The trouble with crowberries

We have these berries here called crowberries. They grow in abundance, carpeting the hills and dales, spreading like weeds. They're everywhere, I tell you. The trouble is no one really seems to want them, poor things. They aren't bad necessarily. It's just that they lack oomph. Not so flavorful. A little watery. They have a rather large pit. They're often referred to a 'filler berries,' something to add to more desirable berries to make them stretch.

I made some crowberry/blueberry jam once. It was okay.

But I'll give crowberries they're due: what they lack in flavor they more than make up for in beauty:

Aren't they pleasing to the eye? Shiny and black, just like a crow. Looks like someone spilled their berry bucket, doesn't it? But no, they grow just like that, nestled into short, squat evergreen-like carpet. Their branches trail and creep across the ground and I've seen them completely cover a large boulder, wrapping around it like a green and black sweater.

With the encouragement of Pille at the food blog Nami-Nami, I decided to make this my first ever entry in Weekend Herb Blogging, a project I've been following from afar for quite some time. While crowberries certainly aren't an herb, the loose rules of the event (I do so love a loose rule) allow you to write about any herb, plant, vegetable, or flower. This time around, Weekend Herb Blogging is being hosted by Katie at the blog Thyme for Cooking.

I got to thinking about crowberries the other day when I went on a hike and ended up taking a nap. You heard me -- I took a nap right  there on the mountainside. We'd already been hiking for awhile straight up a valley. We were huffing and puffing away. It was foggy. So foggy you couldn't see the mountaintops -- and we were pretty high up the mountainsides so that was some thick fog to be able to obscure peaks that were right there.

The ski lift, looking a bit spooky in the summer fog:

A rare patch of blue sky emerging from the foggy clouds:

The trail kept going up and up and up and around a mountaintop and the ladies in the group were all for heading straight up it.

That's when my brother threw down his pack and said he was gonna wait right here. Everyone thought that was very peculiar. He said if he was going to climb a trail that steep, he needed a goal, a view, a waterfall. Something. Anything but fog, fog, and more fog. I called him a nancy. Then I asked him what his problem was.

The ladies shook their heads at him and continued on up the trail and my brother called after them, "Looks like Molly's gonna stay here and fling insults at me ."

Yes. Yes I was.

Turns out a foggy mountainside is just the place to take a nap. Of course, I conscientiously asked plenty of questions about whether or not there are tundra spiders and, if so, will they crawl in your hair should you choose to nap on a mountainside.

The napping nancy:

Post-nap is when I really got to thinking about crowberries. I was sprawled on top of a bed of them, after all.

"Too bad we can't come up with something to do with all these crowberries," I told my brother. "I mean, look at all of them."

They were everywhere. I told him perhaps we could harvest them and turn them into vitamin supplements. Perhaps we could make our fortune off of berries that no one else seemed interested in. Someone needs to harness the crowberry!

"We could call the supplements something really snappy," I told my brother. "Like Cancer Cure!"

"That's not funny," he said with mock indignation and then snatched up a big handful of crowberries and flung them in my face.

But it turns out I'm not too far off -- my friend the Internet tells me that crowberries are extremely high in Vitamin C, twice as much as can be found in a blueberry. They have flavanoids and antioxidants. They're sweetest right after a frost. They contain little natural acid. And the Dena'ina people native to this state have used the leaves and stems of the crowberry plant to treat stomach ailments by boiling and straining the plant parts and drinking the liquid left behind as tea. The roots have also been boiled to make a wash to rinse out sore eyes.

After playing a lengthy game of "Now-Try-To-Hit-Me-In-The-Nose-With-A-Crowberry" I couldn't help but notice all the marmot holes dug into the mountainside around us.

Having exhausted the topic of what to do with the crowberry, of course I moved onto other culinary matters and straight to thoughts of, "Can you eat a marmot?"

All this hiking works up a fierce hunger.

Comments

[Pille]

Beautiful, idyllic photos! I cannot help with crowberries, unfortunately. My books tell to use them for cordials (adding sour juice or citric acid and cherry or blackcurrant leaves for extra flavour), or using in pie fillings and muffins. And apparently their flavour is improved by freezing, just like rowanberries..

[Pille]

PS This would be a perfect entry for Weekend Herb Blogging - I'm pretty sure I've never read about crowberries there before:)

[molly]

Great idea, Pille. Thanks for the suggestion!

[KatieZ]

I'd be more than happy to try the crowberries, but the marmots? Eh, I don't think so, we had them in the mountains in Andorra and they looked like they'd be kind of tough ;-)

[Kalyn]

Great post, and welcome to WHB. Never heard of these berries, so I am excited to learn about something new.

[Y]

What beautiful looking berries. They remind me of Jaboticabas. Too bad you can't do much with them, or there'd be a gold mine in them hills! Maybe you could market them as an alternative to Ribena (now that Ribena has been outed as not being all that high in Vitamin C afterall) ....Crowbena?? :)

[Michelle Waclawski]

Since we had such a cool spring & summer this year here on the Kenai Peninsula, blueberries are pretty sparse from what I've heard from all quarters. Last I checked there were still blossoms on some of the blueberry plants in one of my patches. So it was with great excitement that we found some crowberries this past weekend--actually ripe! Jellies and pies are the 2 things I've heard of using them for--and extenders of blueberries. Am perusing google in search of recipes, and found your delightful pics and story. You won't find us tossing them around...too precious! I think the kids would eat them raw in their school lunches!!