Out of the Box and On the Road

I am having the hardest time writing this post, I got back from Seattle/Canada on Monday night I am back from a blissful and enjoyable vacation. I had such an enjoyable time hanging out with people I love and eating lots of fun things. Washington during the summer is a glorious time to be visiting, everything is a lush green and people are out and about everywhere enjoying the warmth of the sun. Growing among all the greenery are blackberries, and they grow everywhere. This is such a novel treat to me but they can become an overgrown thorny sweet weed if you let them take over a backyard.

I expected to see super ripe plump blackberries to be ready to be picked and plentiful but because of such a long winter they were just coming into the season there were green berries everywhere. We managed to find a  nice little spot of ripe berries and picked enough to make some blackberry compote. I was given Heidi Swanson's new cookbook Super Natural Everyday and have become totally obsessed with it and what better place to make blackberry compote than in Seattle where the blackberries are wild and free.

This is the shortened abridged version of her recipe. You really could put this on top of anything or just eat it by the spoonful.

2 cups of blackberries

2 tablespoons of maple syrup

2 tablespoons of sugar

 juice from half a lemon

a little salt

Combine one third of the berries along with the maple syrup and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Gently simmer for three minutes. Drain the syrup through a strainer and press down on the solids to get as much of the juice out. I was pretty liberal with this part because I didn't have a fine sieve. Pour the syrup on the uncooked berries adding the lemon and salt. 

Taste and enjoy. We had ours over vanilla ice cream and it was amazing.

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