A week and a half ago, I wrote that we were going to spend some family time picking blueberries. When we got to the Pick Your Own farm, we didn’t quite get to where we expected. We pulled up at the address, to a little white house in an older neighborhood. There was a huge back yard full of blueberry bushes, grape vines, and peach trees. But a residential neighborhood with a backyard garden wasn’t really what we were expecting. That didn’t stop us from picking 2 ½ gallons of berries though.
When we took our buckets to the farmer and handed him money, he would only take $10 from Mark. Not $15 like we expected. So, that brings our price per gallon down to $4 instead of $6. You can’t beat that anywhere. He then winked at our gaggle of children and said “Hurry up and eat those berries so you can come take some more of these away!”
When I got home, I washed most of the berries and put them on trays in the chest freezer. When they were all frozen and sounded like a tray full of marbles when I shook them, I put them in freezer bags and tossed them in the upright for later use in recipes. I hate pulling out a bag of frozen fruit and finding it frozen solid in one big chunk. Now my freezer has bunches of individually frozen blueberries that I can use as I need them.
Then I used about 5 cups of the berries in a homemade blueberry pie. I found a fantabulous recipe at pickyourown.org that worked out incredibly well. Not much sugar (I used the ½ Splenda version) and the pie was sweet and juicy anyway. It got rave reviews from the family and guests.
Then on Saturday, I made blueberry pancakes (then had to pick the danged berries out of the batter for 4 pancakes because YL12 swears she hates them… NOW she tells me). Sunday morning it was blueberry waffles with bacon and scrambled eggs. (This time, I made YL12′s waffles before adding the berries).
There were still about 3 cups of fresh berries left and my family is sick of them for now. So, I put a cup of them out to dry, so I can harvest the seeds and grow my own bushes. The rest spoiled and got sent to the compost. Lesson Learned: Make a pie and freeze the rest immediately.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t know if blueberries will grow from the seed. They’re usually propagated by either cuttings or suckers. Let me know if it works.
I could never get tired of blueberries. One way to eat them on a hot day that is yummy is to put vanilla yogurt right onto the frozen berries and stir, let sit a moment in the freezer. It freezes around them like ice cream, and is great to cool off.
I’m really enjoying your blog posts. Wish I could get my mind in gear to write some more on mine.
The blueberry waffles were awesome!