A semi-serious pick

That is to say, the other day we picked enough blackberries to take home and eat, even if the berries did not make it to the freezer for another day.

The venue was the community space, aka community farm, next to Brading church. 

I had made a preliminary visit the evening before, without suitable container, so while I was able to eat a few and assess the possibilities, no serious picking.No pigs, but, that evening there were three sheep, possibly a ewe and two of her lambs, quite big, so maybe from last year. 

But back the following morning, and, inter alia, picked a small tub full. Rather more berries on the bushes than might at first appear in the snap above.

Back at the cottage.

As luck would have it, we had a few eating apples, so stewed apple and blackberries seemed a better bet than taking the berries with sugar, in the way of strawberries.

I was moved to resume the childhood game of trying to get the peel of the apples off in one go. Although, given that I was out of practise, I used quarter apples rather than whole apples. It struck me that, in the olden days, when you might have to spend hours on chores of this sort, a bit of competitive or fancy peeling might have provided a bit of interest.

Borrowed a bit of sugar and away we went. Almost having an accident, having failed to compute the size of the bowl properly.

I had not found any salt, so had not dipped the peeled apples in saline, which is what we ordinarily do to stop peeled cooking apples turning brown. But it did not seem to matter here. Even if the telephone has rather lost the deep red of cooked blackberry syrup.

The same dye as you get from blackcurrants, from Ribena? A drink I used to rather like and take rather strong - but I think last time I had a go, I found it too sweet.

Aside: Ribena gets eleven mentions in the archive, an early one of which is to be found at reference 3. More to do with growing blackcurrants than drinking Ribena. I have not dug into what might have happened to the slips - but I do remember that we had netted blackcurrant bushes at one point.

But the telephones found its colour again on the occasion of the last knockings the following day. The apple and blackberry had done very well. And once again, I wondered why restaurants don't serve such stuff? I would have thought that it kept reasonably well, certainly for a day or two after construction. Maybe if one were to go to seriously fancy restaurants, they could oblige: Claridge's or perhaps the newly reopened Simpson's Grill - which last, I believes trumpets traditional British grub.

A quick peek at the dessert menu for which does not encourage: an improvement on the sweet & sticky stuff you might find in many public houses these days - probably more cream - probably slicker presentation - but not that much of an improvement. No apple pie, no stewed fruit. No fresh fruit. Not even tinned peaches.

PS 1: Gemini to the rescue on the browning front. He told a good story, and his flattery is getting a little more subtle! Mostly unchecked.

Dialogue once again, rather than a single shot question. Anti-clockwise from top left.

PS 2: some corroboration from Bing and Copilot. Which I think would be further corroborated by Wikipedia. I might say that Copilot is a bit idiosyncratic about when a Bing search kicks Copilot off - but I dare say they will get better.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/hot-news.html. Notice of the first Epsom berry.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphenol_oxidase. Somebody still has to do the grunt work which makes the foregoing possible. I wonder if the big cheeses at Wikipedia are turning over the idea of charging the large language models for use of their material? Goes a bit against their free-for-all-public-service ethos, but still and all.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2007/11/water-water-everywhere.html.