I've been meaning to write about blueberry picking for a while, but never got around to it for whatever reason. The blueberries have been in season in North Carolina for around a month now, and I've been lucky enough to get out to the farms 4 different times. There are two organic blueberry farms within a thirty minute drive of me, so I've really been taking advantage of their proximity. Blueberries are really important to get organic when you can because they have such thin and sensitive skins that they absorb whatever pesticides are sprayed onto them. I'm not sure what pesticides really do to our bodies, but I do know that it's nothing like the comic books. They definitely don't give us superpowers and an impetus to help get kittens out of trees. More likely it's cancer or an impending sense of doom.
I should probably mention at this point that I eat frozen blueberries for breakfast almost every day. They're fantastic with granola and yogurt or shredded wheat and milk. I also eat them a few times a month in pancakes. Blueberries are amazingly nutritious for us humans and they seems to grow all across the states. They're always listed as a superfood in those asinine "healthy foods you should be eating" lists that are regularly on the front page of Yahoo or in the NYTimes. (Those lists always have foods that aren't grown in the US and/or are ridiculously expensive. Açaí palm, anyone?)
There's a huge catch 22 with blueberries for me. They make me feel healthy and I'm sort of hooked on them as a staple for breakfast, but organic blueberries are super expensive and I'm a poor singer. For the past year I've been buying frozen organic Maine blueberries from Whole Foods (the only place I can find organic) at around $3.60 for a dinky 10oz bag. I'm no mathlete, but if I'm eating two bags per week for 50 weeks, that's over 360 dollars. How stupid is that? That's more than my groceries cost for an entire month.
So how do I rationalize the consumption of large amounts of organic blueberries on a poor man's budget? I pick my own! In two hours of foraging, I can pick a gallon of blueberries, and it only costs me $10. Let's do a little more math. A gallon weighs 8.35 pounds, so there are 133.6 ounces in a gallon. Divide that by 10, and you have 13.36 10oz bags. Multiplied by $3.60 (the cost of a Whole Foods 10 oz bag), you have $48.09 or what the $10 worth of blueberries would have cost me at the store. That comes out to $74 for a year's worth of blueberries. Awesome, right? Of course my math could be wrong, but I like those numbers.
Wait! The Gay Old Time! Let me tell you, blueberry picking is a gay old time. I bought a big blue bonnet from the garden section at Target. It protects my pasty Irish skin from the sun and since I'm huge it looks fantastic (What's better than a 6'6" guy in a big floppy hat? I'm like Hagrid or something). It's easy to get lost in the rows of blueberry bushes looking for that one perfectly juicy berry and before you know it, your bucket is full. It also gives you a newfound respect for migrant farm workers who spend 12 hours a day doing what you're tired of doing after 2.
The Artist Forages: Blueberry Picking – A Gay Old Time
I've been meaning to write about blueberry picking for a while, but never got around to it for whatever reason. The blueberries have been in season in North Carolina for around a month now, and I've been lucky enough to get out to the farms 4 different times. There are two organic blueberry farms within a thirty minute drive of me, so I've really been taking advantage of their proximity. Blueberries are really important to get organic when you can because they have such thin and sensitive skins that they absorb whatever pesticides are sprayed onto them. I'm not sure what pesticides really do to our bodies, but I do know that it's nothing like the comic books. They definitely don't give us superpowers and an impetus to help get kittens out of trees. More likely it's cancer or an impending sense of doom.
I should probably mention at this point that I eat frozen blueberries for breakfast almost every day. They're fantastic with granola and yogurt or shredded wheat and milk. I also eat them a few times a month in pancakes. Blueberries are amazingly nutritious for us humans and they seems to grow all across the states. They're always listed as a superfood in those asinine "healthy foods you should be eating" lists that are regularly on the front page of Yahoo or in the NYTimes. (Those lists always have foods that aren't grown in the US and/or are ridiculously expensive. Açaí palm, anyone?)
There's a huge catch 22 with blueberries for me. They make me feel healthy and I'm sort of hooked on them as a staple for breakfast, but organic blueberries are super expensive and I'm a poor singer. For the past year I've been buying frozen organic Maine blueberries from Whole Foods (the only place I can find organic) at around $3.60 for a dinky 10oz bag. I'm no mathlete, but if I'm eating two bags per week for 50 weeks, that's over 360 dollars. How stupid is that? That's more than my groceries cost for an entire month.
So how do I rationalize the consumption of large amounts of organic blueberries on a poor man's budget? I pick my own! In two hours of foraging, I can pick a gallon of blueberries, and it only costs me $10. Let's do a little more math. A gallon weighs 8.35 pounds, so there are 133.6 ounces in a gallon. Divide that by 10, and you have 13.36 10oz bags. Multiplied by $3.60 (the cost of a Whole Foods 10 oz bag), you have $48.09 or what the $10 worth of blueberries would have cost me at the store. That comes out to $74 for a year's worth of blueberries. Awesome, right? Of course my math could be wrong, but I like those numbers.
Wait! The Gay Old Time! Let me tell you, blueberry picking is a gay old time. I bought a big blue bonnet from the garden section at Target. It protects my pasty Irish skin from the sun and since I'm huge it looks fantastic (What's better than a 6'6" guy in a big floppy hat? I'm like Hagrid or something). It's easy to get lost in the rows of blueberry bushes looking for that one perfectly juicy berry and before you know it, your bucket is full. It also gives you a newfound respect for migrant farm workers who spend 12 hours a day doing what you're tired of doing after 2.