Berry Berry Good to Me

While we wait for the apples to ripen at our Wisconsin "orchard," there are other fruits to enjoy in the meantime. In a shady low spot by the falling-down big old willow, near a charming feature we call "The Troll Bridge," we found a nice patch of raspberries, both black and red. We came out to camp for the weekend last month, planning on pancakes for breakfast, with maple syrup and a garnish of fresh berries picked before the dew was dry.

We weren't even across the river from Minnesota into Wisconsin when we realized we had forgotten to pack the maple syrup. We had to stop for gas and ice en route, so we picked a gas station/convenience store that I knew stocked a certain amount of local products (mainly beer). But when I asked the friendly man behind the counter if they had maple syrup, he wasn't sure. He asked a young woman who was stocking shelves about it, and she said, yes, they sure did, and she pointed out a shelf where proudly there stood the rotund, iconic figure of...Aunt Jemima. In plastic.

It only took me a second to realize how insulated one can become in the world of real, local foods, that I could almost forget that that sort of product still exists--forget that for many, many people, maple syrup and "pancake syrup" are synonymous. From Auntie J's own website , here are the ingredients of her syrup: CORN SYRUP, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WATER, CELLULOSE GUM, CARAMEL COLOR, SALT, SODIUM BENZOATE AND SORBIC ACID (PRESERVATIVES), ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL FLAVORS, SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE. (I have to say, that's even worse than I expected.)

So I don't really think I was being awfully snobby when I decided to skip the Aunt Jemima's and think of another way to sweeten and moisten our 'cakes. (Oh, and by the way, the ingredients of maple syrup are...never mind.)

About as quickly as the Aunt Jemima anti-epiphany occurred to me, I also knew how to save our breakfast. So after a kind of a crazy Saturday night, during which our normally quiet neighbors down the valley enlivened the evening with a family reunion that included a full-on fireworks display and all-night volleyball tournament (no kidding), we arose in the still and quiet morning, had a quick cup of coffee and went a-berrying.

The red raspberries were at their peak, but not terribly abundant. The more prolific "black caps" were just starting to come in, but we managed to pick a pint or so, and then it was back to camp to make syrup. I had never made berry syrup before, but from past jam-making experience I knew how to make berry juice, which I figured we could boil down to not-quite-jam and have a lovely syrup. With no strainer on hand, dealing with the seeds presented the only major obstacle, but Mary came up with the solution--a sturdy paper-towel-like product that made an ideal jelly bag.

So we took a little more than a cup of berries, I suppose, added water just to cover, and cooked it over low heat until the berries were broken down, around eight minutes, I imagine. We poured the cooked berries into the cloth and squeezed out the juice--ouch, it was hot, I should have let it cool a while, but we were hungry. To that juice I added a couple of tablespoons of sugar and cooked that gently until it started to thicken and coated the back of a spoon.

If you wanted to do a little backwoods tattooing or tie-dying, you could do worse than raspberry juice.

We were able to resurrect the fire from the previous night's ashes, and we sliced up some of our home-smoked bacon and cooked it slowly in the cast-iron skillet. Mary made up her excellent pancake batter. We were ravenous by the time the first batch of pancakes came out of the skillet, so no food styling here, just good food as local as it gets.





The red raspberries were tart but incredibly fragrant, the black caps sweeter but less intense; together they made a beautiful, delicious syrup. The ingredients of our raspberry syrup: Raspberries, water, sugar. That's a little more complicated than maple syrup, but less time-consuming to make. We're don't usually tend to repeat meals, but we had the same thing for breakfast the next morning. It was just as good, even without an all-night volleyball match as prelude.

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw