Elderberry Syrup on French Toast

When I started this blog in January I promised to write about making elderberry syrup. But a recipe would be pointless now and better suited to late summer. If I can find elderberry bushes then that the Highway department has not bush-hogged to stumps. Last summer I had my eye on a large, resplendent elderberry bush at the corner of Old Harding Pike and Bellevue Road. It was across the street from a gas station and only feet away from the railroad tracks. Slash we must, declared the Highway department and there were no berries. I found another bush a couple hundred feet down the line and picked enough berries to make half a pint of syrup. Why the bush-hoggers spared it I do not know.

Elderberry syrup is the color of cassis, or Kir- a liqueur made from black currants, and that is what its taste reminds me of. I have heard of elderberry wine, though I do not know how anyone would ferment it. I tried several times to make elderberry jelly, but no matter how much pectin I added the syrup would never be still. It will give up and turn to purple sugar crystals instead.

Making this syrup is like walking back in time- perhaps to the kitchen of the Smith family in Vincent Minnelli's "Meet Me in St. Louis". It harks back to berry-picking days- blackberries, wild strawberries. To the black cap raspberries I found as a child in New Hampshire; they always grew around the charred timbers and cellar holes of forgotten farms that had burned to the ground. Here in Tennessee, where wild strawberries grow where I cannot find them , we pick blackberries from the field edges, and come home covered with ticks and chiggers.If we are lucky we may find Paw-Paws fallen beside the Warner Park auto roads. But in 30 years I have found only three. Wild persimmons are more reliable. Foxes, deer, coyotes, and possums love them. Beagles will eat them too. It is a myth that persimmons are not edible till after frost. Their orange pulp makes a fine pudding. So much for my little treatise on foraging. I am taking arms against the recession and spending some gas driving over to Whole Foods to find a sole fillet. Good evening.