Wild Raspberries

The first raspberries of the summer arrived just this week, a mounded handful from Judy, my sweetheart (significant other? "spousal alternative"?) who gathered them and brought them to me quietly on a late afternoon. I was just waking (just barely) from a nap induced by the day's merciless heat; the surprise treat she delivered snapped me instantly back to life.

Wild raspberries grow profusely on our property, and like any good weed become more numerous every year, becoming a thick green boundary all about us, filling up the edges and corners of the land. Generally I am the "guardian" of the raspberries, watching and waiting each year for the countless living rubies and garnets to ripen, filling up our refrigerator and freezer, serving them fresh at breakfasts, turning them into countless jars of jams and jellies. In the ten years I have lived on this property, I have been, in fact, the only person who notices and gathers the raspberries, as well as the mulberries, the black raspberries (not nearly so numerous), the fox grapes, etc., or at least as far as I can tell. (I'm excluding our friends Jake and Laura, who moved off the property some years ago.) So the fact that Judy spotted them before I did this year was a sweet irony.

There are moments (more and more numerous lately) in which I feel as though I have given up on myself, on life, in many ways; or rather, I have learned to expect less and less. At times it feels as though I have squeezed my life into a box so small I can scarcely breathe. When it comes to the wild raspberries, however, I am unapologetic and uncompromising, fueled by a greed that borders on lust.

I have done things for them I would do for no other thing or person on earth; I have spent hours gathering them, sweating profusely under a long-sleeved jacket in an attempt to protect my arms from stinging nettles; I have ditched the jacket in frustration, forgetting that in a couple of hours I'll be coating my arms in lotion in attempt to soothe my badly-scratched and stinging skin. When it comes to picking raspberries my amnesia regarding this issue is astonishing.

Last year we enjoyed them fresh by the handfuls for breakfast or a snack; threw them into smoothies (lesson learned - the seeds are annoying in a smoothie); froze them in ziplock bags (I still have one left from last year); topped vanilla ice cream with raspberries and a sprinkle of homemade granola. Primarily, though, I made them into jellies and jams; if there is any task more time-consuming, labor-intensive (and sweaty), this just might be it. Jelly especially so, which Judy prefers to jam or preserves; since I haven't a foley food mill (yet), my other option is to put them in a thin white linen or cotton pillowcase, and squeeze every bit of juice out of them. A good bit of it seems to end up soaking the cloth, not to mention staining my hands and every other surface in sight. I told myself last year, "No jelly, people can eat the seeds and like it!" But I ended up making it anyway. This is the year I get myself that food mill.

My pride and joy was the batch "raspberry-ginger-lime" jelly I invented on the spot. I thrilled with the results, but no one else seemed to favor it; they all preferred the peach or grape. That's all right, more for me. (I still have one jar left.) I think it has a wonderfully "bright" flavor that balanced all three elements, and went equally well on a piece of toast as on a rice cracker with a bit of cheese or coconut cream cheese as an appetizer.

"Did you write down the recipe?" A friend asked recently.

My answer to that was predictable. "No. I was just winging it." And I did truly "just wing it". All I could offer is to take whatever your favorite raspberry jelly recipe is (mine came from a combination of the sheet inside the pectin box and the instructions on the Pick Your Own website), and add freshly-squeezed or bottled organic lime juice, and organic fresh gingeroot, grately finely. Leave out the threads or "sinews" of the ginger (or strain out later), and be sure to put in any juice from the grating process. Do not add the ginger in chunks because the flavor will not come through as strongly.