Berry Bonanza

We’re huge berry eaters in my household. Given the chance, all three of us will stuff our maws with the fruits until our tongues turn unusual colors and our breath smells fermented. (Was that too much information?)

Local strawberries are finally in season, and I’m rubbing my hands together and cackling at the thought of all the other local goodies on the way. Last summer my family picked wild raspberries and later blackberries together a few times. We brought home several gallons of each, most of which went down the hatch before I could jam or freeze them. (A few raspberries did get frozen and turned into a brilliant sorbet in the dead of winter, and we did make one blackberry cobbler for some guests, but that’s about all we had to show for our efforts besides some obscenely full tummies.) My son’s idea of berry picking mostly involves plucking them out of the container as fast as we can fill it. He ate so many last year that we devoted a specific t-shirt to berry picking adventures–it didn’t start out a blotchy purple-blue pattern, but it got that way quickly.

Before the local goods start really coming in, the price of fresh blueberries, raspberries and strawberries drops dramatically at Costco. Those days are blessedly here already. We’ve scarfed most of a pint of raspberries, a gallon of strawberries, and a gallon of blueberries since we stocked up last Thursday, and I’ll probably stop by again tomorrow to pick up more. They’re still not cheap, but this is the cheapest they will be all year and it’s worth it to me to eat something we love so much that’s so healthy.