Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Beautiful Blueberries


Wow, I see why people love high bush blueberries!  I grew up in Maine and my sister and I spent a fair amount of time picking blueberries in our back field each year.  These were the low to the ground wild blueberries that are smaller than the high bush berries, and though we often fantasized about using a rake, we generally only ended up with enough for a pie (4 cups) or at the least enough for muffins (1 cup).  I must confess I sort of looked down on those who loved high bush blueberries with their enormous fruits as sort of wimps, and on more than one occasion declared the wild berries tastier.  Fast forward 20+ years and the house we bought last summer has 4 blueberry bushes.  Miss B. got a couple berries here and there last year but the birds got the rest.

This year two of the bushes seemed to have a ton of berries so I ordered some garden fabric to keep the birds off, cut it to fit reasonably well and secured it with clothes pins.  My goodness one can never have enough clothespins!  We just took the netting off to check yesterday and wowee, what a lot of berries.  We happily picked 3-4 cups in no time and we are planning blueberry pancakes for supper.  Yummy!  I was going to freeze some, but I wasn't quite sure how the huge berries would fair in pancakes.  Here is my favorite recipe for pancakes it's from Allrecipes.com but I tweaked it to use buttermilk (which we tend to have on hand) in place of the milk.  Also I don't tend to bother with sifting.  It seems like a crazy amount of baking powder but trust me it's awesome.


Good Old Fashioned Pancakes
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 egg
3 tablespoons butter, melted


Directions
Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl.  Make a well in the center and pour in the milk, egg and melted butter; mix until smooth.


Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat.  Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using 1/4 cup for each pancake.  Brown on both sides and serve hot. These are also great reheated in the toaster oven.


It's breakfast for supper tonight baby!  


What's your favorite use for blueberries?  








4 comments:

  1. i must say that i was very impressed with that pancake recipe!!!

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  2. Glad you enjoyed! I even made pigs in a blanket with leftover pancakes (is there really such a thing) a couple days later. With a pool of maple mustard for dipping, they were a huge hit with Miss B.

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  3. now really? how are you keeping them wrapped? we have had wretched luck with toothpicks.

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  4. Toothpicks worked for us reasonably well...though Miss B. does like to do a bit of deconstruction...eating all components in the end: ) Another time I rolled a pancake around a hotdog with the fixings and rolled the whole thing up tight in wax paper for a quick car trip. It was sort of like street food, or eating burrito.

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