Alternative post title: “Swedish berries”
Graham and I spent some time on Saturday berry hunting. Berry hunting is like berry picking, but for rare berries. Apparently this is very Swedish; there are some coveted delicious berries that grow few and far between and don’t cultivate well, so folks head out to the forest to hunt them down. Up north or in the mountains folks would look for cloudberries, but here the berry to hunt is smultron, or wild strawberry.
When we were out in the forest we also saw some low, creeping wild raspberry plants that should ripen soon, and also LOTS of wild blueberry and lingonberry – something to look forward to. Graham has said that if he does not have too many contracts over the next while he will pick some for the freezer. It’s nice of him, since it will be mostly me eating them while he is back in Vancouver (enjoying blackberries, but still).
When we got home with our meagre haul of smultron (about a litre for 2 hours of picking), I made some smultron syrup for pancakes. I was trying to figure out the best way to use them and stretch their smultrony flavour. They aren’t very juicy and there didn’t seem to be enough for jam, and drying them for tea would not appeal to Graham. Graham has also pointed out that the syrup would be great on ice cream or yogurt, so we may eat it like that too.
Then, because I couldn’t get enough of stirring boiling stuff on a hot stove, we made strawberry jam. This has gone into re-purposed pickle and nutella jars so they didn’t seal, and I have put them all in the freezer. We tried them out for picnic scones after running on Sunday although not very set (I am not a fan of pectin), it passed the gobble test.
Gobble, goggle… nom nom nom.