Mamas Old Time Recipe for Wild Blueberry Dumplings

1913-1914

My mother would make these dumplings from wild blueberries.  Take a cheesecloth about six in. square or large enough to hold ½ or 2/3 cup blueberries.  First she would make a crust for a pie and cut it into rounds about six in. or as large as a saucer.  Then fill with blue berries sweetened to taste with sugar.  Put each round on the cheesecloth and tie with a clean string and boil until one in boiling water.  Serve with fresh cream and more sugar if needed.  The blue berries grew wild in the “Bay” accross from our house where the gallberries, palmedows and huckleberries grew on low bushes and were loaded with berries but we never picked them as the blue berries were so much better.  They grew as tall as mamma and the berries were large as the end of your thumb.  Ever year we always picked all the wild fruit for Mamma to can.  Plums, blackberries, the red-bugs were bad but before we went out we put kerosene on our legs and cloths – if you did that you seldom got many red-bugs.  The land where the berries grew was damp with a flat pond in the bay that had water in it almost all the year.  Befor everone got grass in their yards we would get gall-berries bushes to sweep the yards clean.  Our yard had all kinds of old fashion roses in it, also a lavender bush, a “dew-drop” bush and lillys – spider and cand stripe.  The fence was picket. in it, also a lavender bush, a “dew-drop” bush and lillys – spider and cand stripe.  The fence was picket.