Blackberry time is here again – yippee.

The little crop in my garden was sweet and succulent. I probably ate half of them while I was picking and the rest went in to a smoothie with a banana, some almond milk, lucuma and maca powders and some protein powder. Deelicious! Inspired by the berries in my garden I decided an early morning walk in the apple orchards was a good idea.  In the hedgerows dividing each field are plenty of blackberry bushes. I haven’t been here for several years I think.  I used to walk round here most days when Lara was at the village school. I really enjoyed revisiting favourite places again in the early morning sunshine. Hellooooooo blackberries ! There were thousands of them. And some hops growing amongst the brambles.  How very Kentish. In no time at all we had filled our 2 pots so we headed home to use them. I picked a little bit of the hops too to add to a vase of summer flowers. I put one pot in the freezer to use another day.  The second pot was prepared for cooking and a few made their way on to my snack plate with a ripe and juicy peach. Plus some almonds. I took this little vase outside to try and take a decent photo of the flowers and a bee hopped straight on to one of the cosmos. My challenge with photographing this vase is that the ‘arrangement’ is very wide and there are few places in my house clear enough or clutter free to place it.  So I have failed to capture it in detail but have hopefully captured the colours and general prettiness of it. I made a very simple soup for lunch.  Last week I made a stock out of the chicken carcass which has been waiting in the fridge ever since for some inspiration of what to do with it?  Soup, she decided.   I fried up some onion, garlic and celery, added 500g red lentils and 2 litres chicken stock. Plus seasoning.  Very simple and quite delicious. We had a simple lunch to assuage any guilt we had with what followed.  An apple and blackberry crumble.  We had just picked the blackberries and I happen to have a cooking apple tree in the garden so I picked some of those too.

I used a wholemeal flour to make the crumble topping and brown sugar.

Apple and Blackberry Crumble (Serves 6-8)

Ingredients

• 225 g flour
• 75 g butter at room temperature plus 5-10 g for greasing crumble dish
• 100 g brown sugar plus 20 g for fruit
• 5-6 cooking apples
• Punnett of blackberries

Method

• Place flour and butter in food processor and blitz until looking like crumbs OR rub the butter in to the flour with your fingers.
• Add the sugar, combine well with flour and butter and set aside.
• Butter a wide and shallow dish.  Core and roughly chop the apples and place half in the dish.
• Add 10g sugar and half the blackberries.
• Add remaining apples, another 20 g sugar and remaining blackberries.
• Pour on the crumble topping and press gently in to the fruit.
• Bake in the oven at 180 ° C for 40 minutes or until apples are soft.

Served with cream.  Yummy.I think we need some more blackberries!