Ok, so before I started to get off track on Rafed's thread on propagation I figured I'd start a new thread. The Rugosa Rose is my favorite rose. Its very useful. The hips are very large on most rugosas and are really yummy if deseeded and infused in honey, or even made into a rose hip pie....


    

that's a huge rose hip.. i wonder what it would taste like if used in brewing beer.. hint of rose.. i might make sipping beer.. lol

Pete: a Valentine's day beer?

And all these years I've been tossing mine away.
But mine don't get as that large.

Maybe half or two thirds

oh.. i have lambic for my wife. she doesn't care too much for other type of beer, but she drinks lambic. framboise is her favorite, but she will drink others. only thing is i don't brew lambic. too much mess. cheaper to buy them.

Here's a rose for you Little John,

What's the recipe for rose hip pie?

wow those are large. what are the steps to making rose hips and honey.  thx

I have been wanting to grow  Rugosa Rose for a while. Seeing this post makes me want to try growing it soon.

OK, the rose hip honey is the first pic. Take the fresh hips and trim off the ends, cut them in half, scrape out the seeds and put in the jar. After 6 weeks strain off the honey and use the candied hips. I like to just eat the candied hips but we do put them in the pie too. The pie is a basic pumpkin pie recipe but the hips are pureed to make them a smooth consistency. We held back a few chunky ones for the added effect. I think it turned out well. My partner, Linda, is the cook and I'm the forager. She's working on a book with recipes. We keep collecting her wild food recipes when we have our wild edible meals. You can see what I'm talking about here.... http://www.moonwiseherbs.com/eat-wild-community-meals/

I forgot to mention the infused honey. That can be used like any other honey. Last fall we canned some pears in honey syrup. We decided to use the rose petal honey we made (same concept as the hips just petals with honey & strain). The pears turned out to have a nice rosey flavor. I bet it would be a nice twist on canned figs as well. We took the candied petals and I blended them up and made strawberry rose jam, WOW. We also made rosey apple sauce with the candied petals.


Rafed, as for the size of the rugosa hips, I collected those in the pic in Seattle. Thats a much milder climate than WI. I'm hoping the "Frau Dagmar" will have hips of similar size and will do well for me here.

Well, I hope I've helped to expand some horizons here. Who would have thought about eating roses! FYI Rugosas or other bush roses are the best for eating. Tea roses and vining roses have small hips and/or bitter petals. Small hips can be used for tea, just don't open up and clean out seeds. Here's a fun fact.... 1 cup of cleaned rose hips contains as much vitimin C as 10-12 dozen oranges.

I go for wild mushrooms and nettles.  I didn't know rugosa roses are better than others.  I always used HTs and wasn't pleased.  Now I'll have to put in a few Rugosas

Hey Bob,

We'll be in Kansas City at the Mother Earth News Fair on Oct. 13th. Come on by to our booth and gab with us!

That pie looks great. Hey Wildforager, are you on the yuku forum PaleoPlanet? If not, I think you would like it. There is a good section on wild foods and primitive food prep. I go over their mostly for the flintknapping, aboriginal crafts and recipes. Here's a basalt knife with rawhide sheath I made a while back:



And another piece - a parfleche made of braintan leather and rawhide from a deer:

Pete - I think rose hips would make a great lambic, well worth the effort. I may try them in my mead.

Hey John,

I have not been to that site, I'll have to check it out. I have posted on slinging.org and sling a few rocks once and a while. Nice work on the knife and sheath!

Thank you. You are in  for a treat over there. They have a section on primitive weaponry - slings, blowguns, clubs, knives, spears, axes, you name it.

Very nice pics & info on the rose hips LJ.

- JP. I like the sounds of that site. I'll have to go check it out. I made an Atlatl once. Fun stuff!

Oh yeah. I've got an atlatl, bows and arrows, loads of stone and antlers for making arrowheads, sinew and animal parts all over my house. I'm just a caveman at heart. Now if they could just resurrect that Woolly Mammoth ...

- JP. I found making arrow shafts from river cane to be pretty enjoyable. Fairly simple too once you've got it figured out. I cheated and used my bench grinder to sand down the nodes. But the rest is pretty much heating and straightening by hand.

Haven't made a bow or tried my hand at flint knapping but I find it all to be very cool stuff.

Couple of questions for you. I've never been much of a deer hunter so I don't know the animal very well. How/where do you find shed antlers? What's the best time of year to find them? Also, have you found any stands of tonkin bamboo growing in your neck of the woods (i.e. good spear shafts)?   

I actually get almost all of my antler and stuff via trades on PaleoPlanet. I make things and swap them for raw materials. I believe February/March is when the antlers are found though. We have a lot of rivercane, but I have not seen the Tonkin. I was thinking of maybe growing it though.

Little John,
Where did you find those nice looking rose hips in Seattle?  I see it everywhere, but not as good as the ones you shown in the pictures.  

University of WA grounds. I'm not sure exactly which campus my girlfriend is the one from Seattle.

JP, If you ever want to trade for some obsidian, just let me know.... http://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1326136239

Little John,

The Rugosa I have might be the one you're looking for.
Mine is called Rosa Rugosa but when I googled "Frau Dagmar" I came up with something almost identicle as mine.
Mine has less than ten petals and the blooms only last for a day or two at the most. But a constant bloomer. And the hips shown on the web resemble the ones I have.

I will try to locate some pictures on the other laptop. I know I had some on a different laptop but it crashed.