Rich pickings to beat food shortages

The Guardian
·1 min read
<span>Photograph: Steve Cavalier/Alamy</span>
Photograph: Steve Cavalier/Alamy

Your article (When food shortages bite: what to eat and drink in the age of empty shelves, 13 August) makes no mention of the excellent crop of wild blackberries this year. During my 1940s childhood, these would not have gone unpicked, as usually happens today. It’s extraordinary that people buy expensive blueberries instead. Blackberries freeze nicely when placed in a single layer on a tray. I now have a nice supply for winter and several jars of blackberry and apple jam in my store cupboard.
Sheila Preston
Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex

• “St Andrews in Scotland and Ely in Cambridgeshire” (York named UK’s best big city for a domestic holiday by Which? readers, 12 August)). Would you say “St Andrews in Fife and Ely in England”? Didn’t think so.
Olive Burnside
Glasgow

• My father was a regular traveller to eastern Europe in the 1970s and 80s. It was several years before my brother and I dared ask him why he always carried a squash ball in his suitcase. His response: “No sink plugs in hotels over there.” (Letters, 11 August).
Richard Stanley
Bristol

• As a musketeer in the English civil war society, I use a pricker, not dissimilar to a sewing needle, to clear gunpowder residue from the touchhole of my musket. I’m not sure how effective it would be if applied to an egg (Letters, 14 August).
Tom Stubbs
Surbiton, Surrey

• The simmering question for habitual egg prickers is, where do you pierce the shell – the big end or the little end?
Andi Noble
Leeds

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