2021-06-17

A valuable life lesson from pickled eggs and elderflower syrup

It took me a long time to get to it and make pickled eggs and then, a few weeks later, some elderflower syrup. That’s when I learned that I didn’t need time to make them, I needed time to find out making them takes no time at all. Does that make sense?

I made my first batch of pickled eggs when I got on garden leave and started my personal/professional “reboot”. It was one of the first things on my list of fun little projects I “always wanted to try but didn’t have the time to do them”. What struck me while making them is that, although they take some time, they do not require a lot of work. In essence, you just boil eggs and walk away; boil water, and walk away.

The idea that they would take a long time to make, is what kept me from even looking into how to do it. Once I had the time, I found out that I didn’t need much time to make them at all.

So, feeling empowered by my success with the eggs, I looked into doing elderflower syrup, since we have a huge bush of the stuff in our yard. That was another one that I didn’t look into and, once I did, I realized that it wasn’t hard to make it at all. It just takes a few minutes to boil and stir while the syrup develops, but then you mix and just let it steep for three days.

Work, not time-intensive
Both of these recipes were traditionally used to preserve their respective main ingredients for longer than they would normally have been kept before the dawn of refrigeration. Because they are such “old” methods, I just automatically assumed it took forever to make them. I was wrong.

Fun fact: Elderflower syrup is loaded with Vitamin B2, Vitamin C, antioxidants and other micronutrients.

So what was my problem?
I never even thought to look up how to make them because I didn’t see the point, since I wouldn’t have time to make either recipe anyway. But now, I know that they aren’t hard to make at all and can make them whenever I want for the foreseeable future.

Full transparency: I also thought I would have to boil the jars and bottles etc. and make sure that everything is completely disinfected. None of the recipes I found featured that and my father, who is a qualified chef, confirmed that the brine (eggs) and sugar solution (syrup) act as antiseptic and preserving agents.