MAMA’S WILD BLUEBERRY DUMPLINGS

There was a “bay” as we called it, a natural water way a small shallow pond with deep gulleys from one pond to another. Around the Bay grew wild blueberrys. They were 5 ft. tall and the berries were as large as your thumb. Every year, we would take our tin buckets and go blueberry picking- -then mama would make blueberry pies and once every season a batch of blueberry dumplings.

Mama would make these dumplings from the wild berries. She always had a few yards of cheesecloth and she used a large piece of the cloth cut in a square. She would make a rich biscuit dough and roll it out, and cut it into rounds that would hold 2/3 cups of the berries sweetened to taste, place the dough on the cheese­cloth and tie with a clean string and drop in boiling water and cook until done. Then she would serve it with fresh cream and more sugar if needed. We also picked wild blackberries by the dish pans full. We’d get our hands all scratched up and red bugs would bite if we forgot to put kerosene around our knees and everywhere to keep the redbugs away. Also there were wild plumbs that we would gather and she made plum jelly. We enjoyed picking berries
and gathering plums every summer.