As a kid, I loved gooseberries. So sweet, so succulent, they were my favorite part of the canned fruit cocktail we often enjoyed as dessert. While the fruit ratio was obviously skewed to encourage the coveting of cherries, it was always the pale green orbs that I kept in my bowl to savor after everything else was gone.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to assist in the baking of a gooseberry pie and couldn't resist the urge to pop one of the beautiful berries in my mouth. In about a sliver of a nanosecond, I realized that something was wrong. These were not the sweet and succulent treats of my youth. No, these seemed more like little caplets of battery acid; sour beyond all comprehension. And my mouth, completely independent of my brain, decided to evict the fruit.

With my mouth agape, my face twisted in abject horror, and (with gooseberry innards dribbling down my chin) I was the laughing stock of the kitchen. I had inadvertently revealed my ignorance of the fruit known as the gooseberry.

As you probably already knew, what I grew up thinking were gooseberries were, in reality, grapes (made tastier by steeping in heavy syrup). And the implosion of my tongue upon meeting with an actual gooseberry will always stand as a harrowing reminder to question bizarre and often downright incorrect hillbilly nomenclature I grew up with in the kitchen. (Not to get too far off topic, but another hard lesson learned involved the difference between mangos and green peppers.)

Despite the pain and distress dealt to my mouth, I did discover that, prepared correctly, gooseberries can be a beautiful thing. So, when a big bag of fresh berries came my way over the weekend (Tricia's mom looks out for us like that) I knew right away that this week we'd be making a pie.

I know that you can pick up gooseberries canned in a syrup, so please be aware that this recipe calls for fresh berries. Using all of this sugar with the canned berries would most likely cause your teeth to disintegrate halfway through your first slice.

Also, you should know that before you get to the fun stuff, you have to pull the stems and tails off of each ... individual ... berry. It's a bit tedious, but worth the effort.

It took me just a hair less than an episode of SVU to do a quart of berries.

Finally, a note on crust. Everybody has their favorite recipe. For a basic crust we often turn to a Pillsbury cookbook that we've had for years. But there is no shame in getting a little assistance directly from the Dough Boy himself. Crusts from the refrigerated section of your grocery are surprisingly flaky and infinitely easier than rolling out your own.

Ingredients
4 cups fresh gooseberries
1 cup sugar
3 Tbsp. quick-cook tapioca
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Cut stemmed gooseberries in half. Mix berries and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir until sugar is dissolved and mixture is clear (about five minutes). Stir in tapioca and simmer for five minutes. Stir in butter and nutmeg and allow the mixture to cool.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Fill a 9-inch pie crust with the filling and cover with a second 9inch crust. Press to seal the crust edges and cut slits in the top to vent. Bake for 20 minutes, then cover the edge of the pie with foil. Bake an additional 30 minutes.

Lol, my grandmother in Logansport had a bush of these growing in her backyard-I got ahold of one just one time, and had the exact same response! So when you started out that they were sweet, I was really confused! I had to laugh at your experience with them.

Your comment concerning the confusion over mangos and green peppers brought back memories. I was born and raised in Marion and many people,when I was growing up, referred to green peppers as mangos. I left Marion and worked on the east coast for over thirty years. One of the first, of many, misconceptions I was corrected on was the definition of a green pepper and how it was completely different from a mango. I wonder how they became confused in the first place?