Gogs

I've started eating the green gooseberries (lightly stewed so they retain their shape).  Later on they'll turn ruby red and will be delicious raw but I can't wait, I love goosegogs.

Last week I bought a book in a charity shop all about the history of cultivated fruit and veg. It's fascinating and very amusingly written. Regarding gooseberries it describes the massively competitive attempts to boost the size of the fruit and quotes the poet Robert Southey who wrote in 1834:
The gooseberry growers who show for prizes... thin the fruit so as to leave but two or three berries on a branch; even then the prizes are not gained by fair dealing: they contrive to support a small cup under each of these so that the fruit shall for some weeks rest in water that covers about a fourth part, and this they call suckling the gooseberry.*


 Apparently some of the berries nurtured this way reached 2 oz/50g in weight. Gooseberry shows still exist in the northwest of England and the champion berries now weigh almost 65g. (Perhaps they're on steroids?)

* Could this account for the prudish fib that babies are found under gooseberry bushes I wondered? Oh no - gooseberry bush was 19thC. slang for pubic hair... 

Never stop learning.