Smith's Blueberry Flats

Blueberry season is here in earnest and I missed it last year so this year I am not letting it slip past me. I took a ride on highway 240 yesterday morning where all cars are going 70 miles per hour (note to traffic cops: you may want to show up every once in a while.) on a two lane highway whose highest legal speed is 55 miles per hour. It's a beautiful road and even though I was fully able to keep up with the speeding traffic, the cars kept insisting on passing me.

It made me angry. What the hell is everyone is such a goddamn hurry for? And why do they feel they need to be ahead of me just because I'm on a scooter? It actually brought out the testosterone in me and made me want to show them what a bad-ass my little scooter is. But this is the kind of behavior on roads that makes road-kill out of people. So the next time I'm on that pretty road I'm going to go the speed limit and let everyone pass me dangerously. (There's no shoulder to pull over on to let people pass).

There were some people picking blueberries when I arrived. One couple was just finishing up picking forty pounds of them to freeze. There was one other person picking who engaged in some awed conversation with the couple and their forty pounds.

Man "Wow, that's a lot of blueberries."
couple "Yep. Forty pounds."
Man "What are you going to do with them?"
Couple "Mostly we freeze them."
Man "Cool. So how do you do that?"
Couple "Freeze 'em on cookie sheets in the freezer and then bag 'em."
Man "But you wash them first, right?"
Couple "Nope. The water will make them all stick together."

Thoughtful pause.

Man "So you wash them when you're ready to use them?"
Couple "Nope."
Man "So you never wash them?"

After the people left I was alone out there with the crickets and the hot sun for about an hour and a half. I can't say my thoughts were restful or pleasant, but still, there's something delicious about time spent industriously by one's self in the middle of nowhere.

Hell, it wasn't the middle of nowhere, it was the middle of the Blueberry Flats! I picked twenty pounds.

That's a lot of blueberries. My kitchen kind of smells smurfy now.

I always eat a lot less jam than I think I will. When Max was under two and still eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches we went through at least a jar of jam a week. I was eating a lot more jam toast back then too. I always thought that it would be great to make all the jam I could possibly use in a year which I calculated at around 52 jars. I wanted to never buy jam again. Unfortunately I haven't bothered to reassess that goal since neither Max nor I are eating much jam these days. So I still have lots of blackberry jam left from last year.

I certainly want some blueberry jam because I've never made any, but I finally realized that I need to make less jam. I'm more likely to use a sauce that I can put over yogurt. In spite of this new goal, I managed to make nine half pints of blueberry lime jam (very good!), and six and a half pints of plain blueberry jam which was supposed to be sauce because I didn't cook it to the jelling point, yet somehow, it is thick enough to be called jam.

I also prepared a batch of blueberry lime jam to make Chelsea's way: you cook your jam only for ten minutes then let it sit over night, or over many nights in the fridge, until you have enough energy to heat it up again and process it. Not boiling it to death before processing really helps to preserve a fresher flavor. Letting it sit for a day helps to develop the pectin or something, because this process tends to help the jam be a little thicker.

So I'm going to end up with over twenty jars of blueberry jam. Shit.

That was just using about twelve pounds of blueberries. So with the rest of them I'm really going to make sauce. Which means being careful not to boil for more than a couple of minutes. Sauce is great for pancakes, ice cream, yogurt, or to pour over something exotic like cheese cake.

I'd love to freeze a bunch of them but I still don't have an extra fridge or freezer. So no freezer space. Which is too bad because blueberries freeze very well and are great for using in smoothies or for tossing frozen into muffins or coffee cake batter.

Anyone else taking advantage of blueberry season? Tell me how!!