Hilla

Today I subjected my pearly white and nerdy skin to all kinds of parasites and bugs. Voluntarily, too. There is a highly elusive and popular berry found in the undergrowth in Finnish forests. It's called a mesimarja, and it's not what we went looking for. Here's a picture of mesimarja anyway, since Boyfriend found some.
The value of these berries is probably something like 5 euros. Super rare.


We went looking for the second most popular berry - cloudberries. In Finland they're known as hilla, lakka, muurain, suomuurain and even valokki. Calling it the wrong name will cause your boyfriend to shout about the berry not being the same as varnish, also called "lakka" (think lacquer).
This is not varnish.

So we piled the dog and Boyfriend's mum in the car and went to the most mosquito-infested place in Finland. Boyfriend has so many mosquito bites on his back that he looks like a burn victim. The dog loves the forest. She bounces around crashing into bushes and chasing mosquitoes. It's really hard to walk there since it's dense forest, so she just bounces forwards and hopes she lands somewhere safe. We suppose.

Luckily for us the rest of Vihanti had either not stumbled across this particular place or else have at least some sense in their head and stayed at home, because we got TONS of berries.
Boyfriend's mum got half a large bucket as well. Look at them all! Look! Here's another picture.

Boyfriend's mum is of an almost militant opinion that the berries should be eaten straight from the forest with sugar and cream. So we did:



But we still have two buckets left. We sorted the berries into perfect, alright and "okay those are for "soup"". I'm making jam out of the "alright" group, but I'm having problems of thinking of something sufficiently scrumptious to make out of those "perfect" berries, since we spent about two hours sweating and being eaten alive in the middle of a swamp-forest. Ideas are welcome :)

P.S I just googled and someone made a toffee-cloudberry swiss roll. Well done, that person.