Blackberrying

4 March ’13

Blackberry –  yes, we know it’s a weed, but those little glossy berries are just so delish.  The hot, long summer seems to have produced a bumper crop this year. So we discovered when we went for a drive on Saturday.

Cat was staying with a friend,  me and the boys (large and small) went out for a drive to the river. There we spotted a man blackberrying.  “Ah ha!”, thought we,  “That looks like a fine idea.”    After we’d checked out the little creek that runs down to the river – the reason we’d gone down there in the first place –  we headed on over to the berry canes.

Billy and the blackberries

I can’t remember the last time I saw such a huge crop of blackberries.  Juicy and sweet, they stained our fingers as we sampled the fruit.  Warm and fragrant in the sun, the memories came flooding back of the blackberries we’d found in Ostia Antica last year.

Blackberries in Ostia Antica, Italy

We went home for lunch, then headed back with pots and containers to gather some of nature’s autumn bounty.

Boy in berries

It did not take long for three of us to gather enough for a cook up. And all the scratches were totally worth it.  We had enough to make a berry crumble to have

Week36 – A Tart of Apples and Oranges

3 – 9 Sept ’11

Billy the Kid found a recipe for a  dessert that apparently harks back to the knight age.  He tells me Lords and Ladies feasted on this marmalade tart.

Apples and Oranges Baked in a Pie

Started out with the old Sigma zoom – it’s what was on the camera and when you’re baking and making dinner there’s not much time to stop and swap lenses!  I should have known.  Low light situation + poorly lens = not good shots…

Tart in the making

The zoom lens will soon be making a trip back to the repair shop.  It is still have issues with focusing, and is now doing some weird jumping/vibration thing.

After dinner was eaten, with the pie in the oven I took the time to swap to