Blackberries, Two Ways

Many moons ago, before we went on vacation and lost all track of time (literally, and now we are trying to go to bed at 10 tonight in order to get back in the swing of things), we went on a little blueberry/blackberry outing with friends from church. Into the freezer the berries went in their neatly labeled bags (of course). It was clear that the blueberries would be used to improve Missy's morning Smart Start and add the key touch to applesauce-blueberry muffins on a regular basis. But what, Jason asked, can you do with blackberries?

Clearly, at least two things. First, this weekend I made a blackberry pie to take to Dawn and Brian's, to welcome them back to Virginia after a long summer away from us. I have eaten a lot of blackberry pie in my day, as my grandparents' farm was full of them, but I had never made one before. To complicate things, I tried my hand at whole wheat pie crust. Shaanti made a delicious apricot pie a couple weeks ago with whole wheat (or, as we have taken to calling it, "ww") crust, so I used her recipe. For the record, she is way better at it than me. A few years back, I went through this "make it from scratch because I can" phase that included a stint in pie crust making. Oh, how I hated pies for a while there! Then I discovered the way my Grams made delicious pies...with the beautiful rollout pie crust from Safeway. So now I make my grandma's pies.

That being said, the pie wasn't terrible, and perhaps next time I'm home I'll have Shaanti give me a pastry lesson.

After the pie was more or less a success, I tried my hand at jam making. I am more in tune with jam, which simply requires mashing fruit, mixing sugar and pectin, and purchasing fun little kitchen accouterments like freezer jars. The jam is sweet and tasty and perfect on my ww English muffin. And I have sort of redeemed myself in my own eyes for my inability to be a competent pastry chef.

There are a few other uses for blackberries, of course, not the least of which is as a lantern. Okay, not really, but when I was young, my cousin Shanna and I (who still have a reputation for being extraordinarily...imaginative, shall we say?) would put blackberries in old milk jugs, shake them up, and pretend that they would light up so that we could see our way to the other house for bed at night. It always sort of surprised and disappointed me that they didn't.