Blueberries

(NOTE: This is from my now former cooking blog, Cooking With Kitten, and was originally published August 16, 2008).

With a lot of sadness, today was the end of blueberry season at Lyman Orchards. I got up early just so I could take advantage of whatever picking there was left, and I'm glad I did. I ended up with a little over five pounds of the plump, juicy berries. Some were so fat and juicy they looked like grapes.

Now I'm in the middle of an all-day project of freezing them for the winter. Freezing blueberries is easy, but can be time-consuming, depending on how many berries you pick. It's a two-step process:

1. Dump all of your berries on a cookie sheet. The berries must be in a single layer. Put it in the freezer for 3-4 hours.

2. When the blueberries are frozen, they should be as hard as marbles. Now is your chance to put them into freezer bags, and freeze them again. Work quickly, because blueberries defrost very quickly.

3. Make sure you label your freezer bags with the date that you froze them. Frozen blueberries can be good for up to a year.