Huckleberrying

It's huckleberry picking time here. We went "Huckleberrying" in the woods with some friends.   We had bear spray with us, but didn't see any bears thankfully.  It's probably because we made enough noise to keep them away. We did buy some Huckleberry Gummy Bears at the local grocery store however to taste. As for real huckleberries, the rule was you could eat one for every 10 you picked. She was caught eating them! This guy was determined to fill his bucket with huckleberries before he left, but after 4 hours of picking, each family had just a gallon. Don't tell any huckleberry purists, but we broke off a limb full of huckleberries to take to Mummo, so could see, smell pick and taste them fresh from the woods:) And you can see , we had a nice break to eat our sandwiches in the woods too. It was so beautiful there.

My husband has been carefully sorting washing, drying and freezing our huckleberries.  He's been reminiscing about picking blueberries in Labrador Canada and I remember picking them in Finland this time of year as well.

Picking raspberries is a whole lot easier than picking  huckleberries is.   One neighbor's raspberries have grown under our fence and they've also given us permission to reach over the fence and pick some as well. Another neighbor has also invited to pick at their house.  After picking huckleberries all afternoon our kids picked raspberries at the neighbors house.  We've enjoyed huckleberries and raspberries alone, on waffles, in syrup and so forth today.  We could substitute them for the blueberries in the Cardamom Cake I posted earlier or in anything else which uses blueberries, but huckleberries are used sparingly, since they are so hard to get.  Maybe we'll make a cheesecake to sprinkle some on.  We'll freeze almost all of our huckleberries and bring them out on special occasions, like the first day of winter to remind us of our enjoyable outdoor summer adventure.  

Here is a link to some huckleberry recipes I found online. http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/uma/hucklebe.htm

As for the raspberries, I think I'll try what our neighbor served the recipe exchange the other night.  It's much like the strawberry rhubarb soup (kisseli) I've posted the recipe for before, but it made with berries, this time of the year, raspberries.  Yummy!

Maria's Swedish Berry Cream Dessert Soup

1 quart berries (straw, rasp, goose, blackberries or currants)
3 cups water
3/4 cup sugar
2 TBSP potato flour or corn starch

Clean berries. Bring water to a boil, add berries and sugar and boil several
minutes. Mix potato flour with small amount cold water, stir in and bring
again to boiling point. Cool covered and serve with cream or milk.