When life hands you blueberries, what should you do? I know what you're thinking... You can't make lemonade out of blueberries! But here's the deal; I had a blueberry MESS! And I needed to figure out what to do.
We recently picked 12 pounds of blueberries from a local farm. I made jam from some of them, but wanted to freeze a whole bunch for use later in the season and in the winter. So, after washing them, and drying them on paper towels for several hours I put them on a clean baking sheet and put them in the freezer to "flash freeze." Unfortunately, I forgot they were in there and the next time I opened the freezer door, the tray shifted and the blueberries went rolling ... EVERYWHERE! There were blueberries under the refrigerator, blueberries under the stove, even blueberries under the piano in the living room!
After we got them all cleaned up, they had to be washed ... again (since my floors are not perfectly clean!). Now I had more than a quart of mushy blueberries. What do you do with that many mushy blueberries? I certainly couldn't just throw them out after all that sweat and money! After browsing through several cookbooks, I finally came up with an idea... Blueberry Syrup!
So, I pulled out my Ball Blue Book and found the recipe for making Blueberry Syrup (it's not too difficult or intimidating, since it doesn't require a pressure canner) and proceeded to make just over 3 pints of blueberry syrup. I had enough extra to pour over the blueberry pancakes we had. It was delicious! And, now I don't have to buy or make blueberry syrup for every batch of pancakes.
So, when life hands you mushy blueberries... make blueberry syrup!
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4 comments:
Oh my goodness, I can just imagine trying to chase down those blueberries... what a project!
The blueberry syrup sounds delicious and what a great use the berries. I bet my kids would love it!
You are very innovative! But I'm sorry...I just had to laugh at the idea of those blueberries rolling all over the place. I'm sure it wasn't funny to you, but, really...I can't stop grinning. Sorry!
I'm so sorry about your blueberry mess, that would bum me out! I was thinking the lemonade slogan by the way....that was funny. Love that you pressed on and made blueberry syrup - I applaud you!
Waste not want not! Great job in using those berries :) We went berry picking a few weeks ago and I had a similar spill in the kitchen. Wasn't too bad picking them up, though the difficult part was trying to keep the dog from licking each one laying on the floor and keep the cat from batting them all over the place!
Care to share your recipe for the syrup?
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