Mary makes lingonberry cream

– Blueberries and lingonberries; that was our daily jam. Raspberries and currants was only eaten in the weekends because there weren’t that many of those berries. Mary Johanne Pedersen from Skibotn makes lingonberries cream.

In the autumn, berries are picked. Lots of berries. Plastic had not been invented, so we had the berries in what they called an eighth barrel. They were made of wood. We boiled the berries without sugar and stored them in barrels like this. The barrel was in the outhouse and we got jam from there. We didn’t have so much sugar that we could sugar everything in one barrel, so we sugared as much as we needed. There was jam all year round. We never discovered mold or yeast in them.

Lingonberries cream

Here we take three egg whites to one and a half cups of sugar and half a liter of lingonberries. Whip egg whites and sugar until stiff. Then you pour the berries in, and then you just continue to whip until it turns a nice pink colour. Now you can make “troll cream” all year round. We had troll cream when the lingonberries were ripe in the autumn. We got eggs for the troll cream from our own hens. I think of those hens: They were so pretty, they were speckled with all the colors. I don’t think I saw a white hen before the war. We called them Italians, the white hens.

Now that I think about our childhood, I never had negative thoughts, even though there was a lot to do. But I will say one thing: You never saw people who were angry and dissatisfied. I have thought about that a lot. They were satisfied with what they had, and happy. But not everyone was equally well off. It probably wasn’t.

From the book “Syv sorter – stories from the kitchen bench” produced by the Center for Northern People in collaboration with Reni Jasinski Wright.