Blueberries, blueberries, blueberries!!!

Today we went blueberry picking. It was hot, hot, hot, but everyone seemed to have a good time. We got close to 16 pounds of berries, which was about 3 big ice cream buckets filled. Beautiful, aren't they? And the boys love them!

So, I spent the afternoon dealing with the blueberries. I made a pie, which the kids mostly won't touch (Jeremy & I are so going to need to workout on Monday). I experimented with a new recipe for the crust from Cooks Illustrated. It has vodka in it (yes, I said vodka). You can add more liquid when you use vodka, which causes the pie dough to be easier to work with. It turned out really well, though now that I've used the recipe once I have a few things I would do a bit differently. It was weird, though, because the kitchen smelled strongly of alcohol during the early stages of baking. I'd highly recommend trying the recipe if you struggle with traditional pie dough recipes.

I also made a batch of blueberry syrup. Reid loves blueberry pancakes, so the syrup is for use on those. This project was a disaster. The final product is fine, but I messed up the first batch royally. In fact, I dumped a large amount down the drain. I don't have the energy (or the humility) to detail the stupid thing I did. Let's just say, though, I have lots of notes on the recipe for next year.

And right now I'm working on flash freezing the rest of the blueberries for use during the rest of the year. We definitely will have blueberries all year from today's pickings!

On a side note, one of the things I love about blogging is that I'm taking pictures of things I wouldn't normally. I'm really getting to know my camera better!