Blueberries

One of my absolutely favorite things about summer is blueberry season. I love walking into the supermarket and seeing piles and piles of blueberries for a really great price. I am always a little heartbroken when it ends and it's back to $5.00 for a pitifully small container. Lily shares this love of mine. From what I can tell most toddlers are obsessed with blueberries, so I won't claim any crazy genetic link here. But it does lead to some stress in our house during non-blueberry season - when I am trying to save the precious few berries left for my morning cereal and she is demanding "more berries!"

Anyway this year I was determined to get to a farm and do some blueberry picking. Sure we get our pint of berries each week through the fruit share at our CSA. But one can never have too many blueberries! So one Saturday we put Lily in her overalls, got in the car and drove to Connor's Farm in Danvers - not too much of a hike from Somerville.

I've found that the actual picking always SOUNDS a little better than the hot, sticky reality. But it's so so worth it. At first it was hard to find the really good berries on the bushes. There were a lot that just weren't ready for picking yet. But after a little practice they got easier to spot and it was hard to stop!

I did feel a little bad for Lily as she seemed kind of tortured at the prospect of carrying around a container of blueberries and not just shoving them all in her mouth the whole time. I know we picked/ate more than those that actually made it to the cashier to be weighed and purchased. But in the end we walked off with quite a nice haul. I even managed to find some raspberries and Lily may like those even more than blueberries. I made a blueberry cobbler when we got home with our treasure and the next day we enjoyed a yummy breakfast - dutch babies topped with all kinds of fresh berries!