Grandma's Backyard Berries

grandmasbackyardberries@gmail.com

I will be selling berries Saturday July 13, 2013 on the West Side of the West Allis Farmers Market from 1 -> 6:00 PM

My berries have taken over my backyard so it is time to offer them for sale for others to enjoy. I will be at the West Allis Farmers Market for the first time this Summer sharing a booth with Lisa of Fer-Li Farms on some Saturdays. Stop by and taste a sample of currants, and add them to your shopping bag. Berry season is somewhere in July.

There will be more details as the berry season progresses and I can pin down a date. You can reach me at the email above or keep an eye on this blog. Nannette - May 30, 2013

History:
Grandma Hessil had a double row patch of berries behind the tool shed on the family operated dairy farm just down the road from the crossroads of Morgan Wisconsin. There were raspberries and two kinds of currants, red and golden. Grandpa kept the runners and weeds under control by laying craft paper feed bags on the ground along side and between the rows. Some of my earliest memories were picking currents from the bushes. I thought the raspberries were not worth the trouble of dealing with the thorns. The raspberries Grandma picked were best eaten for breakfast with raw cream from the barn and a sprinkle of sugar.

We bought our house in a Milwaukee county suburb of West Allis, Wisconsin the Spring of 1987 and immediately put in the same types of berries Grandma Hessil grew.

I planted the Boyne and Latham raspberry varieties. Boyne are easy to grow and the Lathams tasted like Grandma's berries. Berries grown in my Grandma's back yard always bring back happy childhood memories of Summer.

The raspberry patch has grown from 20' of raspberries behind the garage, [note the historical repeat] to a mixture of raspberries on 3 sides of the garage and some of the Latham variety that grew back under the power pole after the telephone company service guys stomped on them. The varieties include red, yellow and the thorny black raspberries. Every year it is a surprise to see which berries out produce the other and which berries do not do well in my yard.

There is also the rabbit issue. Raspberries produce berries on second year canes. Rabbits like to munch on these canes during the winter. This translates into wonderful potential for a Summer crop going into the Winter. Devastation of the canes noticed the following Spring along with the fattest bunnies running around my yard. One more reason to favor currants.

The currants were not forgotten. Three bushes of the variety Red Lake filled in a corner between the house and the garage. This century I added a single bush of the golden variety called Champagne.

Fresh currants should not be confused with the 'poser dried grapes sold in the supermarkets. Fresh currants are ribes and first cousins of gooseberries. They are pretty much pest free, with the exception of aphids that crinkle up the leaves, but not enough of a nuisance to worry about because they do not damage the berries. This makes it easy to grow currants without using any pest control for insects or diseases.

Currants have a unique flavor with a tartness that works well with lemon. Both red and golden currants can be eaten out of hand. It is not uncommon to find my nieces grazing on the bushes in my back yard when the berries are ripe.

There are two well known methods of preserving currants, jelly and wine the Northern Wisconsin wineries bottle. I have been working on recipes that bring these berries into mainstream cooking.

How to use:
The knack to using currants in cooking is understanding they are a tart berry that can go both sweet or savory.

- Toss a handful into tuna salad.
- Swap out 1/2 the rhubarb with red currants in a rhubarb pie.
- Mix red and golden currants with raspberries in your favorite berry dessert, although ease up on the cinnamon as currants are a delicate flavor.
- Make it into a simple syrup (don't forget to strain out the seeds) and stir it into plain seltzer water.

The one drawback with currants is the large single seed in each berry. Think pomegranate. I've found three ways to handle the seeds.
1- Sieve them out as you would for jelly.
2- Include chopped nuts with your recipe and no one will notice the seeds.
3- Just let the seeds be seeds.

Recipes:

Currant Lemon Sauce

2 C. fresh or frozen red currants
1/4 C sugar
juice from a lemon (reserve 1/2)
1 T. fresh lemon peel

Bring all the ingredients, except the reserved lemon juice, to a boil in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir at the boil for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and add the remaining lemon juice. This yeilds about a cup of sauce. Keep in the fridge once it cools down.

- Put it over pound cake.
- Mix it with plain yogurt.
- Use it as a glaze over grilled chicken or pork chops.
- Serve it over Ice Cream.

Currant Lemon Almond Quick Bread

Toast 1 C coarsely chopped almonds in a dry fry pan and set aside.

Mix together and set aside:
2 1/2 C all purpose wheat flour (I've actually substituted 1/2 the wheat flour with gluten free rice flour and the recipe did not suffer)
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt

Whisk together:
1 C softened butter
3 eggs
1/3 C sugar
1 1/4 C plain Greek Style yogurt
juice from 1 lemon

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until almost mixed then fold in 1 C fresh or frozen red currants and the chopped toasted almonds.

Pour into an oiled bread pan and sprinkle the top with 1 t sugar. Bake at 350° F between 45 minutes to an hour. Use a toothpick to test for doneness. Then let it rest in the pan until just cool enough to handle with bare hands and turn it out of the pan.

This bread does not last a day in my home.

You could use the batter to make muffins. Adjust the cooking time. I have not tried it yet, so I cannot give a yield.

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Future plans:

There is a new hedge planted on the lot line of our getaway home that has a 5 varieties of currants and 3 varieties of gooseberries. Grandma Hessil never grew gooseberries, but I am going to give it a whirl. It will take a few years for the hedge to produce. My hope is to grow the love of currants and gooseberries along with the hedge. Who knows, maybe a few rows will follow in time.

Below is the hedge on the day it was planted May 11, 2013. Yes, that is snow.

Below is what the hedge looked like 2 weeks later right after the lawn was mowed.
This must be the reason it is called SPRING!

Currant Recipes

Above is what the Champagne variety currant looks like in early June.

Currant Buckle

This recipe came about when I saw instructions for making blueberry buckle in a church cookbook. I did not have butter or blueberries, I was short on milk, and it looked like there was more sugar than I'm used to eating. The result was on the table when I left to run errands and gone when I returned.

Whisk together:
2/3 C sugar
1 egg
1/4 C oil
3/4 C plain fat free Greek yogurt

Mix together:
2C flour
2 1/2 t baking powder

Whisk the flour mixture into the liquid mixture then fold 2 C of Currants into the entire very thick batter.

Spread the batter into a 9 X 9" baking pan.

Mix:
1/2 C chopped Almonds
2 T sugar

Sprinkle on top of the batter in the pan and bake at 375°F for 45 minutes.

My girlfriend Clara mentioned she had a currant pie recipe. Then she looked into her collection and found 2. See them below.

Currant Pie

makes one 9 inch pie

1 unbaked 9 inch pastry shell

1 cup fresh ripe currants

2 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup minute tapioca

1 tablespoon water

Wash currants stem. Beat eggs slightly add sugar, salt, tapioca, water once mixed add the currants. Pour into pie shell. Bake in moderate oven 350°F for 35 minuets. If you like you can add lattice top crust. Watch carefully so it does not boil over. Cool and enjoy.

Another Recipe from Clara:

Currant Fritters

2 cups scalding milk

2 cups fine bread crumbs

1 tablespoon butter

5 eggs separated

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

2 cups fresh currants

Pour got milk over crumbs and butter or other shortening, mix well let cool. Beat egg yolks well and add to milk and crumbs mixture. Sift dry ingredients together and beat into first mixture. Add currants, fold in stiffly beaten egg whites and drop by spoonfuls into hot deep fat (365°F). Fry until golden brown, drain on a cake rack and then between layers of absorbent paper. Serve hot with a mixture of wine and confectioners sugar. Serves 8

Fitters of all kinds are very popular in New England all the year except in the very hottest weather. They are served with meat and vegetables.

Posted 3rd June 2013 by Grandmas Backyard Berries

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Grandma's Backyard Berries:

Year Two

July 12, 2014 was the 2nd time I've sold berries at the West Allis Farmers Market. More lessons learned.   My primary goal is to promote the currant, even though I did include whatever raspberries and black raspberries were ripe.

Winter 2013 - 2014 was long and very cold beyond the normal recent years. The Winter was much like those of my mid 20s. I kept my thoughts to myself when those who think they are living in Tennessee were complaining. Wisconsin is cold and snowy in Winter. It made sense to believe the berries would be late because Spring was late, cold and wet and Summer arrived 2 weeks ago.

Silly me. The currants were about a week earlier than last years. The black raspberries were right on schedule. The red raspberries were affected by the late Spring and are about 2 weeks later than usual. I was completely unprepared for the farmers market when I noticed the currants were fully ripe. My berry picking husband was in Michigan cleaning out Aunt Mary's porch so she can use it and enjoying the various events of the Bass Festival in Crystal Falls. I was on my own this year.

I began picking berries after work on Thursday. 3 hours of picking each night before the street lights came on and the mosquitoes got nasty. My traditional method of picking currants has been to strip the berry off the stem. They are washed, then measured into zipper freezer bags to freeze for later use. It is an efficient and a quick way to go from bush to storage. Lesson learned last year is currants off the stem will 'leak' their juices if not frozen soon after picking, resulting in very soggy pulp boxes. This year I had to use a new method of berry picking by picking the stem with the berries attached. This slowed down my time because the berries naturally want to come off the stem and the stem does not always want to release from the branch.

Currants drop off the stems every time they are handled if care is not taken. The entwined vine of the wild morning glory just made this more obvious every time I pulled this invasive weed from the bush. Pick, wash and store was not going to work for the market if I wanted any berries left to sell on the stems. The new method was to hose off the bush, let it dry, pick the currants into a container and store in the fridge.

This brings about a side topic: storage containers. Occasionally currants would be stored in large mixing bowls when there was not time to rinse, bag and freeze. To market berries I needed somewhere to hold quantities. Sterite (sp) makes a rectangular plastic container with handles that fold up to hold the lid in place. They are just large enough to hold a 9 X 13 pan. The containers fit on a refrigerator shelf and stacked 5 high without crushing the bottom container. The capacity on the label is 6.1 quarts and it did hold 6 quarts of water without spillage when I checked.

The bottom was lined with a paper towel and the berries went from bush to container. I filled them loosely with ~ 5 quarts of berries so no chance of crushing would occur. They also nest to keep storage to a minimum. At a one time purchase of ~ $4.50 each, it was a bargain.

Saturday morning I picked another 3 quarts total of raspberries and black raspberries along with 5 quarts of champagne currants. The car was packed up and I was on my way a little after noon for the 1:00 opening bell at the farmers market.

The sublet booth is on the perimeter of the market and I was able to find a parking space just across the street from there. The 5' folding table was set up. [It is a 20 year old pressed wood that gets heavier every time I carry it and see the light weight plastic tables now being used. Then I am glad it has some mass to it when the wind picks up.] The two boxes of storage containers filled with berries and the cooler were brought from the car. I began filling the berry boxes and setting them onto the table.

The West Allis Farmers Market does not allow sales until a bell rings at 1:00. Before that time there are people who walk through the aisles looking at what is for sale. This is a social time and pleasantries along with questions and answers are exchanged. 5 minutes before 1:00 a group formed at my booth: hovering. Berries are uncommon and locally grown black raspberries were most desirable yesterday. More so because I do not use sprays in my yard.

The bell went off and three boxes of black raspberries were sold in less than a minute. Then the rest was a blur for a couple of hours. It was explained to me later, it is OK for a customer to ask to have something set aside until after the bell rings, much like a special order. Although, the hovering was quite exciting.

My husband showed up around 2:30 to keep me company. He watched the golden gloves fights at Nylunds and played bingo in Crystal Falls on Friday and headed home on Saturday morning.

At 4:30 there were very few shoppers in the market so all was packed up and we went home. There were 9 pints of currants on stems left. I washed them, took them off the stem, bagged and froze them at home. The result was 3 quarts of berries. Extrapolated out that means 9 pints currants on stems = 6 pints currants off the stems. Or 3 pints currants on the stems = 2 pints currants off the stems. This is good to know.

I was not prepared for this currant season coming during the same time it came last year. Lesson learned. Next year I will also have replaced my unreliable oven for one that holds it's temperature. The plan is to make up some pastries like those sold by the bakeries at the farmers markets using my currants for fillings. I can hand out the samples to the bakeries with recipes the week before I take my berries to market. There was no time to accomplish that this year.

The original currant patch is also too big and needs to be thinned out. The thinned out bushes will be transplanted into a row along the driveway. That cement heat sink is always a good thing to moderate the root temperature.

It was not possible to weed the current currant bush from underneath because it is so overgrown. The only way to get rid of the wild morning glory vines is to physically pull them out by their roots every time they sprout. When I pulled them from the top of the bush and followed the vine down to it's source too many currant berries fell from their stems.

My eventual goal to to establish customers by the time we retire. An email can go out when the currants are ready and then we can overnight ship the currants to their plants. First I need to educate people that currants can hold their own with the berries sold in the grocery stores.

Let's here it for currants!!

Nannette

My Grandma's Back Yard Berries

Monday, July 14, 2014