In this photo you can see ripe cowberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea), also known as lingonberries (and foxberry, mountain cranberry, lowbush cranberry, and partridgeberry). I have been collecting several kilograms of these lovely berries the last few days. I use cowberries mainly as jam or compote accompanying meat dishes, especially game meats. They have a tart taste so they are perfect with meat.

In old times, when people didn’t have a freezer, cowberry was used as a natural preservative because of their high content of benzoic acid. It was mixed with other berries, like cloudberry, to make the berries edible throughout the winter.
Cowberry was (and is) an important source for vitamin C, A and some B vitamins.

Our family is pretty much self sufficient with cowberries, but I believe you can buy cowberries at IKEA in rest of the world?

Here is a close up picture of cowberry flowers.

Taken with Olympus E500 digital camera on June 14th, 2007. Click picture for larger view.

Information about the pictures:
Camera: Olympus E-500 digital SLR camera
Focal Length: 35 mm
Lens: Olympus Zuiko Digital 35mm F3.5 Macro
Location: Laupstad (Andørja), Troms in northern Norway

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