Remembering Susann (A serial Story) CHAPTER THREE Susann was my older sister and often far more observant than me. We often walked the dusty roads of northern Minnesota together just for adventure. In her daily walks, Sue discovered vast acres of wild blueberries known only to the squirrels and bears. She would get up early in the morning and bring an empty coffee can with her. Her coffee can was an ingenious device that had two holes punched in the metal at opposite ends, allowing her to thread hemp rope through to make a handle. The handle was long enough so that she could sling it over her shoulder as she proceeded to her nearest find, determined to beat the bears to it. Oh yes, there were black bears in the neighborhood! She would often arrive back home just as we were trying to decide what to have for breakfast. Blueberry pancakes were quickly agreed on, and we set about to make a feast. The area near our home, “near” meaning a radius of five miles, proved to be an abundance of blueberries, wild strawberries, raspberries, juneberries, butternuts and hazelnuts; all of which Sue considered fair game in contention with forest critters. Sue was a patient picker, and the quantities she brought home left us scratching our heads on how to use them all. Wild strawberries have a much more intense flavor than commercial berries; this is true also of the raspberries and blueberries. More tangy, but just as sweet, they were a favorite flavoring for homemade muffins, waffles, jellies, salads, and more. I remember Mom attempting to make a liqueur out of the wealth of raspberries. Sue and I helped her to lay cheese cloth into a giant makeshift funnel, then fill it with the raspberries Sue had gathered that day. The berries were squeezed and crushed by twisting the ends of the cheese cloth, resulting in removing all the seeds (scattered later to sprout), and producing a rich dark juice. She mixed that with water and some Triple Sec and proceeded to bottle it. It looked great and smelled great, and Mom proudly opened her first bottle of her homemade liqueur when friends visited. She was embarrassed when the opened bottle would not pour into a glass. Checking inside, she learned that those rich, sweet berries had enough natural pectin in them to turn anything into jelly! I remember Susann, with mallet in hand, cracking hazelnuts and butternuts on an up-ended firewood log. She patiently extracted the nut kernels to use in baking. Sue made the best butternut pound cake from scratch, and the tiny hazelnut meats (about the size of a small pea) were a staple for her cookies. We thrived with the abundance of food gleaned from the forest, which was a gift from God; our Dad was disabled from World War 2, and we struggled to make ends meet with a recession going on and his frequent bouts of illness. (To be continued…)
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 15:23:17 +0000
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