HISTORICAL
Lloyd’s wife Katrina harvesting red elderberries on Lake Whatcom
Processing the red elderberries from separating
them from their stems to boiling them down
64
WEST COAST WILD HARVEST
couple days with the hope that the frozen stems would
come off more easily (which is the case with Blue Elderberry). Unfortunately, the frozen red elderberry stems
turned out to be brittle, so we allowed the berries to
thaw before removing the stems. Once all the stems
were removed we boiled the fruit in a pot with a little
water in the bottom until the fruit began to juice, and
then reduced the juice on low heat for several hours
until the pan began to dry out. Then we ran the berries
through a fruit mill to separate the seeds from the pulp.
The abundance of seeds caused the fruit strainer
to bind, so I loosened the screen to allow more space
between the auger and the screen. Approximately a
quarter of the seeds were crushed into meal and pushed
through the screen but we did our best to separate the
seed meal from the pulp. I wasn’t keen on eating the
seed pulp as some studies suggest that the toxic comp