I can't stop buying raspberries. It's something to do with wanting to capture the summer. There's lots of talk about capturing the moment, but I'm not exactly sure how to do it. If I focus too much on each individual moment as a unit of time, it becomes like counting. The only other way I can think of is to do all things deliberately, and try to be genuine, and not zone out. To use all five senses. Raspberries make that easy. They're so red and sweet and soft. Do they smell? Well, they do when you cook them. They don't make much of a sound, but who cares if they're quiet?
I did end up making raspberry jam a couple of weeks back. Pickles, too. It was almost embarrassingly easy. I thought there would be lots of complicated sterilization business involved, but it turns out you don't have to worry about that unless you want jars of preserved food lining your larder shelves. (Not a problem for me since I don't have a larder.) The raspberry jam making went like this:
Wash the raspberries. Dump them in a sauce pot. Add a little sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice. Crush the berries up a little with a fork. Turn the heat on. Stir the jam occasionally. Taste it. Put it in jars. Let it cool, then keep it in the freezer until you're ready to eat it. So simple, don't you think?
Well, if you thought that was easy, wait until you hear how I made the pickles. Basically, you throw some cucumbers into a bowl with water, salt, garlic and dill and wait for them to turn into pickles. Like the jam, these don't last for very long in the fridge (about a week), but we didn't have a problem eating them up before the deadline.
By the way, I got both recipes from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, which I highly recommend.
