Evanston Farmers Market Report....

....slept in this morning, got there at noon-ish, and walked out with an incredible amount of stuff for next to nothing - flowers mostly, and LOTS of them (19 bucks bought me 45 peony stems and three generous bouquets of butter-coloered Asiatic lilies) - but the Score du Jour offers me a challenge. I now have six pints - Six! - of perfect black raspberries. Now, you all know as well as I how fast raspberries go south. I've earmarked some for vinegar-making, and will freeze some, and I have all the necessaries on hand for making 9 half-pints of jam, but I want to experiment with the rest. It's not often one gets this much of a hard to find and delicate fruit to play with...any ideas?

(I want to keep the vinegar a pure raspberry distillation for now; I bottle my fruit vinegars with my home-grown herbs later in the process. A dandy building block for way good eats....)

I have made a very intensely flavored sorbet and a puree that I've used for lemonade. In my opinion, black raspberries are best used after straining. I love raspberries and they are even too seedy for me to eat out of hand.

hmmmm...sorbet, with a nice little slug of Chambord added at the end of the churning to boost the flavor and smooth out the ice crystals? Heaven!

Good suggestion. Thanks!