Autumnal treasures

I don’t know about you but I am a real lover of Autumn, especially those Autumnal treasures. I think Spring and Autumn are my favourite seasons and I’m always pleased to see the start of September. It feels more like the start of the year to me than January, I guess that’s in part due to the back to school feeling that I had both as a child and as an adult when I worked in early years. One of my fondest memories of my children growing up and my own childhood is blackberry picking season, the children would spend hours after school in the park next to their school picking blackberries, eating more than they collected and ending up with purple hands and faces. It was always such a joy to me that they were freely available and in abundance up and down the hedgerows, they literally grow anywhere they can. I also have the fondest memories of baking apple and blackberry crumble with my Mum, she loved baking, mostly because she had 3 hungry teenagers to feed, so baking and making food from scratch was the cheapest option for us. But those Sunday afternoons spent baking in the kitchen with her fill me with a warmth of feeling that just isn’t replicated anywhere else. I spend very little time baking these days, something which I’m aiming to change over the Autumn and Winter months. 

Slowing down

Taking the time to pick the blackberries and then bake or make with them, is such a wonderfully slow process, that it really helps me to appreciate things. A blackberry and apple crumble was always a staple recipe in my Mum’s repertoire of baking. Apples from a neighbour’s apple tree or from the greengrocers, with blackberries from the hedgerows, such a simple dish, that I don’t even use a written recipe, I tend to just chuck stuff in and make it to taste. I’m sure there are some fabulous recipes out there to follow but for me I would just chop up as many apples that fit in the pan with a bowl full of blackberries, adding some brown or demerara sugar to taste. For the crumble I’d mix plain flour with butter (or vegan alternative) and some sugar, using fingers to rub together softening the butter and mixing with the flour and sugar. I think it’s how my Mum used to cook, tweaking things to taste, making it sweeter or more sour depending on who was going to do the eating! I love the tactile nature of this dish, as it feels like you’re part of it.

Blackberries are rich in antioxidants which is probably one of the reasons we’ve been eating them for 100s if not 1000s of years! In a busy world where we have little time to stop and pick the blackberries, I’m slowly learning that there’s a magic in the little things and stopping to pick the blackberries once a year is one of them.

Top tip

Blackberries can be frozen from picking, so a top tip would be to pop them in a freezer bag and put them straight into the freezer for cooking up or using when you need them.