Very Berry Season

Berry season is here!!!
(And nearly gone, but nevermind... I meant to post this a lot earlier. Oops!)

You can't even begin to imagine the amount of wild berries, including blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries that abound everywhere we go around Jøssåsen. On our day off, when Anne, Eva, Lukas, and I went hiking, we stopped nearly every 10-15 steps to pick and eat various berries. Here I am (above) picking wild raspberries.

Oh, and I must proudly announce that I can name all these berries in Norwegian: blåbær, jordbær, and bringebær. I can name more and even name them in German, but back to the berries....

Aren't these little strawberries just darling? They are cute and taste even sweeter than they look: small and packed with flavor. Who ever said size matters? If you ever come across these tiny strawberries in Norway, don't pass them by; they are amazing.

As are the wild raspberries, which are everywhere. They are smaller than your garden variety but are unbelievably tasty! I love them and could eat them all day and all night. Yum!!!

We picked a lot of berries in just a few hours. Our hands were freckled with blue and red stains. We also ate a ton of them, probably more than half the berries we picked. So much so....

...that we all had blue tongues at the end of the hike. For some reason my tongue was especially blue on one side.

We all had a belly full of berries. As if that weren't enough, we made pancakes with the berries that we had saved and ate them with ice cream for dinner. Could life be any sweeter?

Mid to late-August, berries were everywhere, and everyone, including villagers, picked berries. All kinds of berries. We picked more berries than we could eat and made jam out of the excess berries. Yes, I can now make jam (syltetøy) and juice (saft)! Pretty cool, isn't it?!? I'm quite proud that I have these skills although I wonder if and when I'll ever make jam and juice once I leave Jøssåsen....