Friday, August 6, 2010

I'm in blackberry bliss!

We went blackberry picking yesterday morning. We were able to pick about 10lbs in an hour, which I thought was great since we were battling the thorns and prickles for the juicy berries.


Evidence we were battling the prickles..well evidence my guy was battling the prickles and thorns, while I took some pictures. I found this picking spot near a school and community track. I'd seen children and their grandma's picking here last year, so I figured we better get a jump start on the blackberry season.


The bushes behind our house are definitely not getting as much sun as these guys are, since they are basically all green berries still.

Even this patch had a lot of green and red berries, so I think we did hit the start of the season. This means blackberry picking for all of August! And meeting new friends like this lil blue guy...
I'm assuming he is a blue dragonfly. He was so tiny, not even the length of my pinky finger, super friendly though. He just sat there watching me, for awhile and once my guy came near he flew away :(

We were done after about an hour, which was a good thing since the humidity really started getting to us. The air quality was really poor here yesterday and so far this morning due to all the forest fires.


Here is our haul for the morning, found a couple spiders trying to catch a lift home with us. The garden in our backyard welcomed them.


My guy immediately started making blackberry pie crumble to bring to my parents later that evening and I immediately started processing and freezing.



Then I started looking up blackberry recipes, share with me if you know of a great one! :) Does anyone else find it sad that when you use any search engine, type in "Blackberry", and you get no sites, articles or images of the actual food. You just get flooded with cell phones aka blackberry info...ugh :S

Anyways, I have plans for a blackberry cheesecake, a blackberry sauce, and a blackberry chocolate :) As for yesterday we threw some in a fruit salad, made a crumble, and some smoothies. Oh yum! Is it bad that we had raw blackberry pie crumble for breakfast this morning? Nah think not :D

~Maggie

12 comments:

blessedmama said...

What a great site you have here! My grandparents grew boysenberries, so I know there's nothing like a completely fresh berry to satisfy those tastebuds.

Maggie said...

Thank you blessedmama, so wonderful to meet another foodie mom! :)

You are so right about fresh berries. They are amazing :) It's funny you mentioned your grandparents because I always think of mine too when i'm berry picking. Wonderful memories :)

blessedmama said...

Maggie, thanks for checking me out! I'm adding you as a link in my blog roll, just to let you know. :-)

Maggie said...

Aww thank you blessedmama! I appreciate that :) I just added you to mine as well!

Anonymous said...

Wow, those berries are beautiful and so BIG! A cheesecake sounds perfect! A guy once told me when I want to do a specific search use this "blackberry recipes", instead of blackberry recipes....don't know if it will work, but you could give it a try! Your blog is so pretty! Good luck...xoxo P.S. I so appreciate you stopping by!

Maggie said...

Hi Pam :) Hope your doing well :)

Those blackberries were so ripe and big that quite a few times they would just fall apart when I went to pick them! I'd just eat them when that happened lol :)

Thank you for the suggestion on searching, it worked :D And thank for compliments on my blog, I thought I was due for a change :)
I appreciate you stopping by and commenting as you always do! :) *hugs*
~Maggie

Anonymous said...

Glad to help Maggie! xoxo

Lori said...

10 lbs of blackberries? Woah. I'm SO jealous. Blackberry (raw) pie crumble sounds absolutely amazing... wanna share?

Maggie said...

Lori,
I was totally planning on sharing the recipe, but everyone ate it so fast I didn't get a chance to take pics lol :D As soon as we make another one we will share! Yum!

I ended up picking another 10lbs the next day on my own and then on the weekend my mom came over and we picked about 15lbs for her. There is still a lot left, plus all the one's that still need to ripen. My freezer is going to be jam packed!

Melissa said...

I have tons of blackberry bushes that surround my work property and they are slowly getting ripe! Can't wait:)
That's pretty awesome..10lbs in a hour! Great job.
I would love blackberry cheesecake! I'm going to make some rejuvelec and so maybe I'll make a cheesecake after that!! Thanks for the idea:)
PS the humidity is not fun hey? blah..welcome to forest fire season hey?
PPS thank you for all your sweet comments girl..you are awesome!

Maggie said...

Aww thanks Melissa! You are such a sweetheart :)

10lbs in an hour is nothing compared to your mom picking blueberries, when I read that on your blog I was like whoa that is amazing!

Did you get rain the past couple days? It took away some of the humidity here and hopefully helped those forest fires...I hear it supposed to get hot again this week though...

xoxo
~maggie

bitt said...

yum i love blackberries! they are almost ripe for the picking here too