Some weeks ago, I did some nice elder flowers fritters, and now that the berries are being eaten by birds, I ‘m hurrying to make a nice jelly. As it is my first elderberry jelly, I tried to find on internet the best recipe. Well, none appealed to me… So after some tries, I’ll tell you what for me is the best.

Ingredients :
berries, (for 3 pots of 300 g of jam, you need a full bag of berries)
sugar,
an orange if you have one (recipes usually use lemon but orange is good)
and some water.

Harvest your wild berries in the countryside, you’ll find them everywhere. Choose the ripest ones, full of water and not the one already tasted by birds that are no more watery. Because the secret for a good jam is liquid.



Pick berries off the stalks, keep the black ones, and weight them before doing anything else. Because thanks to its weight, you ‘ll have to add one third of sugar later one.
Once you weighted them, put the orange juice into a pan with the water and let it boil for some minutes. It smells really strange and not nice but go on. Crush them. Then use a food mill to remove the seeds. I first tried with the berries and seeds, it is inedible.

Once you have the sauce, put it into a saucepan, add sugar (one third because once you removed the seeds and skin, you have not a lot left) and mix.
The best is to wait the next day to cook it. Boil it then for some minutes. Your jam is ready when using a teaspoon, the jelly is covering your teaspoon and dropping very slowly. The drop must almost stay on your teaspoon.
Pour the boiling jam into pots and seal them and let them cool down upside down. And again store them upside down till eating. The pots can be kept for a long time (a year or so).



Be careful with the berries : never eat them raw, they are toxic, as are the leaves, the roots and the bark.

Read it in French : Recette de confiture aux baies de sureau

What can you do in Dinard when it rains… discover African Art. Every year at the Palais des Arts in Dinard (on the seafront and close to the casino), you can discover a nice art exhibition : last year it was Picasso… This year, the exhibition called Gloire de la femme dans l'art africain (litterally glory to women in African Art) shows 200 pieces of African Art connected with women and their roles in African Art and Society.



It is open from june 28th to september 14th (a Sunday) 2008, every day from 2 pm to 7 pm. And it is free…




It is a really nice aesthetic exhibit. The objects are from the XIXth and XXth century, you ‘ll see masks, statues, stools, woodlocks, pearls’jewels…that explains the role of woman in african society. The different rooms present various women’sides such as maternity, fertility, couple, initiation figure,… thanks to a sign, each room explains some part of the african culture. For example, you will learn that scarifications around women’ navel symbolizes the links to the world or that twins have a very special status in Africa. As a fertility symbol, they are feared and revered at the same time. And the Yoruba people (Nigeria) have the highest rate of twins in the world (45,1 for 1000 births) compared to Europe (10,9). And we still don’t know why !



And if you want your kids to improve their french, a guide in french !!! will reveal the secrets of African Art on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. For the 4-8 years old at 4.30 pm, and for the 8-12 years old at 2.30pm. Hurry up, it lasts till mid september.

Read it in French : L'art africain en Bretagne à Dinard