Mulberries

[iliachenvaar]

The mulberries around here are apparently ripe. Every so often, you'll be walking along and find the ground is covered in dark purple blotches, where the fruit fell to the ground and people stepped on it. Sometimes there are birds pecking at them. Occasionally I think about plucking the fruit off the trees and eating them myself, but I never

Comments

[botanicalmoment]

A lot of municipalities hate fruit trees because they think it makes a mess - and with mulberries, I kind of have to admit they have a point. But I think the benefits of having viable fruit trees outweigh the disadvantages, and they're certainly more interesting and useful than those damn Bradford pears.

Cobblers are easier than pie, in my opinion, just because you don't have to roll out the crust - just put the berry mixture and the crust mixture into the pan and stick it in the oven. If you can do pie, you can totally do cobbler. Trust me.

Oh, and mulberries really don't keep well in the fridge - more than four days and they start getting moldy, as I found out the hard way. So if you do decide to collect them, I would wash them IMMEDIATELY when you get home and either cook/eat them on the spot or put them in the freezer for later. I spend a lot of times picking out the stems, since I think they would get in the way of jam, but you may or may not care about them in something like cobbler. I may end up just using my food mill and making jelly instead of jam, just because it takes so much time. We'll see how it turns out.