Happy 4th of July, Slashfood readers! In honor of today's holiday, I bring you a patriotic dessert from blogger/photographer Lelonopo for you to really feast your eyes on. She's created a blueberry and raspberry treat that isn't as aggressively red, white and blue as that famous flag cake, but is still appealingly thematic for the day.
I hope that everyone has a wonderful day today, filled with delicious food, awe-inspiring fireworks and safe, happy times. We look forward to seeing pictures of all the tasty things you created today, so make sure to take photos and upload them to the Slashfood Flickr pool!
Rob Kasper and a bunch of Baltimore food bloggers get together and try miracle fruit. It makes the tart taste sweet and the bitter taste absolutely delectable.
Whole grain crackers are easy to make at home and are far better than the ones you buy in a box.
Ever have trouble figuring out which wine will go with dinner? Then it's time to check out "Wines That Love." Their labels are printed with images of foods with which they go well.
One of the things that says summer to me, more than hot weather, flip flops and the guys with coolers selling water bottles at stoplights and freeway exits is the ability to go fruit picking. I can't remember a single summer since I was 9 years old when I didn't find myself in a field of blueberry bushes, or carefully inserting myself further and further into a thorny blackberry bramble looking for the big, sweet berries.
The first few years I lived on the east coast, I planned a trip back to Portland that always happened to fall neatly during blueberry season (my mother's birthday coincides with ripe Pacific Northwest blueberries). Then last summer I headed to visit my parents in May and realized that if I didn't take matters into my own hands, I would miss out on picking. I started doing some research and found two farms that I absolutely love. This weekend, I'll be heading out to Mood's Farm Market near Mullica Hill, NJ to pick sweet cherries and early blueberries. I'm also planning a trip to Linvilla Orchards for raspberries in the very near future.
One of the things that helped me narrow down my u-pick choices was a guide that Metro Kids magazine (a Delaware Valley publication) put together last summer. They broke it down by state and so have a South Jersey guide, a Pennsylvania guide and a Delaware guide. When I'm in Portland, we always head out to Sauvie Island for all our u-pick needs.
I don't have much in the way of u-pick resources for the rest of the country, so I'm going to ask the rest of you to fill in the blanks. Where do you u-pick?
I've never been one for cocktails with a lot of fruit flavor. The sweetness of many of these drinks gets to me after a while.
But this one sounds both refreshing and strong (though not too strong) and seems like a perfect drink for spring. It's the Blueberry Smash. You have to muddle blueberries and mint leaves. I'm not sure I've ever muddled anything, but it's one of my favorite words. Muddle! Full recipe after the jump.
I am officially ready for spring to arrive. We've had little tastes of sunny, balmy weather out here in Philadelphia recently and it makes me long for warm days and farmers markets full of fresh, amazing produce. This picture of pints of blueberries and raspberries takes me straight to those summer days of bountiful fruits and vegetables. I want to crawl right in.
If you've taken food pictures that inspire these feels of wanting to crawl right into the scene, then you should come over and join us at the Slashfood Flickr Group.
That's according to Mehmet Oz, the doctor who always appears on Oprah in his scrubs, talking about colons, and Joel Harper, in this quick Q and A at Esquire.com.
Oz and Harper (a personal trainer) answer several questions about food, health, and exercise. Besides declaring blueberries the healthiest fruit, they also say that the only good thing about pizza is the sauce, that colon cleansing isn't really worth it, and that a little alcohol isn't bad for us at all. They also answer the question on whether it's ok to eat something that has fallen on the floor as long as we pick it up within five seconds.
As for the pizza advice, I think there's another good thing that they're forgetting: pizza is totally awesome!
Among the many things I love about fruit crisps, one of my favorite features of this versatile dessert is that once you learn the basic technique of making one, you really never have to measure again. Saturday afternoon, I put together a blueberry-nectarine crisp to take to a potluck later in the evening. Back in August, I froze half the blueberries I picked, along with a quart of sliced nectarines. I plucked both bags out of the freezer, and after an hour of defrosting, tumbled their contents into a large bowl. I sprinkled them with some sugar (I didn't measure, but if I was forced to guess, I'd say it was a little more than half a cup), some cinnamon (a good shake), fresh nutmeg (a third of a meg) and a teaspoon of cornstarch (the only thing I measured, because you always want to err on the scant side with cornstarch). I tossed the fruit around with my fingers until coated and them spread them out in a large baking pan (it was a lot of fruit).
The fruit went into the oven at 350 degrees plain for the first fifteen minutes, as it was still a little frozen and I didn't want the topping to burn while the fruit was undercooked. While it baked, I whirred up topping in the food processor. In went about 2 cups of oats, 1 stick of butter (unsalted please), cane sugar (about a third of a cup), some cinnamon and a bit more nutmeg. This is my favorite way of making a crisp topping, because some of the oats get worked down into flour, while other bits remain intact. It comes together into a sort of dough that has a terrific texture and makes you think that what you're eating has some relationship to healthy eating. I toss in a couple of handfuls of chopped pecans just before spreading it out over the fruit. It baked for another 45 minutes, until the top was lightly browned and the fruit was bubbly and soft. Eaten with vanilla ice cream, it was one of the better treats I tasted in recent memory.
Come on, Blueberry Popsicle Day? Really? I guess if you're going to have a whole set aside for a food, it's cool that it's a rather specific, different food. Makes it more special somehow.
I don't think I've ever had a blueberry popsicle. I've had grape, orange, cherry, raspberry, banana, watermelon, root beer, and many other flavors, but I don't think I've ever come across a blueberry flavored popsicle.
Late last week I put up a post asking for some good blueberry recipes. You guys came through for me in amazing numbers, offering up a fantastic selection of recipes for galettes, buckles, pies, hamburgers and other simple and delicious dishes. I froze half of the berries I picked, so as to save a bit of summer for the fall or winter. I've eaten quite a few of the rest, but managed to save enough to start the Blueberry Vodka that BDW suggested (it's a several week process, so I'll keep you posted on how it turns out) and make a Lemon Blueberry Cake. In fact, it is in the oven as I type this and it smells delicious. Check out the recipe after the jump.
I got up this morning, picked up a friend and drove about 40 minutes into New Jersey to go blueberry picking. It's gotten sort of late in the season, so the picking was a little bit more challenging than it can be when the bushes heavy with fruit, but still managed to come away with a respectable amount of berries for an hour's worth of labor.
Just about every summer for the last 15, I have picked blueberries. Normally I do it in Portland with my parents, and my mom turns the bulk of the berries into jam. I've always been totally content with eating bowl after bowl of blueberries, as if they were popcorn, without a thought given to making something more refined or lasting with them. This time, since I have about 5 pounds of berries all to myself, I'm thinking I should try to incorporate them into a few recipes, because if I attempt to eat the full 5 pounds before they threaten to go bad, I may make myself sick.
So I'm asking you, knowledge Slashfood readers, what are your favorite blueberry recipes? Leave them in the comments, I will do my best to make one or two of them and let you know how they turn out.
So, if you've decided to take part in a charity event in which you raise money by blogging for 24 hours straight, what do you do to start the day?
I'd have a a cocktail made with coffee, a Red BullTab Energy, and a few packets of Emergen-C.
The Barmy Baker, on the other hand, started the blogathon day (yesterday, Saturday July 28, 2007) with a proper stack of blueberry pancakes. If you're curious to see how the Barmy Baker fared, blogging for 24 hours, take a peek. Remember, this is a food blogger, so it was blogging, cooking, and eating for 24 hours!
Julie over at A Finger In Every Pie has a recipe for what her brother and sister-in-law call "the best cupcakes ever." And they do look good, don't they? They're Lightly Lemon Cupcakes. And they have blueberry and lemon in them, and they have the word "Light" in the title so you can eat 5 of them and still rationalize that you're eating healthy.
The full recipe for the cupcakes is after the jump. For the icing recipe, click on the link above.
I have a food confession to make. When I was a kid, maybe from the ages of 9 to 13, I used to eat a ton of pound cake. My mom would buy one of those Sara Lee pound cakes, the ones that come cold and in that rectangular aluminum package, and I would eat the entire thing in one sitting. I'd grab it out of the fridge, get a knife and a napkin, and sit myself down in front of the television and eat it all. Usually with milk but often with a Pepsi. Yes, Pepsi.
That came to mind today after seeing this recipe at RachaelRay.com: a Grilled Pound Cake with Berry Sauce. I haven't eaten pound cake in probably 20 years, but this has me wanting it again. I've never had it hot before in any way, so this recipe, where you butter the bread and grill it in a pan and top it off with raspberries and/or blueberries, sounds intriguing.
In the Canadian city of Abbotsford, thieves made off with 20,000 blueberry bushes earlier this week. The bushes were delivered to a farmer who intended to plant them, but when his workers showed up, the bushes were gone.
Now, why the thieves would steal blueberries is a mystery, but it's certainly reasonable to assume that they were thinking of money. Since news of blueberries' health benefits have been in the media, berries are in high demand. The thieves could probably sell the bushes to another farmer. According to Marc Sweeney, the blueberry bushes will "end up on one of several new blueberry farms in the local Fraser Valley."
But the real question in my mind is how the blueberry burglars made off with 20,000 bushes. I don't know how big the bushes were, but 20,000 sure sounds like it would be quite a bit of volume.
I've never been one for cocktails with a lot of fruit flavor. The sweetness of many of these drinks gets to me after a while. 
That's according to Mehmet Oz, the doctor who always appears on Oprah in his scrubs, talking about colons, and Joel Harper, in 
Some 
I have a food confession to make. When I was a kid, maybe from the ages of 9 to 13, I used to eat a ton of pound cake. My mom would buy one of those Sara Lee pound cakes, the ones that come cold and in that rectangular aluminum package, and I would eat the entire thing in one sitting. I'd grab it out of the fridge, get a knife and a napkin, and sit myself down in front of the television and eat it all. Usually with milk but often with a Pepsi. Yes, Pepsi.
Maybe they just really, really like blueberries.
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