The state flower of Oregon looks like holly and grows throughout much of Cascadia. Anyone who spends time in the woods from Northern California up through British Columbia is familiar with its prickly green leaves, bright yellow blooms, and the tart berries that form in clusters in summer. It's not exactly trail food. Pick a few berries on a hike and you'll experience a lip-puckering flavor that gives new meaning to the term sour grapes. But tame it with sugar and you've got a whole realm of culinary possibilities.
Oregon-grape is not a true grape. Though its dark blue berries hang in grape-like clusters, that's where the comparison ends. Members of the family Berberidaceae, the various species of Oregon-grape are also known for their medicinal qualities. The two species commonly encountered in the forests of the Pacific Northwest are the tall Oregon-grape (Mahonia aquifolium) and low Oregon-grape (Mahonia nervosa). Some botanists consider them part of the Berberis genus, which includes a variety of species commonly called barberries and which are renowned for containing berberine, a compound with cancer-fighting and anti-depressant properties, among other medicinal benefits.
To make Oregon-grape preserves wear gloves and harvest a good quantity of the berries. I picked five pounds or so from a patch behind my daughter's pre-K, right in the center of Seattle. Use containers and utensils that won't stain. Wash the berries and remove any large stems or other leafy debris. Put the berries in a pot and add just enough water so that the berries are barely covered. Boil for 15 minutes until soft, then run through a food-mill in batches. The food-mill should separate the juice and pulp from the skins and seeds.
Now you have a choice: You can further strain the juice from the pulp by using cheese cloth or a fine mesh strainer, or you can leave the pulp in to make a preserve more aptly called a spread. Next measure your juice. I had a scant 5 cups. In general you'll want to add an equivalent amount of sugar, give or take depending on your taste. Try mixing in other fruits or berries, too, or even ginger. Bring your juice to a boil and stir in the optional lemon juice and pectin. I used about half of a 1.75 oz package. Next add the sugar, not all at once but slowly, tasting as you go until reaching your preferred balance between tart and sweet. Bring to a boil again, stirring thoroughly, and cook for a few minutes, then remove from heat and immediately ladle into sterilized jars. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.
My measurements:
5 cups Oregon-grape juice and pulp
4 1/2 cups sugar
juice of 1 lemon (optional)
1 oz pectin
Yield: 3 1/2 pints
While Oregon-grape preserves look and taste a lot like your standard grape jelly, the flavor is more complex and full-bodied, with a sweetness that will please children and a tart edge suitable to a grown-up palate. I think it makes a terrific PB&J yet a dollop is equally at home on a fancy cheese plate.
Okay, we're back to our regular programming.
On the way out of my favorite thimbleberry patch a few weeks ago, armed with a gallon of the hard-won berries—which took the better part of a day to pick and will become Recessionary Christmas presents in the form of jam —I spied a few nice specimens of the Sambucus genus, the Elderberry tree. My feet ached and I needed water, but I just had to have some. Picking the berries of this tree was an exercise in contrasts, with a gallon bag taking about five minutes to fill.
Elderberries are a common sight along the river canyons on the dry side of the Cascades and in many other places across the globe. I'm not sure exactly what species of elderberry these were, but they exhibited the glaucous bloom on the berry—that powdery white dusting visible in the photo at right—that is common in the blue elderberry (Sambucus caerulea), which is apparently the most common species in eastern Washington and Oregon.
While easy to pick, the real work begins at home with the processing. Because the leaves, stems, bark, and roots of elderberries are toxic, you must be sure to remove any non-berry debris before cooking. The stems in particular require attention. As you pull off the berries, try to remove as many of the tag-along stems as possible.
Elderberry Syrup
Family recipes for elderberry syrup abound. I found one that included fresh ginger and another that relied on a healthy dose of vodka. Two of the main considerations are sweetness and viscosity. For thicker syrup, use less water and cook down. Add sugar to taste.
For my syrup I hewed to the simple and direct. I added enough water to the pot of berries so that they were swimming but not entirely covered (in retrospect, I could have used a little less water). After bringing the berry-water mixture to a boil I let it simmer for 30 minutes, periodically working it with a potato masher. This got dumped into a food mill and cranked, removing the skins, and then strained once more to oust the seeds. The resulting 4 cups of juice went back into the pot with 2 1/2 cups of sugar, half a packet of pectin, and the juice of 1 small lemon. I brought it to a boil, killed the heat, and stirred until the foam was gone, then ladled into jars to be processed in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.
Your mileage may vary. My advice is to to tinker until you're happy. Pectin isn't necessary; I used it because I was in a hurry. The resulting syrup was aces over yogurt. Ice cream will be next, then maybe a cocktail of some sort...
What the heck is a compote anyway? I dunno exactly, but I made one with these beautiful red huckleberries foraged not too far from home in a park loaded with hikers who pass these bushes by in numbers that must make the poor huckleberries think they suffer from an extreme case of cooties.
Because they're more tart (tarter?) than most other species of huckleberry, red hucks are good candidates for jam or sauce. Plus, they look terrific atop a cut of meat or fillet of fish. Probably the most enduring way to enjoy huckleberry sauce (or compote) is with a game bird or pork loin, but don't write off the "fibbies," as my daughter calls them. Last year I made a somewhat different sauce for rockfish; this time I aimed for something a little chunkier. It's a sweet sauce, so depending on your tolerance for sugar, you may want to adjust.
1 1/2 cups red huckleberries
1/4 cup port
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp balsamic
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp lemon juice
4 6-8 oz halibut fillets (or other white flakey fish)
1. In a saucepan bring ingredients to a boil over medium heat, lower heat, and reduce until syrupy. Keep warm until ready to serve. Makes enough sauce for 4 servings.
2. Slice halibut fillet into serving portions and arrange on a greased broiling pan. Season with salt and pepper, brush on melted butter, and drizzle with lemon juice. Broil 4 to 6 inches from burner, about 10 minutes per inch of fillet thickness.
Himalayan blackberries may steal most of the culinary applause 'round here and everywhere else, but the Pacific Northwest—besides being a mushroom magnet—is home to many other delicious berries, most of them native. If you live in the Puget Sound region, my advice is to get outside NOW and scour lowland woods.
I went for a walk the other day in second-growth foothill forest west of the Cascades and found thimbleberries, trailing blackberries, and red huckleberries. Thimbleberries (Rubus parviflorus) I've written about before. They make terrific jam if you can exercise the necessary self-control to get them home. (I didn't.) Same goes for trailing blackberries (Rubus ursinus). (Did.)
Though not as prolific as the invasive Himalayan, these impish blackberries are native to the Pacific Northwest, have excellent flavor, and their appearance is more pleasing to me. Himalayas are the Mark McGuires of the blackberry world: pumped up to the point of raising suspicion. Trailing blackberries are the Ken Griffey, Jr.'s, circa 1995: lean, defined, with pop and a winning smile.
I use Himalayas for my baking. You need a lot of berries to make a pie or cobbler and the Himalayas are good for that. (Hint: if, for aesthetic reasons, you want a few of the Himalayas to keep their shape even after cooking, make sure you pick a handful of red or under-ripe ones.) The trailing blackberries, on the other hand, I prefer to eat fresh. Look for trailing blackberries in areas of disturbance: clearcuts, burns, slides. They're common in second-growth forests, especially along trails.
Red huckleberries (Vaccinium parvifolium), another native Northwest berry, are the first huckleberries in the region to ripen. Crops can vary considerably from year to year, and even in a good year, such as this one, there's significant variation in the size of berries from bush to bush. It pays to scout for bushes with larger berries. And the bushes can be quite tall for huckleberries—up to 4 meters high. Look for red huckleberries in lowland coniferous and mixed forests.
Admittedly, picking huckleberries can be tedious work, so relax, get comfortable, and just soak up the atmosphere of the woods while you pick. On this day I had winter wrens, vireos, and an opinionated Pacific-slope flycatcher to keep me company.
Summertime, especially when it's hot out, is made for fresh, local ingredients simply prepared. Who wants to spend a lot of time in the kitchen when the mercury's topping 90 degrees—or 100 for that matter? I love summer pastas with tomatoes, garlic, and basil cooked merely by the heat of the pasta. Similarly, a dessert of fresh fruits bathed only in a little cream (or half 'n' half, as was the case) is a perfect way to enjoy the season's sweet treats. For this one we used Berryman's Twin Springs Farms peaches along with trailing blackberries and red huckleberries gathered mere hours earlier. Great colors, even greater taste.
We're nearing the peak of blackberry season here in Seattle. The Northwest is justly famous for its blackberries. For whatever reasons having to do with climate and temperament, the non-native Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) thrives in these parts, to the point of being an OBnoxious weed. Really, the only way you can keep it down is by running your own herd of goats. They take over abandoned lots, park margins, unkempt backyards, and just about any other nook and cranny where they can gain a foothold and spread their thorny canes.
But let's look at the good side. Blackberries are delicious. They effortlessly combine that sought-after one-two punch of pucker and sweet that is the holy grail for many a dessert chef. Discerning palates pay nearly as much for a carton of blackberries in season as the more delicate and finicky raspberry—yet unlike raspberries, blackberries are all over the city, free for the taking.
I'm continually amazed at how under-utilized this resource is. People, we're famous for our blackberries! 
Go get some. I usually combine blackberry picking with a swim in Lake Washington. They're at their sweetest and juiciest just as the region is at its hottest. Driving around the city, I see them pretty much everywhere. It's not like you have to travel to some distant neighborhood park or outer suburb to find them.
Blackberry Crumble
This is an easy recipe originally written for peaches. Use whatever fruit you want. The baking time seems long, but you want to make sure you get that crispy edge. Oven temps vary, so keep an eye on the topping; when it's nicely browned it's done.
4-5 cups fresh blackberries, rinsed
6 tbsp cold butter, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
3/4 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1. Grease an 8x8-inch baking dish. Layer bottom evenly with berries.
2. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut in butter with pastry blender or knife. Sprinkle over berries.
3. Bake at 375 degrees until lightly browned and crispy on top, about 45 minutes. Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
By the way, Himalayan blackberries are available through much of North America, but if you happen to live in the Pacific Northwest, treat yourself to our native species, the trailing blackberry (Rubus ursinus). Unlike it's argumentative cousin, the trailing blackberry doesn't grow from thick canes or pack such vicious thorns. You'll find it creeping along the ground in less disturbed areas where the non-native species hasn't had a chance to out-compete it. The fruit, many berry connoisseurs would say, is even more flavorful than the Himalayan, though it takes more work to gather a meal as they're not so plentiful.
In any case, blackberries of all species make a perfect summertime dessert on a hot evening. Don't forget the ice cream.
Dear readers, this forager is a hurtin' pup. Maybe part of the problem is he isn't exactly a pup anymore—but still acts like one. Last Saturday I took my son skiing. It was one of those special days, snowing even in Seattle as we pulled out of town. We drove up to Snoqualmie Pass and the white stuff was really coming down, fat fluffy flakes, not the usual Cascade concrete. I explained to Riley that this was the sort of day powder hounds dream of, that we needed to take full advantage and ski all day. Incredibly, no one was on the mountain. We skied onto the lift after each run. Eight more inches must have fallen while we were there—fresh tracks of bottomless, knee-deep powder if you picked the right line. Glorious skiing.
And then I tried stepping out of the car after the drive home. Yikes. My body was trashed. One of the hazards of a snow day like that is that snow is pelting your goggles, the light is flat, and visibility is generally poor. More than once I dropped off a steep pitch without knowing it, only to feel the landing a moment later, and since I was on my ancient tele boards and not alpine, my body absorbed most of the impact.
So here I am laid up on my back. It's a back with serious issues. For the past year I've been trying to heal myself by cutting out one of my favorite forms of exercise, a game that's terribly hard on the body but is a game nonetheless and so beats the hell out of jogging: squash. The net result has been 20 pounds gained and no improvement to the back. It's time to shed the extra poundage. I've decided to initiate the process with a cleansing. We do this occasionally with a few nutty friends, usually in the spring. The first one started years ago as a dare, a friendly bit of one-upsmanship among pals, then over time we worked up to a brutal 10-day fast. Since then we've toned it down a bit.
This cleansing comes from The Source. Marty found it. We adapted the recipes somewhat to make use of our wild foods, which are generally healthier for you than domesticated.
The first few days were all liquids. For breakfast we made fruit smoothies with either antioxidant-rich wild blackberries or huckleberries foraged last summer, along with fresh pineapple, pineapple juice, flaxseed oil, flax meal, and rice milk. I've never been much of a smoothie fan—I prefer my fruits whole—but this was surprisingly tasty.
Wild Berry De-Tox Smoothie
1 1/2 cups wild berries (or mango, papaya, etc.)
1 cup fresh pineapple (optional)
1 cup pineapple juice
3/4 cup unsweetened soy or rice milk
1 1/2 tsp fresh ginger
1 heaping tbsp flax meal
1 tsp flax oil
1 tbsp probiotic powder or liquid
Combine into blender and whir.
For lunch and dinner we made Miso Soup with Shitaki and Morel Mushrooms. You'd be surprised how far miso soup can take you. This is all we ate for three days, along with water, tea, and occasional cups of organic veggie juice as permitted by the plan.
Shitake-Morel Miso Soup
1-2 oz dried morels (or other mushroom), soaked in 1 cup warm water, about 30 min.
7 cups water
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 carrot, thinly sliced into rounds
10 fresh shitake mushrooms, de-stemmed and thinly sliced
2 slices fresh ginger, unpeeled, 1/4 inch thick
2 tbsp white miso
3 stalks bok choy, thinly sliced
dried seaweed (optional)
tamari
1. Prep vegetables while dried mushrooms are reconstituting. Place all vegetables except bok choy in large pot with water. Cover and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer 20-40 minutes.
2. Slice soaking mushrooms and add to pot with water.
3. When soup is finished, turn off heat, discard ginger, and stir in miso. Next add bok choy. Serve with tamari.
Over the course of the cleansing fast I developed a fondness for stinging nettle tea. It's a wonderful spring tonic. People have known about the restorative effects of nettles for centuries. Being one of the first greens of the season, they have a long history of use as a way to transition the body from the rigors of winter into the spring outdoor work season. As a fasting food, they're useful for both cleansing the system and injecting nutrients that the body craves at this time of year. I made the tea from nettles I had collected, dried, and pulverized last year.
On Day Four we introduced Kale and White Bean Soup to the dinner menu. The Brassica family is renowned for its cleansing properties.
Saturday night, after six days, we broke the fast at our friends' annual St. Patty's Day dinner. Who am I to turn down an expertly roasted corned beef? Mostly, though, I stuck to the root vegetables—and a single wee nip because I could feel Old Man Winter making one last claim on my health. The next day we were back into cleansing mode. We ate the Kale and White Bean Soup for lunch and Sweet and Spicy Greens for dinner. For the latter I harvested my first batch of dandelion greens in the backyard and mixed them with collards. Dandelions have been used for centuries as a liver cleanser, among their many other medicinal properties.
Sweet and Spicy Greens
1 bunch collard greens, chopped
1 bunch dandelion greens
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tbsp olive oil
2-3 tbsp apple juice
pinch salt
In large pan or skillet, saute garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil over medium heat. Add greens with apple juice and simmer, covered, on low for 15 minutes. Season to taste.
This was by far the easiest, least taxing fast I've undertaken. Who knows if a week is really enough to give the body a rest? If nothing else, you feel healthier in your mind, and that's half the battle right there. I tend to be highly suspicious of books that tell you how to "unleash your inner energy" and so on. That said, the idea of regular fasting strikes me as a fairly sane practice in the face of all the toxins we're confronted with on a daily basis. Let's face it, we've polluted our air and our water—the very foundations of life—and regardless of what the EPA says about human health and acceptable levels of contaminants in our environment, simple common sense would say that all of us are affected by what we eat, drink, and breathe. Purging your system periodically makes sense to me—as does giving your body a dose of wild foods.
In the dead of winter, while hibernating bears are dreaming about sweet, tangy huckleberries, we humans can employ our opposable thumbs and larger cranial capacity to walk down the basement steps, open the freezer door, pull out a frozen tub of huckleberry sauce, and turn a simple pork loin into something a whole lot more special. We can even multi-task, roasting the loin and warming the sauce while watching the Academy Awards on TV. That is, if we used that extra brain-power to think ahead and make a large batch of the sauce in summer. 
Huckleberry sauce is a good thing to keep around. I have containers of it in various sizes in my freezer. A small 4-ouncer is easily enough to feed two, and once defrosted it can be spiced up however you want. Click here for the huckleberry sauce recipe (you can substitute store-bought blueberries if necessary).
You'll find versions of this pork loin recipe online, but there are a couple extra steps that I follow to make it extra delicious. For one thing, I like to add a tablespoon or more of orange zest to my standard huckleberry sauce. 
Also, I use the usual woodsy herbs (rosemary, sage, thyme) as well as oregano, parsley, and basil. The fresh basil, in particular, works with the orange zest to brighten the huckleberry sauce with a slightly more tropical zing. If you don't have all these fresh herbs on hand, make do with what you've got (but the more the better, in my opinion). Finally, a quick de-glaze of the skillet with red wine will extract every last bit of the herbal flavor.
1 lb pork loin
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
1 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tsp fresh sage, chopped
1 tsp fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp fresh oregano, chopped
1 tsp ground pepper
2 tsp salt
red wine
orange for zest and garnish
huckleberry sauce
1. Combine fresh chopped herbs with salt and pepper on a plate.
2. Slather pork loin with 1 tbsp oil and roll in herb mixture until fully coated. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.
3. Pre-heat oven to 400 degree. Heat remaining oil in skillet and brown pork loin. Turn meat carefully. Move pork loin to roasting pan and de-glaze skillet with a splash of red wine; pour over meat. Put in oven for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on taste.
4. Remove from oven and allow to rest 10 minutes. Slice and arrange over bed of grain (rice pilaf in this case). Drizzle generously with huckleberry sauce and garnish with sliced oranges.
A Pinot Noir will drink nicely with the herb-pork-huckleberry trifecta. Now do your best Yogi Bear impression. "Hey Boo Boo!" Accept Oscar. Serves 2.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here at FOTL we have plenty to be thankful for, including wonderful family, food, and foraging grounds. I'd also like to take a moment to thank you, dear reader, for joining me on my trek through wild foodways this past year. The first anniversary draws near.
If you harvested your own cranberries for Turkey Day, I'd like to hear about it. Several species of cranberry are native to North America, including the common cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos) of temperate climates worldwide and the large American cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) of the Northeast, and there's a thriving cranberry industry in a few places around the country as well, notably Cape Cod, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and even my home state of Washington. But I've never actually seen a non-commercial cranberry bog in the wild, not that I've gone looking for one.
A good alternative for us Pac Nor'westerners, if we want to make our own fresh berry sauce for the bird, is the evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), which is still kicking out berries through much of its range at the lower elevations. They say the fruit is even sweeter after a frost. While down in Oregon's Rogue River Canyon a couple weeks ago I munched on these late-season treats while walking the Rogue River Trail and fishing for steelhead.
Making a sweet and savory huckleberry sauce to complement a roast turkey or other meats is almost too easy to be true (like home-made cranberry sauce, for that matter), but you can complicate it with any number of additions, from various liqueurs to spices and whatever else gets your gobble up.
It was supposed to be a jam, but I skimped on the pectin and my parsimoniousness was rewarded with a slightly thinner batch with bounce to it. No matter. The huckleberry flavor is outstanding. Next time I might try adding some lemon rind.
4 cups berries
3 cups sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 package of pectin (whole for jam)
1/2 tsp butter
Mash the berries by the cupful into a sauce pan. Stir in lemon juice and pectin and bring to a boil. Stir in sugar and butter and bring to a boil once more, stirring constantly. Boil for a full minute, then ladle into sterilized jars. Place lidded jars in a boiling water bath for at least five minutes. Yields 5 half-pints of jelly.
While scouting mushrooms in the mountains yesterday, I was reminded of a comment from a professional forager I interviewed this spring. "I always pay for my gas," he said, the point being that foraging is a multi-disciplinary avocation and a good forager is knowledgeable on a wide variety of wild edibles—or, to traffic in cliche, when the gods give you lemons, make lemonade.
The mushroom hunting was certainly a lemon yesterday. After such a good start with all that rain in August, September has been bone-dry. My chanterelle patch is a withered husk of its former self. We need rain badly. Yes, I'm sure there are mushroomers who are finding goodies in wetter micro-climates. That's why I went for elevation yesterday—I figured there might be a little extra precip up there, at least some drip lines from early morning mist.
Not likely. The roads are dusty and the duff is crunchy. Here and there I found the desiccated remains of old fruiting bodies, but otherwise the ground was bare. This was terra incognita for me, mostly a scouting run. I was on the Pacific Crest Trail and saw a total of four other hikers. Crossed paths with two backpackers and asked them how many nights. They looked a little embarrassed. "Five months," one of them finally answered. Right on! I plan to do the through-hike one of these years. Passed an elderly couple out for a stroll. We talked about the poor huckleberry crop this year. The man said it was 10 percent of normal. If that's true, expect to see newspaper stories about bears coming into town and raiding garbage cans. All around us the berry bushes were bare. Then, about two miles into my walk I started seeing them, big beautiful huckleberries like those we found in Indian Heaven earlier this summer.
Forget mushrooms; I screwed on my huckleberry snout.
Poor crop or not, it's prime time for mountain huckleberries in the Pacific Northwest. Get 'em while you can. I love how the sun-exposed bushes turn fire-engine red this time of year.
Tips for Huckleberrying
1. Scout first. Look for patches producing the biggest, sweetest fruit. This will make the picking faster and easier. During my hike I covered about 7 miles and noted all the good patches so I could hit them on my return, at which point I was able to concentrate on chest-high bushes with lots of fruit that didn't require any bending over. I saved my back the trouble and picked faster to boot.
2. Look for open slopes where fire or logging has removed much of the canopy. There is much debate among huckleberry hounds about the conditions that promote the best fruitings. Some evangelize full sun, while others pronounce the filtered light of open old-growth forests to be best. My own findings suggest that it isn't so much the amount of sun or shade but the make-up of the bush. Spindly bushes will often have huge, sweet berries, with all their energy put into the fruit rather than the growth of leaves and stems. Be your own judge.
3. Know your huckleberries. Two of the most common in my neck of the woods are the thin-leaf huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum) and the oval-leaf huckleberry (Vaccinium ovalifolium), also known as the Alaskan blueberry. The former, with its large size and sweetness, is the most commonly harvested huckleberry in the PNW, while the latter is more sour and suitable for jams. Another less common species is the Cascade bilberry (Vaccinium deliciosum). There are more than a dozen species altogether in Washington and Oregon.
4. Two hands are better than one. Wear a jug around your neck. I didn't have one on this trip, thinking I was mushrooming, but I improvised a plastic grocery bag that had contained my lunch, stretching one of the handles until I could fit it over my head and around my neck.
5. Pay attention. Mr. Bear has a stake in the berry brakes too!
Huckleberry Sauce
This sauce is so easy it's criminal—and yet how nicely it tarts up (yeah, rockin' the double-entendres) a grilled fillet of fish or a cut of meat. Really, you can make it however you like, but here's what I did:
Simmered 4 cups of huckleberries with a cup of chicken stock, a cup of sugar, and 3 tablespoons of cider vinegar (several of the huckleberry sauces I checked online call for raspberry vinegar), then poured in a splash of tawny port a couple times, amounting in total to less than a half cup. I mashed half the berries and left the remainder whole. You might try crushed cloves, or white wine instead of port, or lemon zest, really whatever you want to jazz it up. A dab of butter to finish it gives the sauce a glisteny quality. I went for a fairly simple presentation and let the berries speak for themselves.
The sauce turned a fairly innocuous dish of grilled rockfish into something a little more special. The fish I rubbed with curry powder and a few other spices, then grilled. Topped with huckleberry sauce, the sparring between the curry and the berries made for, in Marty's words, an "awesome dinner!" Meanwhile, I've got a couple cups of sauce left in the freezer.
Lowland salmonberries may be long gone, but up in the mountains they're peaking right now. Last week I gathered a few cups above 3,500 feet—enough to make two half-pint jars of jam.
Though not as flavorful as some other Rubus berries such as thimbleberries, blackcap raspberries, and blackberries, salmonberries are gorgeous to look at. Ripened berries vary in color from bright orange to red to purple, sometimes on the same bush. Why this is so is a mystery to me.
I used this jam recipe, with the addition of pectin. Salmonberry jam takes more effort and patience than thimbleberry jam. Unlike thimbleberries, salmonberries don't want to cook down or thicken with sugar. I ended up using a potato masher to speed along the process, and even then the sugar-berry mix was thin and runny. In the end I added a tablespoon of pectin to get a jammier consistency.
It's not quite the delicacy that thimble jam is, but I'll take it. More arrows in the quiver.
