Blueberries and MORE Blueberries! And some recipes.

To our utter delight, we have gallons and gallons - and more gallons - of blueberries in our chest freezer right now.

At our monthly chiropractic appointment a couple of times ago, Kathy offered to take us blueberry picking.  I jumped up and down and screamed with joy at the chance!

Bright and early one Saturday morning we headed to meet Kathy - trying to get the majority of our work done before it became too unbearably hot.  (We left G at home still asleep, with Lao Lao watching over him.)

There were rows and rows of big, beautiful blueberry bushes to pick from.

These bushes had already been mechanically picked and anything left was just going to go to waste.



























There were SO many blueberries left behind...and so many green-red ones that weren't even yet ready to be picked.  If I was the owner, all these left on the bushes would haunt me.  I know you'd just have to get used to the fact that you can't get them all...but that would be so hard for me!


We love blueberries...but they are just so expensive that we don't have them very often at all.  Maybe about twice a year I will break down and buy the bag of frozen blueberries instead of the bag of strawberries or assorted fruit that we put in our smoothies.  But the 3 lb bag of blueberries costs MORE than the 4 lb bag of the other fruit....and that math just hurts!


Hence, we were excited to pick blueberries and have LOTS to enjoy!




Elisabeth took all these candid pictures that follow - I'm sure she was just wanting to document our trip, not trying to get out of work  ; )

This was the best picture E captured of me that morning.  No, you can't see much of me.  Exactly.

We ended up bagging and freezing 9 gallons of blueberries that night.  And who KNOWS how many blueberries we ate that never even made it to the bags!































And it is such a good thing that we went ahead and finished all the bagging that night (it took hours!)...because the very next morning we got the call that Miss Priss was on her way...and we had to get on our way to get her!!!



Here is what we've been doing with all those yummy blueberries:



Perhaps our favorite way to eat the blueberries is just straight up.  This is a daily scene at our house since our berry picking trip....the kiddos plopped down right on the kitchen floor (for some reason blueberry-eating can't be done at the kitchen table???):




























But feeling like I have been given such a precious gift and need to be a good steward of it and find other fabulous ways to use these blueberries, we've been trying other recipes.



We liked the blueberry banana fruit leather

He **is** smiling

And we've added blueberries to some of our regular standby recipes...making blueberry pancakes and blueberry muffins.  Yummy!


We also recently had a church-wide fellowship at church, and Elisabeth used some of the blueberries to make our recent favorite Lemon Berry Skillet Cake.


I also got brave one morning and made this fabulous fail-proof fruit custard for us.  Good!

And when our "Walker Boys" came over to eat recently, we made this yummy blueberry cobbler.  Really liked it!




And all of this was GAPS-friendly...bonus!

Another bonus - in addition to the ton of beautiful berries we got that morning - when we were done picking, Kathy walked the children down the little lane....

....to meet the pony and goat.

It was just a great way to end an already great morning.  Thank you so much for inviting us, Kathy!  Anytime you want company while you pick...you know who to call!