Several years ago, my green-thumbed friend and neighbor Maria Menegus, who has an enormous elderberry bush, gave me a generous supply of the berries with which to experiment. Maria had assumed that as a food writer I knew that it is necessary to cook the berries to render them edible and flavorful, but this was my first encounter with elderberries, so after tasting a berry or two, and even sugaring a few more, I found them to be so