This year the woods are full of wild berries. Here in Sweden anyone can go out into the woods and pick berries, they are free and you do not have to ask the landowner for permission. As I have lots of time now when I’m out of work, I decided to pick as much berries as I could. In the end of July I started to pick bilberries (European Bluberry), here in Sweden we call them blueberry.
Bilberries can be used for so much. I make juice and jam and I bake pies and make blueberry pancakes. They are also delicious to put frozen on yoghurt.
The most delicious berry you can pick is cloudberries. They can be found on peatlands and this year we found lots of them. I have never seen so many cloudberries and it was so fun to pick. Cloudberry jam is delicious served with waffles or pancakes.
The last wild berry to pick is the lingonberry or cowberry. They are troublesome for the body to pick because one has to bend down so deeply. I went out yesterday to pick lingonberry and today everything is hurting, ha ha. I make jam from these and serve it for example together with meatballs and fried chicken liver.
In total I have picked:
28 kg bilberries
7 kg cloudberries
10 kg lingonberries
In my garden there are also lots of berries that I have picked this summer. There are strawberries, red currants, raspberries and sour cherries. I’m also waiting for the apples (not so many, the tree is young), the plums and the wine to ripen. I hope the plums and the wine (newly planted) will ripen this year. They have started to change colour from green to blue so I’m hopeful. The plum tree is so full of plums and this is the first year there would be a real harvest if they would ripen.
The hardest thing about picking so much berries is that I have to find space for most of them in the freezer. It’s hard, very hard!
I feel blessed with such great access to the delicacy from the forest and the garden.
/Monica
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