Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Quick and Easy: Blueberry Smoothie

Blueberry Yogurt Smoothie

Blueberry Breakfast Smoothie
Makes 2 Cups (2-4 Servings)

I Cup Frozen Blueberries
½ Cup Greek-style Yogurt
½ Cup Apple Cider
2 Tbs. Maple Syrup

Place all ingredients into a blender and whiz until smooth. 

It’s really that simple.

Breakfast in the backyard
And here's a bit of story about the history of berries in my life.

I’ve mentioned before that we were die-hard foragers back in the day, when we lived on Main Street in Bakersfield (VT).

Berries were one of the many wild offerings, if you knew when and where to look. 

Foragers are pretty secretive about their prime spots, but it’s been so many years that I doubt I’m betraying “The Code”.

Loads of both red and black raspberries could be harvested behind the baseball fields of Brigham Academy -at least, until the word got out.

“Choke cherries” grew next to our driveway (technically, on the neighbor’s property) – and were hard to love because of their bitterness.  Still, I ate them, and sweet clover, sour clover, and the wild grapes that grew in the backyard.  I was a hungry kid.

“Black caps” grew on the fringes of farm fields and deep in the woods. These large, cone-shaped berries were incredibly intense in flavor, but woody and seedy, which meant squishing them with your tongue as you ate, to avoid getting seeds stuck in your teeth.  They also stained everything they touched.

Tiny wild strawberries grew at the shady popular smimmin’ hole just outside of town, “Dynamo”, where locals escaped from the summer heat. (Apologies, in retrospect, for the obvious amount of trespassing that occurred.)

“Cream berries”, were pale yellow, nickel-sized raspberries, they were super sweet, and grew in the brush on the dirt roads. Elderberries, too. 

We discovered tiny wild blueberry plants along footpaths behind the Lake Eden camp owned by my mother’s sister, though they rarely made it back to the kitchen (no sharing - they were usually well picked over).

Best Smoothie, Ever 
If you have some time on your hands, you can still locate all kinds of berries in the wild – but going to farmer’s market is much simpler, and you don’t have to rattle a tin can with a handful of stones in it to alert the bears to your presence.