It's that time of the year when we go blueberry picking. Part of my domestic duties these days is to process lots of fruit for consumption by our family of six. Did you know that frozen blueberries are nearly $5 a bag? And did you know how lousy they really taste? I know about the latter since picking and freezing our own blueberries. We visit a local farm to pick our apples, strawberries, pumpkins, and of course blueberries. I did try my hand at blackberries one year, but I haven't kept up with that.At our house, there are recreational pickers and serious pickers. This year one of our serious pickers opted out of joining us on our annual excursion. This little red hen was thinking twice about sharing the bounty, but we gave in. R7 went with me both times and she is one good picker now. Strawberries are satisfying because the buckets fill quickly, but you have to bend over and crouch down the whole time. Blueberries require somewhat less from your back and legs, but they are slooowww to fill a bucket! We use so much of this "super food" that we bought half of the 17 quarts I just bagged and froze. What could we possibly do with that many blueberries? Well, we eat plenty of the yummiest blueberry pancakes ever and blueberry muffins. Occasionally we'll have a cobbler or have some on cereal - though fresh is best for that sort of thing. We need enough in the freezer to last until next July so I may have to get a half a flat more. I'll think on that.
Last month was strawberry season and we picked 30lbs of strawberries most of which went into jam. Yummo! The others went into fresh shortcake and still others are frozen for fruit smoothies and a batch of blueberry/strawberry jam.
Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey is one of our favorite books around here and I'll share some of that another time. For now here's a peek at strawberry jam making and our blueberry haul from yesterday.
1 comment:
Oh, my, they look so wonderfully fresh. It reminds me of my past memories of blueberry picking from the age of eleven to fifteen in the summer time (all of six to eight hours). Oh, I miss those yummy blueberries. If they had weighed us before picking and after picking, I think they would have charged us for a lot of weight. We only earned a dollar twenty five a bucket. And, if we didn't pick fast enough the Mexicans would get our job so we, young teens had to learn to pick very fast. I averaged about two buckets an hour (but those small blueberries were the worst because none of us could pick more than a bucket an hour).
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