"blueberries" news and stories

Kellogg's, why did you try to fool us again? Yes, those blueberry bits in cereals and infamously lackluster packaged muffins from the gas station? Not real. Real sugar and food dye; but not berries from the berry bush. We can't say we're surprised, just officially disgusted.

It turns out, some of our biggest industry bakers are only good as colorists. A new video released by the Consumer Wellness Center last week shows that this is actually no secret. As we've seen before, the front of packages always sound better than the back. If you turn over a Frosted Mini Wheats Blueberry Muffin box, touting fresh blueberries on the front, you'll find an ingredients list with an item called "blueberry flavored crunchlets." Crunchlets -- a word we hope never becomes official -- is defined as a mix of sugars, soybean oil, red #40 and blue #2. Voilà, blueberry! Minus, of course, those real-deal elements: antioxidants, manganese, vitamins C and E, and dietary fiber.

You can also expect similar frauds in cereals, breads and muffins from Betty Crocker, Target and General Mills, whose Total Blueberry Pomegranate cereal contains neither blueberry nor pomegranate. Who to trust? A real baker. Or the makers of products like Natures' Path Organic Optimum Blueberry-Cinnamon Breakfast Cereal, which actually contains real blueberries and cinnamon.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• How much watermelon is in your melon?
• If there's little, fill your head with this watermelon sangria.
• We have on it on good authority that Sesame City has better wings than Buffalo.
• The culinary world isn't filled with Star Trek technobabble -- or is it?
• Reach the blueberry finish line with this bushel of eats.
• Thankfully, this gelatin cheat sheet does not involve Bill Cosby.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• From hops to tap: catch a glimpse of how one brewery brings out the beer.
• Is your scotch schooling up to snuff?
• Baby back ribs heart blueberries.
• You could use flour tortillas, but then this flank steak might go all viva la revolución on you.
• San Francisco declared war over pie.
• Cat Cora can make you a better home cook in eight easy steps.

Popovers just sound like good-time food. Their name hints that any minute they're going to jump off the dessert plate and do a flip. And these relatives of the Yorkshire pudding are so light, doughy, and yet crispy on the outside, they probably could do a few pirouettes if given half a chance. However, the popover is made even more of a good-time Charlie when you add a coconut cream filling, put a dollop on the crown, and add a generous handful of fresh blueberries. See norwichnuts' Flickr stream for the recipe for the coconut cream, and a Kitchen Daily recipe for basic popovers.

And if you're more partial to the airiness of a cream puff over the more solid popover, try this recipe.

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Call this snack Celery, Peanut Butter and Blueberry Sticks, and kids might roll their eyes and say, "Give me a break." But call them Bugs on a Log, and they're sold. Blogger peekandeat substitutes blueberries for the sweeter raisin "bugs" some people use, which, she says, are lighter and more delicate. Cutting the celery into two-inch pieces makes these logs easy to grab and eat. When I was a kid, my mom stuffed celery stalks with cottage cheese or cream cheese and topped them with pimiento-stuffed olives. She lined them up in a crystal celery dish -- something I haven't seen on a table in years -- which somehow made us feel, even snacking on the simplest food, that we were being treated to something incredibly special. If only she'd called them Fiery-Eyed Longboats.

You can also add cream cheese, sunflower seeds and pine nuts to celery, as in this recipe.

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