Berries and stolen apples
As a fee for my playing nursemaid to her while she recovered from her broken nose, I sent my poor ailing mother out to the Back 40 to pick autumn olive berries yesterday. She LOVES picking berries of all kinds, so it wasn't much of a chore for her. She was doped up with bug spray, sunscreen, and her happy meds, and she came home with 32 cups of berries, more or less.
From that 32 cups I cooked 16, which produced 12 cups of pulp which, when sugar was added, made (12) 12-oz. jars of jam. Tom found a nifty hand-blending food mill for making apple sauce this last weekend; he picked it up at a thrift store. I used that to squeeze the berries.
I also purchased a fruit picker. It helped in my theft of the neighbors' apples, and it will help with all the pears I see in an abandoned lot on my way to M's school. It's basically a wire basket on the end of a 10' long wood pole.
It is so fun, avoiding the grocery store.
2 comments:
You really make your mom work for you. ;)
I've never even seen an autumn olive berry. What do they taste like?
I never knew what they were, either. They taste kinda like a raspberry, though not nearly as sweet. They are an invasive species of shrub/small tree. The leaves look like those of an olive tree. I guess the berries have a high quantity of lycopene in them. All I know is they are really easy to pick, they don't stain your hands, you can eat the berries and their seeds, and dang do we have a ton of the shrubby trees in the Back 40.
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