Went up to Townsend yesterday to pick blueberries.  It’s funny because I always thought that blueberries were over by this time in the season… but apparently not!  This little blueberry ‘farm’ is located just up from the Darien outlet mall at Exit 49 as you head west then north along Rte 251. This blueberry ‘farm’ – more of a large patch really – had the largest blueberry bushes I’d ever seen with some really great looking fruit. The place was clean, well kept and the lady who owns it, Peggy, was as nice as she could be! She and her husband have owned the place for about 25 years and the blueberries were already there!

Overkill?

There were so many berries on these bushes, I could have stood at one bush and picked my fill… You could just reach in and grab clusters of large berries hanging almost like bunches of grapes.  I ended up picking two gallons while my husband picked two gallons for my mother-in-law.

Just like I picked two large baskets of peaches the other day near Reidsville – I think the two gallons of blueberries might have been far more than I needed.  Out there, it seems like a reasonable amount of fruit to pick… however, inside your kitchen, you realize you went a little overboard.

I’ve spent the last couple of days making jam… lots and lots of jam.  Anyone who makes jam knows it’s not something you can simply whip up.  There are processes involved with sterilization and all that.  A pot of boiling water going along with the pot of boiling fruit… and it’s not like you can leave the fruit alone and take a long break. Add to all this my peach allergy… yup, I’m allergic to the flesh.  I can pick them with no problem, but once I get in contact with the juice, I break out into hives.  So I have to use latex gloves when peeling and chopping, which makes the process even more difficult.  I still broke out into itchy hives, with the gloves on and spent the last two days  medicated on benedryl.

So I made three batches of peach & ginger jam ( I throw in chopped candied ginger which goes nicely with the peach)… and as you can see, have plenty of peaches left over.  This is after we gave some away and there’s still more in the fridge!

And I made two batches of the blueberry jam… which between the jam, the cobbler I made for dessert last night and a quart ziptop bag frozen – still leaves me with an entire gallon.

The peaches I picked were white peaches, which makes for a beautiful jam – pale and jewel like.  The funny thing is that I also canned a batch of peach salsa.  My husband pointed out last night that while the white peach made beautiful jam, in salsa form, the pale fruit did little to make the salsa look appetizing.  In fact, it sort of looks like vomit – his words, not mine, although I can see what he means.

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Boy this was a long post…

One of the advantages of living on the Georgia coast is our proximity to Tattnall county – Georgia’s self-proclaimed u-pick capital.  Home to the trademarked and well-known Vidalia Onions, Tattnall County is more than sweet onions!

Had the chance to stop in today at Oliver Farm near Reidsville and picked white peaches fresh off the trees.  They had two long rows ripe for picking of the white variety with the darker orange fleshed peaches to be ready between the 20th and 25th of July they said. Managed to fill two large baskets and paid only 50 cents a pound for them! (a far cry from 99 cents/lb on sale in the stores! – and a whole lot fresher!)

So now that they’re home… my kitchen is overflowing with peaches.  They’re covering all my counterspace…

Saturday, I’m planning on picking some blueberries. Ordinarily, I think blueberries are done by July – but our winter lasted so long this year, everything seems to be pushed out til later in the season. There’s a great u-pick blueberry farm in Townsend, just across the county in McIntosh and the lady there said there would be plenty of berries for another week!  So I suppose Sunday, I’ll be making peach & ginger jam, peach salsa and blueberry jam – not to mention a blueberry peach cobbler at some point.

Too bad I have to wear latex gloves to handle the peaches… while I can handle their skin, I can’t handle their flesh and juices raw… I break out in strange hives.  Dunno… developed this odd allergy to peaches in college- nothing deadly like some allergies, just a mildly irritating one.  Still, love peaches enough that I’ll gladly take a Benedryl in order to go a little crazy with peaches each summer!

Wrapped up another trip to Black Mountain… I think this is the most time I’ve spent at the cabin.  From Atlanta it’s only a 3.5 hour trip as opposed to 6 hours from St. Simons Island… and since I’ve been coming up to Atlanta a lot for meetings, it’s just awfully convenient to head on up there afterwards.

Well, it’s apple season so we went apple picking.  Jonagold, Mutsu, Golden Delicious and Fujis were the bulk of the apples we picked.  I also picked up some Arkansas Blacks at a farmer’s market, which I’d never heard of before, but was told they were good cooking apples.  I bought them more because we had seen them on the trees at the u-pick place but they were roped off for a school group to come pick… and they looked so bizarre… all these black apples hanging off a tree.  We though they were rotten at first.  Of course, the ones I got at the market are simply dark red… not even close to looking like black.

I’m always amazed by the food up in Black Mountain.  Local, fresh and delicious.  We asked around at a morning tailgate market for breakfast suggestions and were referred to a few places.  We chose Sprout, a little place that used to be a garden center.  The food was all locally grown, the coffee was locally roasted, and all of it was great.  While sitting down to breakfast, we began talking about what we should do that day.  A couple of ladies heard us and started to run down a list of things we could do.  So by the end of our meal, what looked to be a quiet Saturday in Black Mountain, turned into a busy day all over the area.

So now, I have a fridge full of apples.  So I guess tomorrow, I start making pies… and cakes… and perhaps a tart or two. Will post photos if they come out pretty enough.

Walked out of a restaurant (I use the term loosely) this evening, all because of the cheese.  We went over to town for dinner craving Philly Cheesesteaks and had been told by several people that Skinny Pete’s was the place to go.

Well, we walked in… and the place was empty.  We walked up to the counter and looked at the menu and began to order… then I asked that crucial question:  ”What choice of cheese do we get?”   The answer was a disappointing: “American”  Ugh.  Then she added, “It’s white American.”  As if that makes any difference.

So we left and went next door to Five Guys and got burgers instead… all because of the cheese.  I know there is always much debate on what really  should go on a cheesesteak.  But for me: Provolone!… no American cheese, I don’t care what color it is.

Without realizing it, I have been on search for a really great blueberry muffin.  I really miss the ones I used to get from a place called The Market, Market Street or MarketPlace or something like that.  I just remember it being across the street and one block up from my first job, on the 40th floor of 1 Dag Hammskjold Plaza in New York City (49th & 2nd Ave).  It was one of those gourmet markets that used to make fantastic sandwich platters when we had those big lunch meetings… and even better muffin, danish platters for those pesky breakfast meetings.  Of course, that was back in 1990…  Their muffins were oversized, with these huge crusty muffin tops sprinkled liberally with chunky, coarse sugar.  Inside, they were light, fluffy and moist, tinged with blue and full of berries.  They melted in your mouth and then there was that satisfying crunch from the sugary topping… ah, bliss.

Since then, my experience with the blueberry muffin has been somewhat lackluster.  In Atlanta, muffins were usually relegated to those purchased as an after thought in a (more…)