It's Blackberry Time

Yesterday after church I picked blackberries at my Mother's house. There are tons of them. It's a really good berry year in south Louisiana. I hope it's a good berry year out west. You know, so the bears don't attack. They killed off all the black bears in Louisiana so no need to worry about that here. :( Side note: They are attempting to re-establish them in a corridor around Lafayette. But if we did have bears they'd be as happy as me.


Today I grabbed a bucket, jumped on my cool Cannondale mountain bike, rode down the levee a few miles to my previous scouted out berry patches and was rewarded with quite a few more berries to add to those I picked at my Mom's.

So now we get fresh berries to eat until we're sick of them, blackberry cobbler and blackberry jam.

Here is my solar oven baked cobbler. It baked just fine in the solar oven and tasted yum, yum, yummy. I did open the oven several times and wipe the moisture off of the glass. As you can see, it did brown. (I also cooked a pork loin in the solar oven today. The temps are rising. It was 84 degrees today.)
Fresh berries in the pot ready to turn into jam!
18 cups of berries and 9 cups of sugar yielded 4 and 1/2 pints of blackberry jam. Here are the four processed jars. The half jar is in the fridge to eat now and in the morning. Fresh blackberry jam is so delicious. If you want to learn to can, buy the Ball Blue Book on canning. It has pretty much all the info you need. Canning is really easy. Except for waiting for the mixture to cook enough to gel. You have to stir continuously for about an hour. It is a great workout. Keeps the flab off the underside of the arms. :)

Here is the cobbler recipe I use. It's easy to remember.

Cobbler:

1 stick of butter

1 cup of self rising flour

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of milk (I use about 3/4 cup of milk)

Fresh fruit and another cup of sugar

Melt butter an pour in the bottom of medium pyrex dish or such like. Mix flour, sugar and milk. Drizzle mixture in pan over butter. Sprinkle with fresh fruit. Then sprinkle 1/2 a cup to 1 cup of sugar over that and pop into the oven. Bake at 350 degrees until golden. Serve hot with vanilla ice cream. So good.