Blueberry Hill Farm

Cold Blueberry Soup

1 ½ cups unsweetened grape juice, divided into 1 cup and a 1/2

2 cups fresh blueberries

1 T. frozen unsweetened orange juice concentrate, thawed, undiluted

1/8 t. ground cinnamon

1/8 t. ground ginger

1 T. plus 2 t. cornstarch

Combine 1 cup grape juice, 1 cup blueberries, orange juice concentrate, cinnamon, and ginger in a saucepan.  Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer about 3 minutes or until blueberries pop.  Combine starch and remaining ½ cup grape juice; stir into fruit mixture.  Bring to a boil and cook 1 minute; stir constantly.  Cool.  Serve, topped with a dab of sour cream, cool whip or yogurt.  If you want to serve with "crackers", try vanilla wafers.

Overwhelmed.  This one word describes it all right now.   It's the peak of blueberry season here and blueberries are all there is right now.  Big picking Monday and Tuesday morning, go to market Tuesday afternoon/evening; pick all day Wednesday for egg club customers orders Thursday; pick all day Friday for market on Saturday.  Church Sunday.  Crash Sunday afternoon for a heavenly NAP. Yay for Sunday afternoon naps!  When I close my eyes to sleep I see BLUEBERRIES!! I'm not griping here.  Honestly.  It's been a very good season thus far and I'm psyched to finish it out. 

Nothing else is getting done on this farm, though.  Grass and weeds abound.  No time to mow.  No time to get plantings started for the fall.  Everything is on hold until I can come up for air.

Once a season I take a load of berries to First National Bank.  I've done it for years.  FNB is very supportive of farmers.  I guess that's why so many of us bank there.  They welcome farmers with their labors' fruits to stop by and sell a bit.  While there today, a lady, who bought several pints of berries from me, promised to share a new recipe for Blueberry Soup she makes every year.  She says it is a truly delicious cold soup and I'm excited to try it and to share it with you.  It'll be something different, anyway.

On a non-blueberry note -- we are on "cria watch".  Any day now I am expecting a new alpaca baby from our girl Runaround Sue.  She is huge, hot and miserable and spends the majority of most days laying in front of the barn fan.  Any time she sees me with a hose in my hand, she comes up and demands to be sprayed.  I'm always glad to be of assistance as Sue is a good girl and, having had my first child in mid-August, suffering through one of the summers with many consecutive days in the upper 90's, I can empathize with her situation.

In other alpaca news, our handsome boy, Salzedo, has finally become a "man" and has begun servicing a couple of our girls.  It took him a while to figure out the "birds and bees" stuff, but he's gotten the hang of it and has been doing quite well, thank you very much!

Well, that's the latest from Blueberry Hill.  Onward and upward . . .

Here we are, in the height of blueberry season.  I am loving every minute of it.  The two months of my favorite season will whiz by but while the season is here I'm going to enjoy every delicious minute of it.  I'm going to drink in every touch, taste and smell.  As a matter of fact, while I'm sitting here "blogging" about it, I'm enjoying a smoothie that contains a whopping portion of last year's frozen berries.  It is yum!  And, I should be out picking instead of on this computer, so I'll be brief.

In an earlier blog entry I promised I'd pass along my recipe for Blueberry Sonker, so get your vanilla ice cream ready (Bryer's is my favorite) because a big glob of vanilla ice cream is a sonker's crowning glory.  As for the word "sonker" -- my Daddy always used that word in relationship to this particular dessert.  He was a born and bred foothills North Carolina native, so I'm assuming that, like the word "mommick", it is in the rural mountain/foothills dictionary.  To give it credence, an article about sonkers appeared in Our State magazine a couple of years ago.  (To chase a rabbit here -- my mom always used the word "mommick" when I was growing up, the meaning being "to mutilate, mess up, trash" -- usually used to refer to my bedroom or other projects I was involved in but probably shouldn't have been.  Example:  "You have mommicked up ....."  It fits all the rules of English.  Mommick, mommicked, mommicking, etc . . . It was not until I was grown, married and with children that my husband and I were having a debate over the word.  He, being from the midwest, had never heard the word and I was trying to educate him concerning it.  The blow came when he told me to look it up in the dictionary and I found IT WAS NOT THERE!  WHATEVER!  It's still a good word and fits many a situation, so I will continue to use it, whether Noah Webster knew it or not!  End of rabbit chase!)

Here's the recipe.  ENJOY!!

BLUEBERRY SONKER

• 2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries, rinsed
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg (either chicken or duck)
• 1 stick butter (use the real stuff, the fake stuff doesn't work)

 In an 8X8 baking dish spread the rinsed blueberries.  Add a little water -- maybe 1/8 cup, and sprinkle a little sugar over the berries.

Mix together the flour and sugar.  Add the egg and blend with the flour mix.  It'll take on the consistency of cornmeal and be lumpy and all the flour and sugar won't mix completely, but it's OK.  Spread the flour mix over the blueberries.

 Melt the stick of butter. (I place the unwrapped stick in a glass measuring cup and put it in the microwave for about 45 seconds.)  Drizzle the melted butter over the flour mixture.  If every little space is not covered, that's OK too.

Bake, uncovered, at 400 degrees until it's golden brown.  About 45 minutes.  It'll start smelling really good when it's about done.

Let cool for a little while, but while it's still warm, flop a generous portion of vanilla ice cream on top of your serving and prepare yourself for one of the best treats you've ever had.

***

The sonker recipe can be used with any fruit.  I've made blackberry, peach, and apple.  With the peach and apple, you won't need to add any water to the fruit as they are juicier than the berries and when I make an apple sonker I use cinnamon in the flour mix.  I can't tell you how much -- just "some".

This recipe is also good if you need to take a dessert to a covered dish.  It's very easy to double the recipe.

And now, the blueberry bushes are calling and I must obey!