Blueberries are finally in season! Our blueberry bushes are still too young to have a ton of fruit, but we also came across a patch of wild blueberries in the woods. There wasn’t a huge amount there either, but enough for everyone to have a few handfuls. Steve used to think that I was nuts (and I think he even was a little embarrassed) when I’d stop on walks to grab a handful of blackcaps or blueberries from bushes off the side of the road, but after reading In Defense of Food he’s sided solidly with me on this one – foraged food has greater health benefits than cultivated food. Ha!

But since we’re not able to get more than an occasional snack from foraged berries, we made our way about 25 minutes north to an organic blueberry patch that offers U-pick at an unbelievably reasonable price (I wouldn’t have thought twice about paying double what they were asking!) We brought in somewhere about three and a half gallons gallons of blueberries! From that we made a blueberry pie and put up 2 batches of blueberry jam.

Especially valuable when making jam was the Instant Pot Steve got me for my birthday. (I know, I know. They’re super trendy right now. But it’s for good reason!) Instead of using the pressure cooking function, I used it’s “sauté” mode. Not only was I able to make multiple batches of jam without heating up the house in 90 degree weather, the sides of the Instant Pot are so high that there’s no splatter onto the stove and counter tops – another big win!

Back to blueberries. If you were doing the math above and noticed that 3 and a half gallons of blueberries makes a lot more than 1 pie and 2 batches of jam…. you’re right. We’re eating some, and the rest we’re dehydrating. Yes, I know, we ruled out dehydrated strawberries last month because it was a crazy amount of work for not that much payoff. Blueberries are different because all we had to do was give them a rinse and toss them on the trays. They did take a little time to arrange so that none of them were touching, but that took about 20 minutes as opposed to the full afternoon it took for the strawberries. Hopefully they’ll turn out well – the dehydrator is still whirring away with them in it.

Next month – peaches and pickles!