Day 37 - Blueberry Pie

Seeing BLUE (well maybe more purple)!  Spent the day working on processing all my blueberries.  I now have 7 quarts of blueberry pie filling and 7 - 8 oz jars of blueberry syrup.  In addition, there is puree ready for tomorrow to make blueberry butter (not something I would normally make but it utilizes what normally would be waste from making the juice for the syrup).

Also, I have the red currants draining overnight so will have the juice for making jelly tomorrow.  Below is a picture of the currants in the pot before they cooked down.

Not sure what I'll do with the remainder of my blueberries.  If I have time tomorrow I might make some blueberry sauce or if I don't have enough time I will simply freeze them for eating (currently that's my choice).

It was kind of fun today - my mom and I ended up making our pie filling at the same time.  Unfortunately mom's didn't yield as many quarts as mine did (only 4 quarts and a pint).  I even had a little left over that I put in the fridge and Alan and I had with ice cream tonight (yummy).  But it was nice to know mom was working on the same thing I was at the same time.  One thing I do when making pie fillings for canning is once the fruit is blanched I pull the fruit out and put in a strainer on top of a big bowl.  I then dump the fruit in my crock pot (not turned on) to keep warm.  I do not drain them before folding them back into the pie goop.  And I use the juice/water that drained from the fruit from the blanch as part of the liquid for making the pie goop.  This way I think adds more flavor since I'm using juice from the fruit plus I don't add any coloring so this yields a more colorful pie filling too.  With that batch I am all out of clear jel until my next order from KAF comes this week.  Need to have plenty on hand for peach season!

I didn't get as much done as I had hoped since it was just Grant and me around here today.  Timing things around naps keeps me hopping.  Grant was pretty patient today with mommy working with berries.  Alan and Clark went to the Star Wars concert in Des Moines.  Clark doesn't always show a lot of enthusiasm but if he keeps talking about something afterwards we know he loved it.  He loved telling mommy about all the Star Wars stuff he saw today so I know he had a great time.  Alan said he was great.  When it was over he didn't want to leave and asked Alan to see more Star Wars.

He picked the Darth Vader t-shirt so it seemed fitting to show the photo of Clark with Darth Vader.