Let's get out of the way the classic stuff:
a handful of blueberries, a banana and 3/4 cup of milk became a much appreciated and colorful fresh smoothie.
A couple of breakfasts were cheered up by blueberry pancakes, "with the happy face!" as a long time favourite of my kids, "Curious George makes pancakes" teaches to do:
Besides, I had still some buttermilk that I had bought in Germany (can't find it here), so those pancakes were really a hit!
We didn't go without some blueberry muffins and minimuffins (with the recipe from Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise" ):
Which were also well liked.
In the "Oh Berry Day" post, I mentioned the blueberry cjarsons, a kind of savoury wraps/ravioli with a blueberry filling. That day at the fair there was a kiosk serving them, but by the time we wanted to have lunch, they were momentarily unavailable, and we didn't want to wait too much, with two hungry kids under a hot hot hot sun. So we went for something less typical, and I came home with no idea of how blueberry cjarsons were made.
Did it stop me? Nope.
Knowing a little of the local cuisine, I knew that they couldn't be ALL that exotic, so I decided to improvise and make my own filling with ingredients that made sense:
3oz/100gr blueberries
12oz/350gr mashed potatoes
7oz/200gr ricotta
1 or 2 tbsp breadcrumbs
salt
pepper
nutmeg
I first whisked blueberries alone, than mix them with the potatoes and breadcrumbs, then whisked the ricotta in the unwashed blender, so that I could take the most of blueberries, that's why you see different tones of purple.
As for the wrap, I decided for a touch of fusion, and went back to a tecnique learned through a Daring Cooks Challenge, making potstickers...
... which were served with butter and poppyseeds.
Despite of all the salt that I had put in the filling, these potstickers were really too sweet to be a savoury dish.
Beside that, I still had a lot of leftover filling, having used barely 1/6 of it, so I had to think of a way to use it.
I decided to convert it in gnocchetti (small gnocchi).
I took what was left of the filling, added two eggs, 3 tbsp of flour, put all in a pastry bag, and as they were showing in that video I had linked, cut the gnocchetti into a pot of boiling (and SALTED, that made the difference!) water, waited for them to come to the surface, and served with butter and some parmigiano.
This time the savoury-sweet balance was alright, though the color may not be.
Nobody's perfect!
And after all this, came the round of jams.
Again, I didn't want to stop at "only blueberries", so I picked these combinings:
pineapple, redcurrant and yellow kiwi.
Plus one, not portrayed, with pure frozen maracuja pulp.
Again, as with the raspberries, I made a big batch of blueberry jam and at the same time small batches of fruit jam, always keeping a sugar/fruit ratio of 0.6/0.7.
Just two handfuls of berries were saved for freezing.
Frozen blueberries is another thing you don't find easily here, so I hoped to save a little more for the hard winter, but I guess we will have to do with our jams.
And now you know what happened to the berries.
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