Summer Blueberries Still Do It for Me

I still love blueberries.  It's my 3th (pronounced threeth) summer here in Michigan, and I still get excited about the fact that I can pack up my kids, drive just a little way in the car, and pick my own buckets and buckets of blueberries.  We've been twice since the blueberries got ripe enough to pick, and the kids still indulge me when I want to take artistic blueberry photos like this...

On our last visit to the blueberry farm, my youngest insisted that everyone call her "Little Sal" while she dropped blueberries, kaplink, kaplank, kaplonk, into her little blue bucket.  "Little Sal" incidentally ate at least half of the blueberries she picked, but no one faulted her for that.  (Does your favorite pre-schooler know Robert McCloskey?  If not, you really need to go to the library.)

We've tried several recipes with our prized, locally picked blueberries: muffins, waffles, pancakes, smoothies, crumble, blueberry chicken, and I even see a blueberry cocktail in my future.  But my favorite way to eat them is simply by the handful.  And, as my friend Rebecca Hegner pointed out, if you do indeed eat nothing but handfuls of blueberries for dinner, you will go to the bathroom the next day.  For some that is worth getting excited about.

Happy Summer!

I  hope you are enjoying whatever is growing locally near you!

"One berry, two berry, pick me a blueberry.

Hat berry, shoe berry, in my canoe berry..."

-Bruce Degen, Jamberry