Black and Blue

This morning after breakfast I went straight back to bed and slept until 10:30 or so. Then I went outside with Penny. We tramped through our woods a little bit, and I found a couple of patches of moss. The moss was sporting its spore caps, so I took several pictures. This is the best one:

Moss Spore Caps

We had some errands to run, so all of us got in the car and went to lunch first. Then we went to the church where Jonathan and I fiddled with the computer network while Va did some photocopying for her Sabbath School class.

While Jonathan was working on the computer, I thought I might go outside and look for things to take pictures of. To my surprise, I found a wasp of some sort. It was above 40 degrees outside, so maybe I shouldn’t have been too surprised. It was a sluggish wasp though. I have not yet determined the species, but here it is:

Winter Wasp

After we got home, Va asked me if I was going to ever bake the pie I had been talking about. Last fall Beth and I spent a lot of time picking tiny amounts of blueberries and blackberries. I guess three or four tablespoons at a time. But each time, I would pop them in a bag (or a plastic container) with the rest of them, and stick them in the freezer. I ended up having maybe enough to bake a pie. So I whipped out the cookbook to see how one would go about baking a pie.

A blueberry pie requires a top crust. I had asked Va to buy me a crust, and she did, but it was only a bottom crust. So I decided to try my hand a crust making too. Maybe it came out OK – we’ll see. I sure didn’t come out pretty, but that was because I couldn’t roll it out into a round enough shape (the top crust that is). I settled for sort of a patchwork top crust.

Then I turned my attention to the filling. It called for five cups of blueberries. I didn’t think I had five. I dragged them out of the freezer and measured them: 2 cups. Then I measured the blackberries: 3.5 cups. And I decided right then and there to make a black and blue berry pie.

I looked for a blackberry pie recipe too, just to see how different it was compared to blueberry. They didn’t have a blackberry recipe, but the did have a raspberry recipe. Same genus! I figured, “close enough!” Actually, some of my blackberries were dew berries, but you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference just by looking at the berries. Anyhow – the raspberry pie recipe was almost identical to the blueberry recipe, so I chalked that up as a win. Of course… I haven’t tasted it yet, so perhaps I should reserve judgement?

Black and Blueberry, Dewberry Pie