Blueberry Bash

Blueberries at our house are typically a seasonal treat, most specifically during the month of August. This is because the berries that are sold year-round in our grocery stores are from far away and very expensive. During late summer, however, the prices drop because the berries come from nearby Michigan and are plentiful and delicious. I trot out my blueberry recipes every summer and we feast on their luscious juiciness.

Blueberries are a Super Food, at least according to the know-it-all nutritionists, because they are high in anti-oxidants and vitamins and all those things that are good for you. They are alternately an ingredient in comfort foods (muffins, pancakes, coffee-cakes) and a stylish addition to trendier offerings (smoothies, juice drinks, candies). Growing up, my experience with blueberries was limited to the tiny berries that came in the can with the Duncan Hines muffin mix. There was more juice to drain off than there were berries in the can. They added mostly color, but little texture, to the muffins.

For a couple of consecutive summers, I made take-your-daughters-to-camp road-trips along the east coast of Lake Michigan, where blueberry farms abound. I made it a point to stop and buy their berries, and kept myself awake during the long drive on the chocolate covered dried blueberries that were sold by the pint container. I felt satisfied buying Michigan berries in our stores in Iowa because I had seen the farms for myself, and talked to the fruit-stand vendors along the highway.

This year, however, locally-grown blueberries will be around all year at our house, for we discovered Pick-Your-Own Iowa blueberries. I happened to have a conversation with a local berry farmer while picking up my food at our Iowa Food Cooperative distribution site a few weeks ago. She told me that they allow visitors to come and pick their own berries, and that the blueberry bushes were loaded with berries in easy reach. My daughters were game for the trip, so we drove the forty minutes northeast of Des Moines through rolling green fields to the Berry Patch Farm, near Nevada ( pronounced with a long A, not to be confused with that state out west).

We were given buckets and shown on a hand-drawn map in which fields we should pick. We drove along the gravel road past apple trees, raspberry bushes, and a tomatoes-only greenhouse. The blueberry bushes grew in rows, acres long and wide. They were the tall-bush variety, growing about 3 feet high, and were loaded with fruit in varying stages of ripeness. We worked for about an hour in the warm sun and light breeze---it was a perfect morning to be outside. The picking job was easy---when the berries are ripe they can be easily rolled off the stem with your thumb. Each of us filled our five quart buckets about two-thirds full of the marble sized berries, and ate handfuls of them straight off the bush. They were warm from the sun, and perfectly ripe.

We took our harvest to the little stand where the berries were weighed, and we paid the $2.50 per pound---we had picked 10 pounds in all. We felt quite smug about our industriousness and chattered on the way home about how cool it was to do our own harvesting, like the hunter-gatherers of old.

I spent the rest of the day figuring out how to use our gorgeous berries. Some were set aside for immediate use---a blueberry-orange tea bread, blueberry smoothies, fruit salad, and sending home with my daughter's friend. The rest I laid out on cookie sheets in single layers and let them freeze; this keeps them from sticking together during storage. When they clanked together like marbles, they were ready for ziploc baggies. I filled five three-cup bags with frozen berries; when I am ready to use them, I won't have to thaw them since they are small and easy to measure.

The blueberry buckle (an odd name for what is basically a coffee cake with cinnamon-sugar topping) that just came out of the oven didn't have a chance to cool before a piece was cut and consumed by the resident teenager. She did, after all, assist in harvesting the berries, so why shouldn't she get the first piece?