Last night, I made elderberry syrup from this recipe at 5 Orange Potatoes. I keep hearing about the wonderful benefits of elderberry, so this year we are prepared.
It was really neat to see how the elderberry liquid settled on top of the honey. It would have stayed separated if I had not shaken it. And here is the finished bottle.
While I am on the topic of immunity, here are some other things that I swear by in the Autumn. They help prevent allergies, colds and flu. So far so good for this season. On the far left is an ayurvedic herbal jam called chyavanprash. It is very tasty and sometimes can curb my cravings for chocolate (and if you know me well, that is saying something!). The essential oils are the ones found in the Young Living brand of Thieves oil. A friend had recommended that oil last year when our household was down with a cold. I looked it up on-line and realized that I already had 3 of the 5 oils, so I decided to just make my own blend. I burn it in an oil diffuser every day. It smells great!
Back to the elderberry. When I was done with the syrup, I decided to try dyeing some playsilks (Esme's teacher, Susanne, was given a huge bag of leftovers from a fabric company and she shared a rather large bag with us) with more of the liquid. I just boiled the berries with more water for another hour and let the playsilks sit in the juice overnight. The color turned out quite nice. A light mauve color (they look a bit more pink in the photos).
I know of several more natural dyes- walnut, beet, turmeric. Does anyone have any other ideas for natural dyes?
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