Speaking of Raspberries . . . 10 October, 2008

Not this kind:

Yum.

No, I’m talking about this kind:

Tasty.

Courtesy of the three breakaway saves I made Tuesday night, I now have this wondrous addition to my gorgeous leg. I was wearing shinguards, but mine are the type that don’t attach at the ankle (I hate the ones with ankle guards). This means that they tend to slip if they’re not secured properly. The fact that they slip isn’t a problem if I’m actually playing on a normal field, but turf=pain.

We tied 0-0, if it’s any consolation. The breakaway saves were pretty much the only saves I made (or shots on goal the other team had), other than a low skipper that was easily retained with a collapse dive. My distributions were subpar, but my catching was excellent.

Enough about soccer.

We already told you, Father. We were berry picking. 11 July, 2008

But these aren’t imaginary berries.

Oh no.

We’re talking 16 cups of blackberry-goodness. Plus the thorns and battle scars to prove it.

Maybe I should start at the beginning.

Laura runs. A lot. Seeing as there aren’t very many places to run near our neighborhood, she tends to go into one of the neighboring neighborhoods (bleccch. I hate using those words back to back. Back to the story). ANYway, on her run (Tuesday? Wednesday? I don’t remember) a couple of days ago, she passed by a plethora of blackberry bushes. Apparently there were some people in the vicinity picking honeysuckle, so she decided that we should go back and pick whatever berries were ripe. We wound up getting about three cups worth, plus she had gotten some at Ukrops earlier (which were humongous), making our total around four cups.

What could we make with these delicious berries? Two words.

ICE CREAM.

So we boiled them, and sugared them, and mixed them with heavy whipping cream. Shoved it all in our ice cream maker, and about an hour later had purple fruity ice cream.

It tasted amazing.

Fast forward to today (which was Friday).

Laura went out on another run today down past those heavenly–yet hellish with their thorns–bushes and came back with news of more ripe berries. Even more than last time. In optimistic anticipation of the purpley tastiness that awaited our quivering tastebuds, I brought along an even bigger container for our bounty. After our frenzied picking extravaganza (accompanied by disturbed glances from passersby, more thorns in our fingers, and fighting off more spiders (shiver)), we drove home victorious. Our container definitely overfloweth-ed.

A quick wash and measure later, Laura revealed the damage.

16 cups.

We already made a cobbler (which was watery), and blackberry lemonade (which is chilling, awaiting our consumption), with plans to make a blackberry and white chocolate fool and other things.

Too bad blackberries aren’t like asparagus and make your pee turn purple. Because THAT would be awesome.