Yesterday afternoon, just after Dad arrived home from work, a much-appreciated rainshower settled the dust on the dirt roads–perfect weather for a four-wheeler ride! After the supper clean-up, we headed out. Can you believe we almost forgot to bring buckets for gathering wild blueberries? Here in Minnesota, July is the month the delicious pea-sized berries ripen, and no summer is complete without going “Blueberry Picking” (though the activity could also go by the names of, “Mosquito Slapping,” “Wood-tick Picking,” or “Detoxing the Body through Persperation”).

We made for our top-secret, never-fail blueberry-picking spot, but, when we got there, the berry population was rather pitiful. Oh, here and there we’d find a plant with a few berries on it, and it was tempting to just pop them into your mouth once you’d collect a tablespoon or so, but I had plans for these blueberries. “If we get enough, I’m going to make us a blueberry pie for breakfast tomorrow,” I told Dad. Well, Dad was particularly agreeable to this plan, and redoubled his efforts to find more berries. We drove here and there, peering into the woods for a hint of blue. It took multiple stops (even going back to a previous patch, in hopes that we’d missed a few berries), but we were able to gather enough to make one good-sized blueberry pie. But you should have seen our clothes, after plowing through fresh mud-puddles and traipsing around in the wet underbrush, in search of the blue jackpot!

After changing out of our dripping-wet clothes, it was time to get started on that pie! I generously volunteered to make the crust if the younger girls would pick through the blueberries, removing any that were green or shriveled. For the crust, I used Joy of Baking’s recipe for “Pate Brisee”, which uses all butter, no Crisco (Trans Fat! Horrors!). There wasn’t enough time to refrigerate the dough for an hour (not if I wanted to get to bed before midnight, that is!), so I just popped the prepared dough in the freezer for ten minutes or so.

Rolling out pastry dough between layers of plastic wrap eliminates much of the stress of making pie. Peel the top strip off, flip the dough over, and place it in the pie pan, plastic side up. It’s easy to peel off the second piece of plastic once the dough is in the pan.

We used the good ol’ Betty Crocker recipe (see below) for the filling–er, almost! It’s my fault, really. You see, the girls put all the blueberries in a bowl, and I thought they had just put in the four cups the recipe called for… Yes, turns out I used close to twice as much berries as the recipe wanted! The pie was less sweet than normal, as I did not double the sugar, but I thought it tasted wonderful. The blueberries took center stage, rather than the sugar. However, I must add, most of the family mildly disagrees with me on this point. They would have liked it a little sweeter.

Mixing in the flour, sugar and cinnamon

My favorite shot!

Fluting the edges

Need an impetus to get out of bed in the morning? The thought of fresh blueberry pie waiting downstairs ought to do the trick! Serve it up with whipped cream and a glass of milk–delicious! True, not the healthiest breakfast in the world, but, hey–blueberries come but once a year. Besides, I skipped the Crisco, right?

Betty Crocker’s Blueberry Pie Filling
(the real recipe, not my, hem, alteration)

1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, if desired
4 cups fresh blueberries
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter

Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Prepare pastry. Stir together sugar, flour, and cinnamon; mix with berries. Turn into pastry-lined 9-inch pie pan; sprinkle with lemon juice and dot with butter. Cover with top crust which has slits cut in it; seal and flute. Cover edge with 2- to 3-inch strip of aluminum foil to prevent excessive browning; remove foil last 15 minutes of baking. Bake 35-45 minutes, or until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust.

My thanks to sister Erica for taking most of the photos. I admit it: she’s a better photographer than me.