Pickin' Blueberries

So I know I promised a post about when my sister was in town, but somehow it just keeps getting pushed farther down the blog list. Maybe it's because it is going to be a long post. But anyway, you can always go over to her blog and read about it there. But I may get to it after this one if nothing exciting happens in the meantime. Not that her visit wasn't exciting. I feel like I'm digging a hole here. Moving on.

Yesterday at church a bunch of the ladies let spill about a pick-your-own blueberry farm that is just down the road. I love pick-your-own farms. I think it somehow makes me feel better about not being capable of growing anything myself. I get the joys of the harvest without the pains of weeding, debugging, watering, etc.

Yum. Blueberries. We actually don't eat them very often because they are just too expensive to buy. But at $1.50 a pound, the price was right.

We headed out as early as we could to try and avoid the heat. And by heat I mean the 90's rather than the "cool" 80's.

Alex didn't put a single berry in his bucket. They all went in his mouth. If you look closely you can see he has purple teeth. Though he seemed to show a partiality to the unripe ones.

Ella did really good at first. Then she just kept whining about wanting to go back to the car, or needing a drink of water, or wanting to sit down. She just wasn't getting the idea that this was supposed to be FUN!

Anton just went along his quiet way. He picked a lot, but I picked more.

Another picture of me!! You guys are going to get far too used to seeing me. I'll be sure to cut back. I was raking in the beautiful blueberry bounty when a small, evil creature decided I'd had enough.

A wasp attacked me as I was going for his favorite bunch of berries. It hurt like the dickens. And since I'm still not sure what manner of winged stinging insect sent me to the hospital in high school, we decided we'd better call it quits, just in case. So we paid for our 4.5 pounds of blue goodness and headed home. (And don't worry, it must not have been a wasp those many years ago. No hospital trip this time.)

We wasted no time in putting those blueberries to work.

Alex had berry measuring and washing duty.

Daddy helped a little bit. We made sure to measure out extras since we knew we would lose a few on the way to the mixing bowl.

Task #1, blueberry muffins. The recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook is the absolute best. Foolproof and it has a crumbly streusel topping.

And as in all baking, there was bowl licking.

I don't know where she gets it from.

Once the muffins were in the oven it was time for Task #2, blueberry jam.

Did you know the insides of blueberries are white? I discovered that while mashing them for the jam.

Some water, sugar, and fruit pectin later, and we had ourselves some yummy blueberry jam.

No jars for me. Plastic leftover containers are about as far as I go in preserving food.

And then with perfect timing, the muffins were done.

Don't those look fabulous? We let them cool down just enough so we wouldn't scald ourselves, and then dug in. Let me tell you, they were divine.

And they make your tongue turn blue.

It's a little bit freakish when your tongue matches your eyes!

In addition to polishing off all 12 muffins today, we also had peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwiches for lunch, and have been eating fresh blueberries all day long. Do you think there is such a thing as blueberry overdose? Because if there is, I'm sure I've got it.