"I'm wishing (I'm wishing), for a slice of pie..."

One of my all-time favorite Disney movies is Snow White.  It is from a simpler time, when the women weren't drawn like swimsuit models, the songs weren't written with a soundtrack in mind, and the movies weren't filled with gross-out humor.  They were still cute and pretty innocent (well, all except the part where the step-mother wants to murder her step-daughter, but hey - blame that on the Grimm Brothers - it's their story).

But I digress.  Do you remember the scene where she is making gooseberry pies for the seven dwarfs?  I always wondered what exactly a gooseberry was.  Was it a real fruit, or just a made-up fairy tale thing?  If it really was a fruit, what did it taste like?

Well, by dumb luck, I got to find out.  About a month ago the girls and I went strawberry picking.  I saw a sign for gooseberries when we were about to leave, and curiosity got the better of me.  I HAD to go try some. 

 Here's what they look like:

 Weird, right?  Well, we tried them, and the taste was actually quite delightful.  They had a firm skin, like a grape, and when you bit into them, the texture inside was also grape-like (maybe a little softer), but the flavor was nothing like them.  They were a sweet-tart taste - really interesting.  I had never had anything like them.  Very yummy. 

So I got it into my head that, upon finding gooseberries, the only logical thing to do was to make a gooseberry pie.  I just had to - in honor of Snow White and all.

I went home, googled a bunch of recipes, took some ideas from a few of them, combined them, and came up with this:

 It turned out perfect!  So...what did it taste like?  To be honest, it was almost a dead ringer for strawberry rhubarb pie.  Seriously, almost exactly the same.  I'm not quite sure how that happened, but when I think about it, gooseberries have a sweet-tart taste, and so does the combo of strawberry and rhubarb.

So, the mystery is over.  Gooseberries do exist, and they are delicious, and they make a yummy pie.
   

And we all ate happily ever after.

THE END