Wineberry Time (Blog Forty-one)

This past Friday, I spent much of the morning picking wild berries behind our Botetourt County, Virginia home.  The first two weeks of July means that the wineberries especially are ripening and for that fortnight every day I try to pick a quart or so.

Friday alone I easily could have gathered two gallons of these bright, red berries, but I stopped after having accumulating three quarts.  The first two quarts went into Elaine making jam and the third one went for my wife baking a cobbler.  I ended up by picking a quart of wild blackberries and freezing them for the winter.

Out of all the wild berries that we gather and of all the sweet treats that Elaine turns them into, I would have to rate wineberry pie as my favorite.  Wineberries are so much sweeter than other wild fruits that they don't need much sugar, particularly when compared to tart blackberries.

But the wineberry cobbler was a taste sensation, too, even though the berries do not hold us as well as they do when part of a pie.  And the wineberry jam goes great on any kind of whole wheat bread.

Although the ratio of wineberries to blackberries picked was three to one in favor of the former, soon the wineberries will cease to be so plentiful and it will be the blackberry that reigns supreme.  Which reminds me that I need to pick several quarts of each after Sunday's lunch of grilled tenderloin, corn on the cob, and wineberry cobbler.