Shakutewa mak Shashapina !! Cloudberries and Dulse !!

 

Mona and Julie - Ann , you both may go directly to the head of the class with the "cloudberry "answer. So it is a hjortron , the Swedish word for cloudberry....... and  you all realize that I am learning Swedish by osmosis so to speak ..... probably due to my intimate proximity to the source !! And should Jim ever come to our house for supper I hereby promise to kill the berries before serving them for dessert. If it were tobacco , Dixxe , it would cost me next to nothing to smoke as I know where to get oodles of this stuff "relatively free "!! Now two days ago I said I would name and explain both items more fully in a separate blog so here goes..... and I am choosing the point form over the  narrative or prose form in what follows.

Cloudberry :

1. Mainly a circumpolar , subarctic berry ..... found especially  in bogs , moors and marshes. The cloudberry grows one fruit to a plant on low bushes roughly 10-12 inches high. The berry is amber-coloured .... made up of several yellow - orange drupelets much the same way as raspberries and blackberries are formed  In  August it even takes on a reddish hue  when over-ripe.

2.I have often gone "berrying "with the Montagnais - Cree - Naskapi peoples of Quebec and the "shakutew " or cloudberry in a big time favourite, The women mix them in with bear and seal grease/fat to make preserves.... and the resulting mixture "äged" is fit for gourmet taste buds only !!! We Québecois have adopted or borrowed the Montagnais word " shakutew " and Frenchified it to " chicouté " for everyday chitchat while reserving our more classical word " plaquebière " for more sophisticated scientific usage.

3. The Newfoundlanders call them " bakeapples " ... and the whys and wherefores are mysterious as to its origins. However , I think it is a simple misnomer based on rampant bilingualism and language contact involving  English and French across the Strait of Belle Isle between Blanc Sablon ( Québec ) and Saint Anthony's ( Newfoundland ). Bake-apple comes  from "baie qu'appelle "...... " berry ( thät one ) calls  " ..........and I'll stop here as the truth is long to discover and certainly  not all that interesting to those who do not study historical linguistic aberrations for a living !! LoL

4.While doing fieldwork in Finnish Lapland during the 1980s among the Saami people I picked and ate my fair share of cloudberries and cloudberry jam . Up there the Finns call it "lakkamarja".... and in any Finnish ALKO store you can buy a bottle of overly - sweet LAKKA  , an after-dinner liqueur....... rather potent in alcohol content.

Dulse:

1.That awful - looking stuff is called "dulse".... a word you'll find in all good dictionaries. Etymologically dulse is a loanword from Irish Gaelic "duileasc"..... a special kind of seaweed found only in certain spots along the North Atlantic coastline........and my very own Bay of Fundy is the top place in the world , especially the rocky shorelines of Grand Manan Island and Deer Island.  Growing underwater and swaying ... pulsating...to nd fro with the waves dulse looks very much from above like moose antlers doing the boogie woogie.At low tide this seaweed is collected . then sundried and sold in most grocery stores and convenience stores....... mainly in and around my hometown , Saint John , New Brunswick.

2. Growing up as a kid it was a must in every household. We never went to Gault's grocery store without my Mom buying a peck bag of dulse. Doctors recommended dulse instead of vitamin pills as a source of iron for the blood. At hockey , baseball and football games the vendor carrying popcorn , peanuts , softdrinks  , etc in the stands also carried little bags of dulse which they sold for a penny each.  Nowadays they ask for a bit more !!  On my last trip to Saint John last Fall I brought back about 6 or 7 giant  bags of dulse ... enough to last me all Winter Fluff hasn't develloped a taste for it yet.....

3. In closing I wish to greet my best buddy , Bill , whose birthday you all helped me celebrate last January 27th and who chickened out of facing up to the challenges of our annual Great White Scourge and who is presently hibernating under the sunny skies of Florida . I know that he is stalking this site , lurking in the shadows..... so maybe this will bring him out of his bashfulness ..... and while I think of it , Bill is my favourite "dulse pusher " likewise......and he could possibly tell you all why I call him this ????