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.

White peaches on the left, yellow peaches on right (from last years batch) - can't tell if you can see here, but the white peaches have that pink translucent tinge that makes them look so pretty!

White peach salsa on left, yellow on right (once again, from last year's batch). The yellow peaches look like salsa... while the white peaches kinda makes the whole thing look yucky. It still tastes good!

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Boy this was a long post…

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!

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.

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.

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 convenience store while paying for gas (since you practically live in your car)) or bought in a clear plastic clamshell at the local Publix… ugh.  When I moved back to New York City in 1997, I went in search of that now mythic place where they raised the art of the blueberry muffin to an art form.  But it was gone.  I couln’t even see a place that might have replaced it so I could stand out front and say, “Here was once made the best blueberry muffins in the world…”  did I imagine the store?  Did those muffins really exist?

Well, since moving to St Simons Island, I’ve really developed as a cook and have begun to really enjoy baking.  So I like to play around, cakes, pies, cookies, whatever.  My husband is a wonderful guinea pig… and whatever he can’t eat, he takes to work where he always gives me an update by mid-morning how the ravenous vultures at his office have devoured whatever baking project he set on the breakroom table.

Of course, by now, my muffin mythologizing had faded away, buried beneath so many years of disappointment and bland, boring, less than average muffins.  Last week, blueberries were on sale at Harris Teeter.  I had already made a blueberry pie (which my husband loves!) so when I caught a glimpse of the buttermilk on the refrigerator shelf, I thought: Buttermilk Blueberry Muffin.  Buttermilk has become a fascination to me… On a recent trip to Asheville, NC,  we had the best cake – Buttermilk Coconut Cake – at the Early Girl Eatery, by far our favorite lunch place in a city full of great places to eat.  I successfully replicated it last week (with a slight difference on the frosting but delicious just the same!) and was stuck with half a carton of buttermilk.

So I Googled recipes for Buttermilk Blueberry Muffins… and found numerous options.  I picked one  that sounded good and gave it a whirl…all the while thinking how fantastic these are going to be with the slight tang of the buttermilk and all those luscious blueberries. In the end, they didn’t rise up very much… and they tasted like something I could have picked up in a clear plastic clamshell in the mass-produced stack by the bread section at Harris Teeter.  Sigh.  And then I realized that buttermilk or no… what I was really expecting without even thinking about it, when I first bit into the freshly baked muffin… was that muffin from the long defunct shop in New York  City.

I did find some other recipes… some calling for sour cream, others cream cheese, all promising delicious muffins.  I suppose I will try them all, but  I think in the end, I will probably have to start from scratch… if blueberries continue to be plentiful and cheap… this could be the summer of the blueberry muffin…  Ryan’s office survived the great apple pie experiment of 2006… I suppose they’ll survive the blueberry muffin test kitchen of 2009.  On this,  I am quite determined.