Last week I was staring at new fruit (see earlier blog post) without really a clue what to do with them.

In the end I decided to treat them like a cross between raspberries and rhubarb and pulled out my generic recipe for fruit crisp, which called for 2 cups of fruit. (Okay, in American terms it called for four cups of fruit, but I don’t have that much oven space, that many pans, nor -as it turned out- that much fruit). All those berries I painstakingly de-seeded or pitted or whatever one does to yamamomo – came out to 1 3/4 cup of fruit to use in my recipe. But, I had nothing else to do with them, other than to make 1 3/4 cup of jam.

No big deal actually. The crumb mixture never makes enough anyway, so no worries there. The fruit mixture itself is thickened and sparingly drizzled on, so no worries there, either.

I took those berries and cooked them. I surrounded them with cinnamon and brown sugar and oats.

Oats.

That’s where I went wrong.

It’s one thing to know there are different kinds of oats. It’s another thing not being able to read the package. They looked like rolled oats rather than steel-cut oats. I always cook with rolled oats, so I wasn’t worried about that, either.

I should have been.

The “Fruit” part of my “Fruit Crisp” is delicious.

The “Crisp” part of my “Fruit Crisp” is a misnomer.

I couldn’t believe how hard the oats were, even after an hour in the oven. I am so very, very disappointed.

My dessert should have been called “Yamamomo and Gravel.”

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