SERIES: Gathering vs. Buying – Blackberries

We love Summer for an endless list of reasons.  One of the big ones is Summer is harvest and Summer is abundance.  All throughout history, before our supermarkets had global reach and fresh produce became available year-round, Summer was the busiest season of the year and it bustled with the activity of not only harvest but also food preservation.  Food sources are available in the Summer and the goal then was to put up a years’ worth of food items when they were available for harvest.  This is a good way to live.  What you’re eating year-round shifts to what’s available, either in the form of preservation from previous seasons, or what is locally fresh and available in season.  I don’t do this completely today, but I aspire to.

One of the ways to take advantage of this abundance and manage your budget simultaneously is to jump on opportunities when seasonal items are available at a fraction of the cost or even for free if you’re willing to do the work of gathering versus buying.  Blackberries are a great example of this.  Ever notice that blackberries are expensive at the store?  They’re a delicious berry for adding to your yogurt in the morning, making a quick berry cobbler for a dessert to accompany a meal, or turning into jam.  They’re everywhere in the Pacific Northwest and they’re free!  Summer affords us the opportunity to put up as many blackberries as we want.  At the end of this post, I’ll share a few tips I’ve found helpful for preserving blackberries.

Gathering and preserving food takes time and it may not be worth your time if you don’t enjoy the work.  It’s not for everyone.  But for many of us, there’s something innate inside of us that loves the process of preserving food and even more so when there’s a limited season that the food is available, the food you procured was of high quality, or the food is something that you’ll use a lot of in your kitchen and cost you nothing other than time.  These are great motivators for us to get our food preservation game going.  In this series, I’ll share a few more food items I’ve been able to gather versus buy, which means all it cost me was time.

Back to the blackberries.  Here are a few tips:

• Taste: Taste before you pick – make sure that what you’re spending your time gathering is worth it.  Ensure they’re ripe and flavorful.
• Pick: I find using a large plastic container with a lid works great – something like an old yogurt container.  The bigger the better.
• Soak: Once you get home, put the berries in a large bowl or vessel full of water and soak for a few minutes.  This will rinse them without destroying the delicate berry and get all the little bugs to float to the surface.
• Portion: I like to portion the berries into 4 cup packages as that allows me to make a quick berry cobbler when needed.
• Pre-freeze: After portioning, I place them into a labeled food saver bag and freeze before I seal it.  This will prevent the vacuum sealing from sucking all the juice out of the berries while it seals the bag.  You can also distribute the berries among a sheet pan on a sheet of parchment, freeze and then place the berries in a plastic bag for freezer storage.
• Seal & Freeze: Once adequately frozen, I’ll seal the bag and place it in a drawer of my freezer dedicated to berries.