Raspberry Heaven

My 16-year-old pondering the mysteries of the raspberry

After many years of trying to grow raspberries, this year we hit the jackpot. We're getting tons of raspberries and we might even be getting sick of them--especially picking them! We have a couple of different varieties and the most prolific produces fairly small berries so it can take a while to pick them.

Today's harvest--we have to pick almost every day to stay on top of it.

To freeze them, I spread them on a cookie sheet on wax paper and stick them in the freezer for a few days.

Then I put them in a Ziploc bag and put them back in.

We eat some of them but mostly I freeze them and make jam. Raspberry trifle is an especially delicious dessert and I might try homemade raspberry ice cream sometime soon. I don't remember having them when I was growing up so I don't love the fresh raspberry taste as much as some people do. Lots of sugar helps. We also do smoothies. My husband grew up in Washington state where they consider raspberry bushes to be weeds. I think all that rain makes them kind of invasive. I don't know why our bushes are so prolific this year--maybe we're giving them more water. But we'll enjoy them all year long.

Freezer jam is really popular at our house and we go through a lot of it--it's hard to have enough freezer space for all of it.

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