Tuesday 13 January 2009

Raspberries & Goosegogs

The cherries and apricots are late due to the long cool rainy spring we've had, so we're almost entirely reliant on raspberries for fruit. Not complaining. We've been picking 2kg every 2 days. Raspberry cordials, jams, sorbets, milkshakes, raspberry yoghurts, even a raspberry mudcake to celebrate Trev's 51st birthday. Even the dog is getting into it. It took me a while to realise that as he padded along beside me he was sticking his head in the bushes and coming away smacking his lips. Can't blame him, but managed an 'Oi!' of horror when he decided it was easier to eat them straight out of my bucket. Truly scensational fruit.



To a lesser extent we've been into strawberries and gooseberries. Well, 10-12kg of gooseberries is pretty big, had a couple of gooseberry crumbles and froze the rest in a friends freezer. They're a buggar to pick with thorns as long and prolific as the fruit. The fruit almost tastes as sharp too. But love 'em. They're the easiest plants to propogate, if they don't self layer then chopping up the tips, and wood and plonkin them in damp soil will provide additional plants in a couple of weeks. Next year my harvest will be huge. Hopefully I won't have a blood loss increase to match it.

2 comments:

Lee said...

Hi Linda - Yummy :-)

Berry season is in full swing over here (Dunedin, NZ), and my kids are putting on several kilos of berry-weight. I think they're likely to turn red with it if they're not careful!

Last nights dessert was half a kilo of raspberries for them and, when they'd gone down, half a kilo of raspberries and half a kilo of boysenberries for us simmered in cointreau, and served with ice-cream....Yummmmmmm...

Anonymous said...

When I was growing up, my dog would lick the rasberries of the canes. now I know that she wasn't entirly unique