i'll take one please - tack!

pictured: spruce distillation in progress

the other night ulrika pulled out something amazing, something i myself had been thinking of purchasing - something that would take whatever you wish and turn it into a fragrance or oil. this amazing thing is a steam distiller, and we were going to experiment our way through it.

first, we would try spruce tips - the light, vibrant green tips of a spruce tree that can only be found during spring. after collecting some tips from the forest we finely chopped them up and got ready to make some oil. right away sounds started to plop and swish, and after 15 minutes or so our first drop of magical liquid fell into its place. and then 10 minutes later, the four of us (ulrika, hakan, alex, and i) sat around staring at a bottle filling with clear liquid and convincing ourselves that there was definitely a layer of oil. 10 more minutes pass and the layer of "oil" isn't growing any larger, but the clear liquid keeps on dripping. 10 more minutes pass and we have ourselves two bottles full of something that looks a lot like water. but it isn't. no, we weren't able to extract any oils (we don't know what went wrong) but we were able to create a pure, clean, distillation - something the swedes call hydrolator (maybe we'd call it that too, but i've never heard of it). this hydrolator is something that you can sniff for aromatherapy benefits, clean with, or use in some kind of recipe. and the later is what we chose to do.

ulrika came up with the seemingly crazy idea to turn the hydrolator into sorbet. i was on board, but alex, after tasting the liquid, was a bit sceptical - as he thought it was rather reminescent of cleaning products. but she did it anyway and it actually turned out quite delicious (alex and one of the daughters didn't care for it too much, but 5 out of 7 ain't bad).

pictured: pretty purple flowers

naturally, we still wanted to make some oil. so we tried experiement two with some lovely smelling purple flowers. they made nothing more than some nasty smelling water (think artichoke water that's been over boiled). and then we tried the spruce tips again thinking maybe we didn't pick young enough tips. turns out, that wasn't the problem, and now we have two more bottles of hydrolator to play with.

but i still think it's really neat, this distilling. and i wonder what it'd be like if you put coffee beans, or grounds, into the gadget - would it make clear, coffee flavored hydrolater (with the possible bonus of some oil)? i dunno. but i kinda wanna figure it out...