The Trustees of Reservations recently had a Beach Plum Canning Workshop. Unfortunately due to the lack of Beach Plums growing this season they changed the event to a Beach Rose Canning Workshop which was just as exciting for a foraging/canning novice such as myself. They brought a small group of people to Crane’s Beach in Ipswich, MA where we were lucky enough to get to go into the sand dunes and pick ripe rose hips from the Beach Rose bush. We then drove up to the Crane Estate and cooked up the rose hips in Castle Hill‘s massive kitchen. I have yet to taste the jelly since I’m waiting for it to set but have been told that it should taste more like hibiscus than roses. For those interested we used the rose hip jelly recipe from Simply Recipes. Another version of this recipe can be found from the archives of the The Times newspaper from the UK.

This morning I decided to finally try my hand at making a green juice with my juicer. Here’s the recipe I put together which makes approx 24 oz. (2 servings):

Pretty Green Juice Machine

1 thumb size of ginger
1/2 cucumber
3 handfuls of fresh spinach
2 apples
2 sticks of celery

Place everything in your juicer and drink immediately. I was surprised that it had a nice (not overpowering) sweetness to it from the apples but also had a refreshing vegetable aftertaste with a nice kick of heat from the ginger.