It was one of those days where my mind took me off in a different direction. I had this desire for a PB&J sandwich.
OK - nothing unusual about that.
Except I had this urge for blackberry jam.
Fresh blackberry jam. Real fresh blackberry jam.
Maybe it had something to do with it being blackberry season.
Nope - not going to the grocery store.
Nope - not going to a blackberry farm.
I'm going to get me some fresh wild uncaged, free-range blackberries.
So ... anybody that knows the Virginia Tidewater country ... I lived in Williamsburg and decided to pick blackberries at Battery Winslow* on the Eastern Shore.

So off I go.

Not sure what the ratio of eat-on-site and take home is/was ... something more than 1:1 ... but eventually I had enough blackberries in a pail to take back with me.

Well - more than enough as it turned out; I didn't bother looking at a recipe until I was ready to get down to some serious cooking.

Not paying attention, I used a full recipe.

4 cups blackberries
1-2 cups sugar
Tablespoon cornstarch
dash of lemon juice

Mash the berries with a masher.
The recipe didn't say anything about cleaning the berries ... they were clean enough to eat off the vine ...
I did wash them.
Stir in sugar
Mix in cornstarch
Boil the mixture for about 15 minutes.
Let cool ½ hour then refrigerate until stiff - maybe another ½ hour.

Construct sandwich in usual manner.

Enjoy your sandwich.

(eechhh, spit. what is in this?)
Oh. Sticks and seeds that we don't needs.
Oh-h-h ... CLEAN the berries.

But it was a fun day anyway. And that's what counts.
I made another PB&J with store-bought jam ...

*Battery Winslow was part of the WWII coastal defense system on the US east coast. It had two 16" guns and was built in the 1940s and active 1943 - 1948. Another source tells me that the site was built in 1917 for WWI. Anyway, built of earth-covered concrete and steel, the battery is now overgrown - or was when I was there - but the concrete foundations are still in place. It's now part of the "Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wild Life Refuge"

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