Addicted To Golden Berries Growing In The Garden

Growing these in my garden, but they are not as big and as golden yellow/orange as I have seen on ones from South America. Perhaps those are different seeds. I do not know.

These berries do get more golden to tan, but that is all. They range from marble size to smaller. The taste is like a sweet firm tomato with slight fruit flavor ranging from pineapple, peach, to apricot. There is also a sort of after taste which I cannot put my finger on and is the addictive part. These are so addictive. My body wants to keep eating these like there is something important in the berries that my body needs.

Saving some seeds for next year. They are very small.

I have four bushes growing at various stages. This is an area where I have two and they are huge. These plants were the most delicate to grow and I thought they were all going to die. They start out very thin and week, but have grown into very sturdy plants. I call them my mini lantern trees. They are so beautiful.

You can pick these and keep them stored on the counter in their husks. They continue to ripen and the husks dry out. These stay fresh for days. I have not had any go bad yet. Do not mind the bubble. My son wanted to play with bubbles in the garden.

More pics. Have tomato plants, patty pan, hot peppers, tomatillos growing amongst the berries. It is a jungle.

 Tedious to pick, yet so worth it.

So cute.

Yes, more pics.

The bubble gun.

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Tonka and Mijo.

Yeah, after so much rain it was nice to be outside.

It is a jungle in there.

Yum.

Helping hand.

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: )

Dehydrated Beet Chips Recipe

I have been pondering the idea of eating beets for a long time. The first time I tried them was juiced with and apple and maybe a carrot a few years ago. All I could think of when drinking it was that it tasted like dirt and maybe I did not clean the beet enough. My next beet encounter was when I moved to Pflugerville TX. and met up with a friend whom lives in Austin. We had lunch and she had a salad with beets on it. I was curious, she offered me a bite of one. My thoughts kept remembering dirt flavor and I said no thanks.

Beets keep popping up here and there on the net. and in the store in mid summer. They are so healthy and nutritious that there must be at least one way I could tolerate and consume these. I tried making some fermented drink out of a beet and my ferment went bad. It is July and the last few veggie ferments I have tried failed to. Sometimes I fail miserably and mope around for a few days. I had two more beets sitting in the fridge. What to do. I read that the greens are very nutritious and the only way I could sneak that into food was to dehydrate them. Did that and put them in a jar for soup or stew insertion. Saw online that some people were making Beet chips. I thought if they do not work out they can be crumbled into sauces, soups or stews right?

Took out my little porcelain blade mandolin from www.cutleryandmore.com It slices real thin and I wanted the thinnest sliced beets. Sliced my 2 beets real thin and put them on racks. Salted the tops and dehydrated at 135 until crisp. Must warn that the beets did drip a lot of beet juice on the bottom of the dehydrator. It cleaned up with water and paper towels.

Taste test: The first taste was sweet, salty and a dirt after taste. The sweet seemed to dominate just a bit more than the dirt flavor. I was not sure if the salt was even needed at that moment. I found myself looking at how beautiful they are and craving another every time I opened my pantry. The salt flavor is now welcoming and perhaps makes the dirt flavor more of an earthy flavor. Not only do I tolerate these chips, but I like them. They are actually my first successful veggie chip made.

Some people say they make you pee purple. It does not seem the case for me or perhaps I have not eaten enough. I have also read that if you do pee purple that you may have underlying issues and to visit your doctor or that you are just the estimated 15% of the population than cannot beak down and assimilate the so called purple essence itself.