For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved honeysuckle. I have also always wanted to understand medicinal uses for herbs and have an apothecary cabinet in my house.
To me, buying dried herbs just to put them in bottles to have a neat-looking cabinet is vain. I want to be able to make/grow whatever ends up in that cabinet. However, my husband and I rent an apartment, and the land isn’t sunny at all. It’s like, deep shade to dappled shade. If I can manage to grow anything here, it’s going to be a food crop.
One thing is growing, however: honeysuckle. Honeysuckle isn’t the prettiest flower, but it’s attractive enough, and it smells divine. I absolutely love honeysuckle. I don’t want to live anywhere without a honeysuckle plant, and whenever I do get a sunnier piece of land, I plan to have huge honeysuckle plants all around my house.
Honeysuckle is mostly ornamental, but it can help to soothe a sore throat or a cough, so when my honeysuckle went into bloom, I decided to make some honeysuckle syrup.
If I’d thought about it, I would’ve done this a few days ago when there were more flowers, but such is life. As it was, I only got enough flowers to make 1 batch of this syrup.
It’s a really simple recipe. Bring to a boil and them simmer 1 c. of flowers in 2 c. of water until the water has reduced by half (I don’t think I reduced mine enough). Then strain out the flowers and add 1 c. of sugar. Then bottle it in a container of your choice.
I ended up putting the syrup into some old canning jars. (They’ve been used. I didn’t actually can it.)
Once it cools down, I’ll pop these babies in the fridge. I read that, because there’s so much sugar in the syrup, it’ll keep for about 6 months, but if it’s about to go bad and we haven’t used it yet, then we can always pour it on pancakes or something. It does taste really good- just super sweet, so I’ll likely water it down if I use it for food.
I can finally add something to my apothecary cabinet, even it it’s only cough syrup.
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