I’ve not read the “Twilight” books nor seen the movie, but we were clearly in Twilight Territory a few weeks ago when we visited La Push and Forks on the Washington coast, if the vampire coffee, vampire candy, vampire t-shirts, and the myriad of signs advertising Twilight tours, souvenirs, and photo ops were any indication.

Thousands of years before Bella and Edward arrived, however, the The Northwest Coastal Indians were noshing on salmon and berries, and that’s what we preferred, too.

Thimbleberry (photo: Gardening-for-wildlife.com)

My sister’s house on Bainbridge Island, a few hours inland, provided us with a wide variety of native berries as well as her cultivated raspberries, too.  The red huckleberries were ripe in the woods, so we picked and picked and PICKED them until we had enough of the tiny jewels to make a single pie.

I had never sampled a thimbleberry before, but we threw a few of those into our buckets too.  Eating a thimbleberry is a little like eating a piece of wet felt, but the taste is extraordinary — sweet and rose-fragrant, like the best of raspberries.

It is a summer tradition of my family in the Pacific Northwest to make pies out of whatever berries we manage to pick, and a year or so ago I discovered the best berry pie recipe to date.  The berries are hardly cooked so they taste as fresh and sweet as can be.  As an added bonus, you can make this pie in a rental cabin that has no oven, if you purchase pre-baked pie crusts.

Summer Vacation Berry Pie

• One pie shell, baked (make your own, or buy one.  We even tried a graham cracker one by mistake, and it worked.)
• Enough fresh berries to fill the pie shell.  (Use any combination you like.  You can add other fresh fruit as well to help fill it out if not enough berries.  Sliced, pitted peaches are GREAT! )
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• pinch of salt
• 3/4 cup water

Make/bake pie shell, if not using a purchased one.

Rinse and pick over the berries.  Mash some of the berries (1/2 cup or so) and set aside. 

Combine sugar, cornstarch, salt, water, and mashed berries in a saucepan, and heat over low heat for 10-15 minutes, until slightly thickened.   

Fill baked pie shell with fruit, pour the sugar mixture evenly over fruit, and chill for a few hours.