Botanzing

Crowberries

According to Walker, the ripe berries are good added to muffins. Use fresh or frozen, or cook with sugar and lemon juice to serve with ice cream or custard. Mix with blueberries to give it more flavor. It is good made into jelly or jam. Fermented black crowberry juice makes a sparkling white wine. Its flavor also improves after frost. The Dene of Slave Lake gathered these berries to relieve thirst when no water was available. Samuel Hearne, writing in 1795, explains the origin of a local Indian NAME for this fruit. "It is also the favorite repast of the gray goose, which is why Indians called it "Nishca-Minnick" or gray gooseberry. Juice makes pleasant bevorage although seeds detract from the fruit itself."

Sources:

"Wildflowers of Churchill and the Hudson Bay Region," Karen L. Johnson. (published by Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature, in 1987)

Harvesting the Northern Wild, Marilyn Walker, The Northern Publishers, Box 1350 Yellowknife, NWT X1A 2N9, 1984;

Harvest" TheAmerican Indian Ethnobotany Database

The Flora of Churchill, Manitoba 7th edition, 1991 by Peter A. Scott, Dept. Zoology, U Toronto 25 harbord Street, Toronto, Ontario CA M5S 1A1

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