Sunday's Sweet

"Top Hat" Blueberry

This loaded little blueberry plant is from The Shepherd's bonsai collection.  The beautiful little Japanese clay pot it was in broke last winter, but it seems to be doing OK in the plastic pot it's living in now. 

For some real Sunday Sweets visit my new favorite blog site Cake Wrecks.  My friend Trish at The Katnip Lounge talks about being addicted to Bejeweled 2.  - Cake Wrecks is nearly as addictive - I can sit for hours clicking on the links and being amazed and amused by this web site. 

Have a Happy Sunday! 


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Blueberries!

FRESH FROM THE GARDEN - 

 FRESH FROM THE SPINNING WHEEL - 

FRESH FROM THE OVEN!!!









 My sister and brother-in-law have raised blueberries in Lewis County Washington for almost 50 years, since they took over his dad's farm.  His dad had been there for many years before that, and the berry plants were well established. 

She is often asked to bring a blueberry dessert to events and came up with this easy to make cobbler recipe.  I must confess that I had never made it before, but we have had a bumper crop of berries from our 6 plants this year and The Shepherd has managed to pick them before the robins have for once.  So I finally had enough berries to make this yummy cobbler. 

So I give you:      Wisten's Blueberry Cobbler

Oven at 375-400 degrees - use a 9 x 13 inch cake pan.

Combine:
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
A "dash" of cinnamon and
a "trace" of salt

Pour over and toss with:
8-12 cups of fresh (or frozen) blueberries that have been mixed with
3 Tablespoons of lemon juice and
1/4 cup of melted butter

Pour your berry mixture into the 9 x 13 baking dish and put in the oven and bring to "bubbly" - about 20 minutes or so until the mixture is juicy and the berries have begun to burst.

Take your pan out of the oven and add the cobbler topping mix below:

For the topping mix:
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking power
2 Tablespoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Combine with:
1/2 cup melted butter (don't have it so hot that it "cooks" the egg mixture)
1 egg beaten in 2/3 cup milk.

DON'T ADD THE LIQUID INGREDIENTS TO DRY INGREDIENTS OF THE TOPPING UNTIL RIGHT BEFORE YOU ARE READY TO PUT IT OVER THE BERRIES.

Drop in tablespoon-fulls over the berry mixture and bake another 20 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with ice cream.

I am going to try out this cobbler recipe with peaches and maybe some tart cherries - don't you think that would be good?  Or maybe peaches AND blueberries together.  Ah, the possibilities are endless - Thanks, Wisten for your yummy recipe!  

For more blueberry recipes got to my blueberry blog Something Borrowed, Something Blueberry - (yes, I know it's been a while since I put some new recipes on it - guess I should look for some new ones - there's only so many hours in a day, however)   

 Enjoy my little video of this cobbler HOT from the oven.  Wish you had "smell-a-puter?" 

A Visit to The Berry Farm

My oldest sister Wisten & her husband, Glenn, have a berry farm and plant nursery in southwest Washington.

Glenn's mom & dad moved to their farm in 1933. He helped them plant the original blueberry field beside their house in fall 1944/winter 1945; Can you believe that this field is still in production? Including the original field, they now have 25 acres in blueberries.

The season, over-all, extends from 4th July to mid Sept. A max-day's harvest might be 15,000 - 20,000 pounds! They used to harvest it all by "hand" pickers - people from all over the area would come to work for them in the summers, they actually ran a bus from the outlying area to bring pickers to the fields.

Including me - Well, I didn't ride the bus, I got to stay with Wisten & Glenn. It was terribly exciting for a young girl from a wheat farm - my first year must have been when I was about 12 or 13, because Chris (also known as Parker's daddy ) hadn't been born yet.

At that time, they still had a field of raspberries for commercial picking. But my tenure as a berry picker was pretty short - my row of raspberries ripened so fast behind me (ok, so I was pretttttyyy slooooowwwww) that the beginning of the row was ready to pick again before I finished the other end. (I'm sure you get the picture...) So Wisten found "other things" for me to do that summer - I helped around the house, etc. But, I continued to work summers for my sister through out high school and college - by that time, I helped take care of the boys and helped out in the retail shed.

Now days, due to state labor laws kids under the age of 12 are not allowed to pick and, in my opinion, (and this is purely editorial) the general lazyness of the American public (picking berries is hard, hot dusty work - you can make it pay if you work hard, but most people don't want to do that kind of work any more), they have begun to harvest most of their berries by machine, - that's what this contraption on the right is.













They center the row on the machine and the fingers shake the berries off into these tubs.




They actually have been using machines to harvest berries since the late '60's - working on the "belt" was one thing that I wasn't too bad at - how much trouble can you get into standing in one place picking green berries out of blue ones?

At that time the berries processed by machine were for the packing house - mostly frozen, I think -


Now, even their fresh market berries are processed by machine, then packed into the plastic "clam shell" packages that you see in the grocery store. They have "fresh market" business partner in the Seattle area and they sell a lot to customers off the farm. They had customers who would "make a day of it", driving over White's Pass from Yakima to pick up 15 or 20 pounds (or more) of berries - One of the most fun things for me was remembering these customers from year to year - (my true start in customer service!)


It was way too short a visit - less than an hour, because we had to head home - about a 4 hour drive - but "I have been thinking" (which the Shepherd says is a very dangerous thing) ever since that it would be fun to do a blog with JUST blueberry things on it - recipes - what ever I find (and there is a LOT about blueberries to be found) - so TA DA - Announcing my new fledgling blog!! Something Borrowed, Something Blueberry -
The "borrowed" part is that most of the recipes that I will post will be be from other sources - notated, of course - but I'd like to make it a really fun resource for anyone interested in blueberries - the "wonder" fruit - the newest thing I've read is that they help keep you from getting alzheimers disease -

So there you go - hope you enjoyed this brief visit to the farm and into my past - have a great weekend!

Blueberries - more later

Although these beautiful berries are from our bushes, last weekend we visited my sister & b-i-l in Mossyrock on their blueberry farm. I have a great story and more pictures for you, but no time to write it out tonight - so this is just a little teaser -

I'm also giving great thought to doing a blog of all blueberry recipes for her - I thought it sounded like fun! There are certainly some tasty recipes out there. We'll see how my time goes.