Big, Fat Sausage Finger Blackberries

This is NOT my creepy hand.

Good grief, if there's one thing in my backyard that produces more food than we can eat, it's our  blackberry bushes. We have one Triple Crown thornless blackberry bush that produces immense, phallic looking blackberries. They aren't the sweetest things but, then again, maybe it's because I'm always just so excited by their big, black juicy ginormousness that I get flustered and pick them too early.

We have two other thornless blackberry bushes that aren't quite so prolific and not nearly so intimidating in the size department. I don't remember the variety, but they hold their own and are sweeter and less seedy. Right now, the three bushes are literally covered in unripe berries and buzzing with bees like you wouldn't believe. I'm really tempted to remove one of them and replace it with another of the Raspberry Shortcake plants that I got last year that produces nicely. But, I just can't bring myself to rip one of them out. (Or, for that matter, a few stupid pear trees that are unyielding and need to go.)

We, literally, still have about 5 gallons of blackberries in the chest freezer from last year. My intent was to make blackberry jam during the winter months when it was cold out and a more reasonable time to do some canning, but I just never got around to using all of it. My favorite recipes are Blackberry, Rum and Black Pepper jam and Blackberry, Hatch Chile and Tequila jam so you'd think, with all that liquor, I'd be more inspired to make some jam.

Anyway, sensing the upcoming onslaught of this year's blackberries and my already getting behind in the eating department, I picked a big batch of them yesterday morning and dropped them off at the neighbor's house. This year, I won't be hoarding them. At least, not yet. They were a little tart because I probably picked them too early cause, well, you know.

And, for those of you who believe my brain is permanently lodged in the gutter, I must remind you that I managed to make my way through an entire post on cucumbers yesterday without any salacious comments.