Gone A Pickin': 8 Blueberry Recipes to Try

Here's a confession I'm a little embarrassed to make after today's ventures: I have never eaten fresh blueberries right off the bush, until today.  I quickly became addicted, so much so that I went picking twice in one day.

Here in southwest Missouri we have several little gems that are called U-Pick farms.  Some places might have strawberries, blackberries, or raspberries, but the majority of them are blueberries.  Basically, a land owner has several - a couple hundred - blueberry bushes and they charge a flat rate per pound for you to come and pick your own berries.  In my area it ranges from $2.75 to $2.95 per pound.  I'm not sure how that compares to grocery store prices, but the blueberries from the grocery stores are so nasty and uninspiring that I am willing to pay more per pound.  Some of the farms will even "buy" the berries from you, so you could essentially pick blueberries for free if you picked enough, or if you're not that interested in blueberries you could make a little extra pocket cash.

In about 1 hour I am able to pick about 7-8 lbs, depending on how heavy the bushes are and depending on how big the berries are and the variety.  The first farm I visited had very tall bushes with very fat blueberries.  I think I could have easily picked 10 lbs in an hour.  However, the second farm had a smaller, more compact variety and the berries were about half the size.  It took a lot longer to fill my bucket with the small berries.

Anyways, I only spent about an hour at each farm today and brought home well over 10 lbs of fresh blueberries.  I would have had more but I had my boys with me and it's kind of hard to pick quickly when your 4-year old is whining and freaking out about harmless beetles.  Sigh.

So what the heck am I going to do with 10 lbs of fresh berries?  Well, I already ate several handfuls.  That was pretty easy.  And delightful.  And now I'm going to freeze the rest of the 28 cups or so to save for cooking and baking, and save some to turn into Christmas presents when the time comes.

I went in search of some blueberry recipes and found 8 that I am going to try.  I found all of these on allrecipes.com, which happens to be my go-to site for recipes.  All of the photos are taken from the All Recipes sight.  None of these are mine.

Blueberry Pie

Todd's Famous Blueberry Pancakes

Blueberry Lemon Loaf

Blueberry Sauce

Menny's Blueberry BBQ Sauce

To Die For Blueberry Muffins

Blueberry Syrup

Blueberry Pound Cake

Actually, now that I look at all these recipes, I am beginning to think that I don't have ENOUGH blueberries in my freezer.  Welp, I guess I know what I'm doing next week!  

If you want to find out if there's any U-Pick farms near you, just go HERE.