'Tis the season... for blackberries!

Sound of a sword hacking into a wooden table: ideas?

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Emily

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Jul 26, 2018
Ireland
We've been gathering blackberries and apples (we had our first blackberry and apple crumble of the season! Many more to come!!) and so being that time of year, thought you might enjoy this too, I could happily listen to Seamus Heaney reading his work all day, every day :)



Blackberry-Picking
BY SEAMUS HEANEY

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
 
Soda bread, takes me back! . My grandmother used to make soda bread when we visited her in Ireland, I loved it.
 
Which part of Ireland @Geoff? It's not made as often now, which is a shame. Mine demolish a whole loaf in no time!!
 
It was Cork, she live just outside of the city. The last lime I was there I must have been about six / seven. I bought some soda bread in a local supermarket here, but it didn't taste anywhere nearly as good
 
I lived in Cork city for a couple of years, great gastronomic delights down there :) Soda bread is really simple to make: you should have a go! Takes about 5 minutes to throw together and 20 in the oven. Life changing!!!
 
Mmm! I have a recipe for whole wheat soda bread that is divine! It's a super simple recipe, and when my kids were little, I'd give them a 1/4-cup measure to my 1-cup measure and they'd each make a quarter-sized loaf to eat all by themselves--they loved it! (and I loved it because it meant more bread for me ;) )

Here, I'm still working through last summer's berry harvest (mostly red currants and gooseberries left at this point). If we're lucky, we'll finish all of last year's frozen fruit before November, when this year's starts to ripen. (If we're not lucky, we'll have to gorge ourselves on fruit come November :) )
 
Such a small world. I had friends in Cork and would go there often (but not for a while). Anyone else remember 5 Go Down to the Sea's 'There's a fish on top of Shandon swears he's Elvis'? :)
 
@Rainbird that's my Saturday morning sorted! Soda bread a la mode! I also remember having ’fadge’, which was also really good too.
 
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Sound of a sword hacking into a wooden table: ideas?

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