Blueberry-Blackberry-Gooseberry Grunt

I've mentioned that berries rarely are made into anything in our house and are instead eaten au naturel, but we have a plethora of frozen blueberries so I tried making Vegan Yum Yum's Blueberry Grunt a couple weeks ago...it was a total fail.  I mean we actually had to compost some of it.  I asked my sister to try it and she gagged and couldn't swallow.  The kids ate the fruit, but the dough part was really inedible.  This is Vegan Yum Yum we are talking about so I was sure it was something I did wrong.  As far as I know, I've never eaten a grunt before, but I've had cobbler and I knew this is not what it should taste like.  First, I used white whole wheat flour which is my flour of choice and I use it instead of all purpose flour all the time with excellent results, but maybe it added to the bitter taste of my grunt.  We also buy our baking soda and baking powder in similar Bob's Red Mill bags so I may have put baking soda in for baking powder.  That would probably account for the bitter taste.  I also cooked it the 20 minutes, but it was too long.  All of these things aligned in such a way that I was left defeated.

Thursday I went to the Farmers Market on Historic N. 1st St. with the kids and picked up some black berries (among other things).  See Dema above, very happy to be carrying some of our market loot to the bikes.  The kids ate their fill at the library after the market and I still had a few left over.

The week before I picked up gooseberries.  I wanted to do something special with the gooseberries since they remind me of my maternal step-grandmother (my biological grandmother died of a heart attack at 52 when I was too young to remember her) who loved gooseberry pie.  Grandma Mary was diabetic most of the time she was in my life and she had an amazing sweet tooth and gooseberry pie seemed, to my young mind, to be my grandmother's obsession.  I was an extremely picky eater in my youth and don't think I ever let a slice of gooseberry pie pass my lips, much to Grandma Mary's disdain and frustration (I wouldn't put a worm on a hook and felt sorry for the fish when they were caught on those frequent summer days at their lake cabin, which was also the source of much eye rolling and grumbling from my fisher woman grandmother.  Too bad she did not live long enough to be annoyed at my veganism, it was bad enough for her when I stopped eating mammals.)  As much as my grandmother never really understood me, I do have fond memories of being at her house and the many cousins her marriage to my grandfather brought into my life and being surrounded by home-cooked food, billiards, playing cards, swimming in the lake, riding in the boat, etc.  Thus, the gooseberries caught my eye and I knew I had to buy them.  Josie, of course, ate many of them while I was paying the farmer, discussing the origin of gooseberries, and how to prepare them if they didn't all get eaten before we arrived home.  I ended up putting some in a green smoothie, at Josie's request so I didn't have enough left for a pie.

Last night, I decided to try the grunt again and added the blackberries and the few gooseberries I had left to the frozen blueberries.  I used all purpose flour that was in the back of my freezer (we rarely use it) and made sure to grab baking powder, not soda.  Everything came together nicely and the grunt was a success!  My sister was here to have some so her first grunt experience wouldn't leave a bad taste in her mouth.  I topped it with a little vanilla rice cream and everyone was happy.  I think even Grandma Mary would have approved.