Juniper. The berries are good with strongly flavoured foods such as venison and they are used in making gin. In Norway the branches, along with birch, were traditionally used in making pinnekjøtt, though this practice is now illegal. The branches were gathered in May, when the bark was most easy to strip from the branches. They were then laid out to dry until around Christmas time. They where then worked into a kind of thatch, almost submerged in salted water and the meat laid on top. This picture, sent in by Gary Maloy, shows how the juniper used to look at the end of the process, and demonstrates the ideal size for the branches.
