The Best Kind of Idiots
It all started with a parcel in the mail. This parcel contained hundreds of eggs, and some tiny black specks that were already humping around, baby silkworms. Our tree had next to no leaves on it, so we had a dilemma. In the end a question on a local Facebook page fixed it. Someone told us off a huge mulberry tree that grew at the end of a fairly run down street and it did not belong to anyone.
So we drove through town and found the tree, full of leaves and also millions of green mulberries and quite a few red ones. We took a bag of leaves home for the "Hump Hump's" as my little sister calls them. Sadly we decided there were just way to many silkworms..... well sadly for them, but not so sadly for my chooks who got to eat about two thirds of them.... and we still have a wriggling mass of them....
Next time we went to get more leaves we ended up putting mulberries in the leaf container and finding another bag for the leaves. The time after that we brought an ice-cream container to put them all in, the mulberries it is..... well at least the ones we did not eat.
Under the covering of leaves is a jungle of branches. I stuck fairly near the ground, but my sisters had other plans. To give you an idea I heard Jane saying, "I will get this one or die!" So she swung on a branch with one hand, or some such mad thing, just to get a mulberry.... The weirdest thing I did was stand on the edge of the car bonnet to get high enough to reach some particularly juicy mulberries that had been looking down at me from just farther up than I could reach. I only almost fell of the car about five times trying to reach farther.....
Needless to say Jane did not die, we got a lot of mulberries.... and there was a fair bit of chanting, "The best kind of idiots, are idiots with a mulberry pie...." I also mentioned that I really did not wish to be driving anyone to hospital..... and luckily I did not have to....
Our hands got covered in dark, purple juice as we picked. I took this photo of Jane's hands after she had been scrubbing them with a green mulberry for a while. My hands had so much juice on them they were dripping... blood.... like I had murdered someone.... someone who had purple blood instead of red.
Then we took the berries home and the de-stalking began. That in my point of view is the worst part. (maybe other than being willing to die for a mulberry).
Jane (the master pie maker) had already made a pastry, but added a bit to much water. Meaning it decided to be a little softer than a rock.
Eventually the Master Pie Maker got the pastry flat enough to be pastry and not bread, or rock. Then we cooked it.
It is a pity that one cannot really describe the smell of mulberry pie that has just been pulled from the oven. But let me tell you it is one of the most delicious smells there is.
We ate it for dessert with ice-cream. And we all liked it so much that the next time we got leaves and mulberries the Master Pie Maker had to make another. So I was also inspired to make something, a little less impressive but with a lot more mulberries. You shall have to wait for a future post to find out what that is. For now I shall just leave you with your mouth watering over this pie, that I have already eaten.
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11 comments
IWA MP (Idiots With A Mulberry Pie) is a good song... And mulberry pie is even better (Particularly my mulberry pie). :D
ReplyDeleteYes of course... it is... and so is not dying for a mulberry.
DeleteI didn't even nearly die actually...and if I had there'd be no more pies and that'd be sad (for you, not me, 'cause I'd be dead). :)
DeleteOooooh yum! That looks (or should I say 'looked'?) delicious.. I will have to try and convince Mum to maybe help me make one, that's for sure!
ReplyDelete( P.S That tree looks awesome :D )
Oh yes you should I'm sure you could look up a recipe or Jane could give you hers... which I think she just found on the internet... but I could be wrong. But they are soo good!
DeleteOh yummy! My Mommy, Sisters, and I make Mulberry cream pie every year, a plus about that recipe is you don't have to de-stem the berries!
ReplyDeleteThat Mulberry cream pie sounds nice too! We have also made a mulberry and crab apple pie once, with some crab apples we grew... most years the birds get nearly all of them though.
DeleteWow, this brought back memories! I haven't had mulberry pie in years. My family used to have an abundance of mulberry trees so we ate pie or cobbler/crisp often. We moved away from that house eight years ago and I haven't had one since! Looks delicious!
ReplyDeleteOh, and since you were mentioning doing dangerous things just for a few mulberries--once my dad had my brother climb up in the raised tractor bucket so that we could get the high berries. All was well and good until a branch bumped a lever and darling brother tumbled ten or fifteen feet. Thank God he was only knocked unconscious and we did not have to take him to the hospital.
What are you raising silk worms for?
That is quite a fall, it is such a blessing he was not more hurt though!
DeleteWe are not raising the silk works for anything more than pets really. But as we fed another half of them to the chooks yesterday, maybe for chook food... They are meant to be good for them, well for the chooks.
When Mom was little, they had a huge old mulberry tree. She's told me before about how she and her next younger sister would almost live in that tree over the mulberry season, eating to their heart's content. :) She said they often made mulberry pie, but never de-stemmed them--they thought it wasn't worth it to do that since the mulberries are so soft. So they ate stems and all.
ReplyDeleteLooks delicious--it's been at least six years, probably more, since I last had any mulberries!
Blessings,
Esther
learningresourcedirectory.com
Oh that does sound nice, Jane wanted to transplant the tree to our place so she could do that too... but we do have two mulberry trees of our own, but it will be many years before they are big enough to sit in without the branches probably breaking.
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