Country Kitchen:
Blueberry Treats
By Mary Emma Allen
As the wild blueberries ripen around our home, we know it's time to look
for our recipes using this tasty morsel. One of my favorites of summer,
blueberries, both wild and cultivated, provide enjoyable treats.
Blueberries are delightful in muffins, cakes, cupcakes, pies, puddings,
fruit salads, and with cereal. They also are tasty in a bowl with milk
and sugar. We often ate them this way for dessert when I was a child.
Mother canned blueberries, too, for winter meals.
Picking Blueberries
We may find blueberries in the wild, the small low bush type. There also
are the cultivated blueberries we can plant and grow in our gardens.
Often you can pick your own at farms where fruit growers raise them for
this purpose and to sell at road side stands.
The Blueberry Hill of my childhood was so named because a farmer raised
several acres of cultivated blueberries where we picked them for our use.
Other locations of this name may have been designated because a great
many wild blueberries grew there which sustained the early colonists.
Many years ago, we helped a friend harvest low bush blueberries from his
fields, where he grew low bush ones for commercial sale. For this, we
used a metal rake to pick the berries. This looked somewhat like a scoop
with teeth at the end with which we pulled the berries from the bushes.
Then he put the berries through a winnowing machine which separated the
fruit from the leaves and stems.
Blueberries vs. Huckleberries
Most of the time nowadays, I hear these berries called blueberries.
However, in my childhood, many people referred to them as huckleberries.
In some regions of the country, one name is used more than the other.
Technically, the lighter berries are called blueberries, and
huckleberries refer to the darker, almost black ones. Also, it's
generally considered that blueberries have the very small seeds which you
hardly notice.
Huckleberries, on the other hand, contain around ten hard seeds.
Generally huckleberries are found wild, whereas blueberries often are
cultivated.
A Native Food
North American native peoples used blueberries as a standard food. They
ate these berries fresh and cooked them with their meat. To preserve the
berries for winter use, the Native Americans often dried them.
From these people, the settlers to our country learned to use this berry,
as well as many others, as summer staples in their diets and dried for
winter.
Many Uses
Glancing through cookbooks, you'll find recipes for blueberry pancakes,
pies, muffins, tarts, breads, shortcake, sauces, puddings, flummery,
waffles, chilled soup, and turnovers. They also can be eaten fresh on
cereal and in fruit salads.
BLUEBERRY FLUMMERY is a dish my aunt often made. You can serve it as a
dessert or sauce.
Simmer 2 cups fresh blueberries in 1 cup water for 5 minutes. Then put
the cooked berries through a sieve. Add enough water to make 2 1/2 cups
sauce.
Mix together 1/4 cup cornstarch, 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar (depending on
tartness of berries and how sweet you like your desserts), 1/8 teaspoon
salt. Stir into the sieved berries. Cook the mixture, stirring
constantly, until it's clear and thick. Stir the juice of 1/2 lemon into
mixture.
Cool and serve with whipped topping as a dessert. Or use as a sauce over
cake, ice cream, or vanilla pudding.
(For variation, you may eliminate the sieving and thicken the whole
cooked berries. However, use 3 tablespoons cornstarch for this.)
(C) 2003 Mary Emma Allen
About the Author
Mary Emma Allen has been writing her "Cooking Column" for newspapers
and online publications for 30 years and
has compiled a family cookbook. She’s currently compiling a
cookbook/story book,
"Tales From a Country Kitchen." Visit her web site for more cooking
articles. Contact her at me.allen@juno.com
