I'm in blueberry bliss!

I switched it up yesterday, and decided to go blueberry picking with my mom, sister and my lil one.

Before I talk about that though, I should mention the rest of my week. I wasn't online much because I was staying at my parent's place. My parents were needing me to help them with a few things, so my lil one and I just camped at their house for the week.

We spent a few days searching used book and thrift stores. In which I was able to find a great juicing book! "Juicing!" By Judi Olstein, has recipes for juices, soups, sorbets, marinades, sauces, entrees, and salad dressings. It's quite different and only cost $2.00! I'll let you know if I make any of the recipes.

One morning I was looking at some of my sister's book and discovered she had a great smoothie book, which she purchased at the same bookstore I had found my juicing book at. Can you guess the price? Only $2.00!

"Smoothies for Life!" by Daniella Chace and Maureen B. Keane, gives a review of almost all the ingredients they use to make up their recipes. They give you alternatives to milks, talk about supplements, and even give you grocery lists for ingredients. This book is informative and at the same time had me laughing. The names of some of the smoothies are hilarious.
While reading this book, I stumbled upon a recipe for Oat Milk. I've never tried or seen Oat Milk before, so I thought I'd give it a go.

"Oat Milk"
1 cup of Oats
1 cup of water
Blend ingredients in a blender until creamy. Pour everything into a nut milk bag and squeeze out all the milk into a bowl. Wash the blender and create whatever smoothie you would like! This makes about 1/2 a cup of Oat Milk.

I made my own smoothie recipe, since I had to use what was on hand. I named it after the "short blonde bombshell", since they didn't seem to have brunettes involved in any of their recipe names. They did have a recipe for redheads called "Hot redhead with a secret!"

"Brunette Bombshell"

1 banana
1 peach (sliced)
1 cup of blackberries (picked by me and frozen)
1/2 cup of Oat Milk

Blend everything in a blender. Pour and enjoy. Makes 1 serving :)
Oat milk is something I will make again. The book recommends that it's best in smoothies and I would agree, since it's a pretty strong taste. I could see it working as a great substitute for milk in baking though. My lil one loved this recipe and said the drink tasted like a muffin! Too funny :)

Back to blueberry picking! We started off the morning being greeted by this little guy outside my parents house. We don't have any poisonous snakes here, let alone many snakes at all. This one just omits a nasty smell as defense, lesson learned as a kid. We all just looked at him and he looked back at us, until we all were bored.

Then we were off with $40.00 in each of our pockets, hoping to pick around 20lbs each. The farm we've been going to for years has the best price we can find at $2.00/lb u-pick. There are not many other u-pick blueberry farms around here, other than a 1 hour or more drive away. This farm is really beautiful and has helpful staff on hand. They supply you with buckets, let you drive right down to their patch, allow well-behaved children, and even sell little recipe books! They have around 1400+ bushes and a couple different varieties of blueberries. Really small blueberries for baking or those yummy big ones we buy in stores. We picked the big ones!

It was quite a hot morning, but we were able to pick just under 40lbs in a couple hours. Don't mind me looking like a sweaty farmer! I love those straw hats, they always make me feel like a farmer :) I had one, but wasn't wearing it in this picture. I think my lil one wanted to try it on.

My lil one even picked half a bucket and he was so good at just picking the "blue" ones. He loved being there because the blueberry patch was like a maze he could walk through. We all were way to hot by noon, so we packed up, purchased our berries and drove down to another farm. Before we left we admired the farm's horses! They were beautiful, friendly and hungry!

The other farm we went to sells their produce on the side of the road. Love veggie stands! This farm's main attraction is their corn maze and pumpkin patch.
I bought myself 2 green zucc's, 2 yellow zucc's and one of those green pumpkin looking squash. I still have to find out the name of that one. In the picture if your wondering what's under the white cloth, it was a bunch of beets on ice :) They also sold other produce, but were sold out for the day :(

Once we were home our afternoon was filled with...

Rinsing blueberries in cold water
Sorting blueberries in bowls
Preparing blueberries on cookie sheets to go into the freezer!

My guy made some blueberry jam last night as soon as he was home from work, and who knows what else I'll make with all these berries! I'm sure blueberry, zucchini and don't forget blackberry recipes will be a plenty on this blog in the near future :) I also wanted to mention that my son's "Cowboy Garden" is thriving, we have lots of sprouts growing! A few of you messaged asking how it was going, so I'll be posting a picture next post :)

I wanted to ask you, how much does it cost to pick blueberries at your local u-pick farm?