That does sound indulgent and delicious although the shop-bought blueberries here taste a bit insipid sadly (expensive too!).
Picked half a kilo of blackberries today.
Probably just gonna have them macerated for bit and then mixed with vanilla-flavoured whipped cream.
Might keep a few to add interest to the Zwetschgenkuchen (basically a large damson tart) I also plan on making which I bought at a farm when I picked my daughter up from Wales today. The blackberries came from the garden of the house she lives in while at Uni. 🙂
It is high summer in Canada, he is probably digesting. Also, BC is on fire, we are even seeing the smoke haze here on the east coast, so he may be in retreat. (or fighting fires!)
I am in Sarasota Florida for a few days. They are having an unusually long season of "Red Tide." It really stinks. The folks who have to work outside wear masks.
Now for the folks who think forest fires smell nice like a fireplace wood fire, they don't. All the burning moss and other rotten stuff makes quite a stink also.
Once in my youth I and a friend did put out a small wild fire. Wish I could put out the "Red Tide."
So all the best to those affected and all the okay to the rest.
Now for the folks who think forest fires smell nice like a fireplace wood fire, they don't. All the burning moss and other rotten stuff makes quite a stink also.
Once in my youth I and a friend did put out a small wild fire. Wish I could put out the "Red Tide."
So all the best to those affected and all the okay to the rest.
Portland ME is the Austin of the Northeast these days.
Maybe like Providence in the late 90s.
I though this year was particularly bad on the wildlife. Eating illegally harvested shellfish can definitely kill you. If I have to follow the CDC/FDA recommendations on cooking seafood I would rather avoid it. One of the advantages of the cold North Atlantic is that mostly only clams, mussels, and oysters are affected.
Do you ever get wild blueberries (vaccinium angustifolium)? We are lucky Maine and Canada have enough in season that they are not that expensive for a few weeks. There is no comparison to the high bush cultivated variety. It's the same analogy as frais de boix to those giant tasteless cultivated strawberries.
Yes, in fact Oxford, Nova Scotia advertises itself as the Blueberry Capital of the World. The wild blueberries are incomparable. When I had a fishing lodge in Cape Breton we had a meadow where they grew in abundance, only outnumbered by the blackflies and deerflies that lived there. With a head net it was possible to pick berries early in the morning. Best blueberry pie, ever. That meadow also had wild strawberries in early July, but not enough to bother picking, though their flavor was intense. When I was a kid I knew a lady who sold jars of home made wild strawberry jam; I can't even conceive of the effort required to pick enough of those to make even one jar of jam, never mind dozens.
PS: just this week my wife and I were in the Oxford area and bought a box of fresh wild blueberries, I have been eating them on my cereal most of the week (as well as the grunt the other night).
PS: just this week my wife and I were in the Oxford area and bought a box of fresh wild blueberries, I have been eating them on my cereal most of the week (as well as the grunt the other night).
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Today we picked up some very good yellow corn at my fave farmgate stand, along with some other fresh produce from a farmer's market. I love this time of year. Unfortunately this evening raccoons were digging around in my garden and knocking over potted herbs on my back deck. They wanted to come in my kitchen door. Cute little buggers but I would lije them to leave my garden alone. The wife bifted a rock at one and he finally seemed to get the point.
In Europe, the wild blueberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) are to die for but they're getting very pricey, especially as picking brushes have been forbidden and you have to pick them by hand.
But a blueberry pie with brioche dough is just heavenly.
Otoh, the wild strawberries ("fraises des bois") are nothing special in my book, compared to the best cultivated strawberries. The lambada variety in particular is great but fragile, so you pretty much have to go to the producer to get it. Same goes for raspberries.
No, those blueberries are a North American species.
In the right area you might be able to find bilberries, a closely related European species as 009 mentioned.
They grow singly on tiny plants, never seen them for sale anywhere.
Bilberries need a certain soil so you'll find them in heath land and subarctic, tundra-like parts of Scandinavia.
The cultivated ones you get here in the shops are little blue waterballoons.
I grow my own blue berries.
They have to be in pots or a raised bed in lime free soil.
My raised bed is made of bricks and concrete.
In UK they only grow on high ground it very few places except in parts of northern Scotland where they are common.
They have to be in pots or a raised bed in lime free soil.
My raised bed is made of bricks and concrete.
In UK they only grow on high ground it very few places except in parts of northern Scotland where they are common.
We unfortunately don't get much variety at the market, but do have pick your own farms a few weeks of the year.
Oh, we don't either; in shops, it's everywhere the awful same inflated strawberries or blueberries tasting nothing but water. Open air weekly markets used to be better but the small producers are fewer and fewer. Picking such fruits is back breaking work. But pick your own farms are also starting to appear around here and that's good.
Still my parents live near the only region in Belgium producing bilberries (I've learned a new word today) and there are still some people going picking them for sale.
Still my parents live near the only region in Belgium producing bilberries (I've learned a new word today) and there are still some people going picking them for sale.
We're extremely fortunate where we are in terms of pick-your-own fruit, starting with strawberries and blueberries in June and finishing with apples in October. It's an embarrassment of riches this time of year.
Concrete will raise the pH of the soil, but I guess it works. Blueberries like a pH around 4.5 in soil with a lot of organic matter.
Coffee grounds will lower the pH, but not a lot. I used to think that oak leaves were acidic --they are until they decompose when they become slightly alkaline!
Look at me talking, I tried to grow blueberries without success ... maybe I studied too hard. I also tried raspberries this year with no success.
The best blueberry barrens here in Nova Scotia are generally on high ground with thin, acidic soil where even spruce and fir trees won't grow. I don't think the elevation per se matters much, I have picked pkentry of wild blueberries a few meters from the beach. A lot of our soil s naturally acidic, exacerbated by acid rain from New England.
In some areas around here people still burn off the barrens every spring to kill competing flora and promote vigorous berry production.
Blueberries in June? Here the u-pck cycle starts in June with strawberries, then raspberries and cherries, then blueberries (first low bush then high bush), plums, then apples and pears.
The concrete base I built on is old and weathered and has finished giving up its lime content.
I built three courses of brick around the edges and transplanted two mature bushes into it.
They were a bit slow in the first year as the cement weathered but now they are putting up 3 foot green wood each year to carry the fruit in the following couple of years or so.
We got quite a lot this year and are looking forward to the fruit off all the new shoots that came up this year.
Two year old wood produces the best fruit.
00940: +1 for Vaccinium myrtillus, the proper Blueberry.
Kids running around with faces full of blue/purple stains from the juice.
Not much of that here this year, only picked enough for ca 3 liters of raw jam in the freezer.
Last year we picked 40 liters of berries (that was just Blåbær/Vaccinium myrtillus).
This year we only got 2 liters of wild raspberries, so not too many glasses of jam, about 1 liter of Cloudberry, still got leftover from last year of strawberry jam.
Kids running around with faces full of blue/purple stains from the juice.
Not much of that here this year, only picked enough for ca 3 liters of raw jam in the freezer.
Last year we picked 40 liters of berries (that was just Blåbær/Vaccinium myrtillus).
This year we only got 2 liters of wild raspberries, so not too many glasses of jam, about 1 liter of Cloudberry, still got leftover from last year of strawberry jam.