Blueberries

I don’t know about you, but I love blueberries. I eat them every morning on cereal no matter the kind or brand. Blueberries make it better. I eat them in pancakes with a quick blueberry syrup made in the microwave. I eat them in smoothies with blueberry yogurt and almond milk. I eat them in quick breads with pecans or walnuts. I toss them on salads no matter what else is in it, and pie? Well, yummy, but not so much anymore. Too many calories.

When we first moved to Florida in 1978, I was introduced to blueberry bushes at Hainesworth Farms by Jim’s brother and sister-in-law. They had been picking a few times before and raved about how delicious they were. Sometime in May blueberries ripened, and we got a phone call to join them on a Saturday morning. As we drove the back roads northeast of Gainesville, we caught up on family news and looked forward to picking several pounds of the luscious fruit. The farm handed out family recipe cards for all kinds of blueberry concoctions and even sold young blueberry plants. We stored bags of them in our freezer. Then, Jim’s and our relatives’ interest waned. After all, it is a hot sweaty job. But my love of blueberries never diminished. So I found a new partner.

Picking blueberries with Aunt Fanny was a real adventure I never wanted to miss. Toward the end of May or the first of June I could expect to get a phone call letting me know local blueberries at a certain farm were ripe and abundant, and would I want to be picked up around 8 tomorrow morning? Absolutely! We traveled to Monteocha Farms, to Lake Santa Fe, to Earlton, and many others that I have forgotten the names of.

Aunt Fanny usually had a couple of other ladies with her, but she always kept the front passenger seat reserved for me. Containers were stowed in her car trunk as well as ropes or belts to loop through the handles of the farm’s supplied buckets and then tied or buckled around our waists, leaving our hands free for picking. Once we arrived at our destination, the owner directed us to the next in line picking spot, always in the hot sun and getting hotter by the minute.

Fanny with her straw hat and long sleeves was a fast picker, outpacing me two to one, but I didn’t pay much attention, just enjoying the company and munching a few berries as I picked, making sure they were good and sweet, which they always were. Like the others I started picking at chest level, but if I didn’t want to be admonished, I eventually had to bend and reach for the berries, picking the bush clean of ripe berries before advancing on to the next bush up the row. Sometimes the bushes might be next to a pine forest and depending on the sun, some shade might come my way, but this was unusual, and within a short period of time, I and the others were hot and sweaty. We dare not take a break because the sun was advancing in the sky, and soon, remaining in the field would be unbearable. At some point, upon agreement, we would have to be satisfied with what we had picked, grab up our filled buckets, and return to weigh and pay.

I never picked blueberries with a group that Aunt Fanny was not part of. When she passed away, I bought bags of berries already picked from a farm near Newberry named Maid Marian’s. Of course, they had been cooled, and I never got that warm juicy flavor of the ones fresh from the bush. Not picking with others was just a sentimental thing. Aunt Fanny was a good friend, and I always think of her when the blueberries are ripe.

I am thinking about blueberries today because this year’s stash is dwindling. The berries I am eating this morning were shipped from New Jersey. I buy most of my blueberries at Publix now, and bags stored in my freezer barely last until year’s end. Then I must go to the frozen bags of fruit at the end of the ice cream isle. But blueberries are blueberries and I love them any old way! Here are a few of those old recipes.

Apples and Pears

Sand Pears

I’m not sure why I buy apples by the bag because I always end up with 2 or 3 that lay around in the fridge for a month or two ending up wrinkly. Once I wrote about making an apple cake from some not so good looking ones that turned out pretty delicious. Yesterday with 2 old apples I mused about what to do with them, throw out or cook. I ended up peeling and dicing and cooking as though for apple pie filling and they turned out fine. Tasty on crackers.

This reminded me of something else I used to cook…sand pears. Personally, I haven’t known but one person who could eat a sand pear raw and of course that was a native Floridian. They are so hard they could pull out your teeth if you’re not careful. Beavers would probably love them. The only time I’ve seen them for sale was at a house near Fairbanks off Waldo Road. Jim and I were looking for muscadines, and the grape grower had a couple of pear trees in his back yard. He happily sold us some.

But back to when I was cooking them. When I worked as a bookkeeper, my boss had several sand pear trees in his yard and he would bring me large paper bags of them as they fell to the ground. That was the only way to know they were ripe. He gave me his pear cooking recipe which was very simple. Peel, cut off thin slices, put in a microwaveable casserole, add a little water and cinnamon, and cook for however long it takes for them to soften. The time would vary from 12 minutes to 20 minutes and I think you could cook them forever and they would continue to remain crispy, with a somewhat sandy texture. You could add sugar and a little butter if you wanted to or Stevia or another sweetener after they had cooled. They were delicious on crackers, even better than the best apple you’ve ever eaten. And in pies or cobblers, delicious!

I tried to find some this past August but had no luck. Supermarkets wouldn’t dare sell them because folks would bring them back complaining about how they broke their teeth. I thought farmers’ markets would be a good place to try, but no luck there either. And they are the ugliest pear you’ve ever laid eyes on, a speckled light greenish-yellow and brown with the appearance of mildew all over. They’re more apple-shaped than pear-shaped but definitely a pear stem. The skin is very tough and they are difficult to peel, but to me the results are well worth the effort. I’ve never been strong enough to cut one in half.

I did some research and found that the proper name is Kieffer pear, a cross between a Japanese pear and a common pear. The first ones, my research said, were grown on the grounds of Andrew Jackson’s home near Nashville. I think ours have mutated a little because the pictures are not exactly the same as our Florida sand pear.

Sadly, my former boss’s land was sold and the pear trees were knocked down. His trees bloomed with tiny white flowers, and I have seen many similar trees blooming along roads in early spring. I wonder if they are sand pears? It would be nice to cook some again.