is going to get Zsa Zsa. And sherlock? If you want your dick, you need to shout out…
Posted: July 29th, 2010 under britain, food, personal.
Comments: 17
Comments
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: July 29, 2010, 11:12 pm
I’m so old that when I was at school, they used to serve up jugs of rose hip syrup to sweeten the rice pudding we frequently had for dessert.
In fact I seem to recall it was regularly dispensed to children, along with cod liver oil.
What? What have I said…?
Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: July 29, 2010, 11:41 pm
I learn so many interesting things here on Weasel Times. And I’m of the cod liver oil age as well only my mother insisted I NOT get it along with all of my cousin. Unfortunately that was the only thing mother ever did right for me.
Picked up my new “nameless” car today!! Funny thing is the little bugger was sitting in Oxford on a transport truck at the same time I was in Oxford in June. We were meant to be together!
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: July 29, 2010, 11:53 pm
Mmm… that new car smell!
Wonder what the hell they spray them with?
Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: July 30, 2010, 12:12 am
They could unspray it cause it’s icky and makes my tummy upset. I think nowadays it’s all glue and cardboard and cheap leather. In the old days it really meant something and was something! I couldn’t believe the quality of the leather in this car. Granted it cost 10 grand less than my last car but the leather comparisons is night and day! I passed on the leather option, there is a local guy who does beautiful leather cheaper than the Mini. And I can get it all fancified!!
Comment from Nicole
Time: July 30, 2010, 1:57 am
That is nifty! I have heard of rose hips and rose hip tea, but I never had a clue what they were. I had assumed a piece of the flower.
Comment from Lipstick
Time: July 30, 2010, 2:05 am
That’s very interesting, Stoaty. I seem to remember some sort of vitamin supplement with rose hips back in the ’70s.
Do they form when you don’t trim off the dead rose? That’s my vague recollection from reading a gardening manual.
Comment from steve
Time: July 30, 2010, 9:59 am
I passed a Mini on the road, yesterday.
It had a small sticker in the back window.
It said, “Actual Size”.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 30, 2010, 10:39 am
That’s right, Lipstick — if you cut the blooms off, which most people do with ornamental roses, they don’t form hips. This is a wild rose that grows up through the hedge at the front of the house and it forms big, fat hips. I pickecd them at dusk last night, and I’ve just noticed this morning that I left quite a lot.
Well, I may take a few more for tea, but you have to leave some of your hedge produce for the little animules. They’ll be fattening up for Winter soon.
Comment from Deborah
Time: July 30, 2010, 10:50 am
Wild roses growing in your hedge! You are driving me crazy. Rose hip tea and cream cakes in the garden at four, maybe
Comment from Eirik
Time: July 30, 2010, 1:38 pm
Deadpool? Who died off the last one?
Comment from steve
Time: July 30, 2010, 2:35 pm
sherlock had picked Daniel Schorr; the 180 year old news reader from NPR, whose ill fitting dentures made him sound as though he had recently gargled Listerine and was still looking for the opportunity to spit.
Comment from Bill (still the .00358% of your traffic that’s from Iraq) T
Time: July 30, 2010, 3:33 pm
No fair!
I saw the thread topic and have been overwhelmed by flashbacks to my yoot’ful summers with the luvverly Rose DiNucci…
Comment from bad cat robot
Time: July 30, 2010, 5:03 pm
For giant rosehips you really need a rugosa rose. They are sorta the primordial ancestor of the civilized roses. Simple flowers, deeply ridged leaves, and they can withstand harsh environments like salt spray. We used them to prevent erosion. The rosehips were the size of pingpong balls (mostly seeds, but you still got a lot of rosehip)
Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: July 30, 2010, 5:16 pm
BCR, you seem to know alot about roses…. when I got married we had a rose in my bouquet that smelled like bergomot, any idea what rose it might have been. It was either a Bepto Bismol pink rose (which I have NO idea why she put it in there since it was suppose to be WHITE) or the FEW white ones she managed to scrounge up from my arrangements after I threw a shit fit and the videographer rushed her away from me. She’s located in Bonnyrigg if anyone wants to take her out for me, my wedding was perfect except for that bitch. Nooooo, not bitter still after 10 years! No, not at all!
So can I get these things from my own little rose bushes that I have here at Casa Mrs C? Just snip off their little heads when they’re bundled up?
Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: July 30, 2010, 5:16 pm
And they look like cherry tomatoes.
Comment from bad cat robot
Time: July 30, 2010, 5:36 pm
Mrs. Compton, that sounds like a tea rose but I couldn’t tell you which one. They have a wonderful scent that varies between types. You have to go to one of those large nurseries and sniff the roses to know for sure 😉
Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: July 30, 2010, 9:49 pm
Actually yellow roses have pretty tasty rose hips but most of them are not very good at all. Like, they taste like dust. Lots of vitamins in them, though. As a kid I lived on a 50 acre farm with a forest covering half of it. There were apple and cherry trees, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, all sorts of foods. There was liquorice fern growing on the trees, morel mushrooms, rose hips, I walked around all summer eating things from around me. I had fantastic health then too, relatively speaking.
Its amazing how much is actually edible around you. Euell Gibbons took it a bit far, but there’s a lot of stuff you can just reach out and munch on. Just be careful. Lots of poisonous stuff out there, too.
Write a comment
Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.<< carry me back to ol' virginny