Blueberry Crisp...
Summer is so many things. For me, one of the best things in Dallas about summer has always been being gone in August. Every year I drove our two boys and the dog from Dallas to a little cabin in the woods on Lake Michigan just eight miles outside a little town called New Era. I got very careful about the timing of our arrival and the last day we spent on the road. The aim was to stop at Renders Blueberry Farm when they were open.
Ottawa County
Renders Blueberries
9981 W Olive Rd (US 31)
West Olive, MI 49460
Hours: Mon~Sat 8am~6pm
Ken Renders
14079 168th Ave
Grand Haven, MI 49417
Now, this is blueberry country and there were and are many places along US 31 to buy blueberries. Sweetness and size always made Renders our top stop. Many of their blueberries were the size of your thumb across, big and juicy wouldn’t be enough to put them on the map if they hadn’t been sweet. Just one of their big juicy berries in your mouth was a wonderful flood of sweet “blueberryness”.
The boys were always excited to stop at Renders for the blueberries but also because they knew we were getting close the the cabin. I was always excited to stop at Renders for the blueberries and also because I knew the sibling fighting of close quarters would end until the return trip to Dallas.
Have you ever traveled long distances with small children in a car?
It is such a joy: they talk about things that would never come out at home. They share secrets with you and each other and we always shared some wonderful moments.
It is such a pain: they fight with each other especially when they’ve built up super high energy reserves from long stretches of inactivity in the car. I always stopped at every rest area along the way to walk the dog but also to have races around the car just to run off all their super energy!
Oops, sorry, we were talking about blueberries. Well, we’d stop at Renders for these great big blueberries and every year I’d buy bigger and more boxes. Five pounds seemed like a lot but was almost gone before we got to the cabin. It was 60 miles back to Renders. We worked our way up to 30 pounds and I still found I needed a return trip for more. I ate them like candy but I was running long distances at that time so I could get away with it. I do remember I had to make a lot of “stops” in the woods on some of my long runs.
The other day I was reading Danielle’s blog Habeas Brulee on Blueberry Crisp. Danielle’s story about her mother and blueberries was beautiful and the blueberries called me. This was very easy to put together and (without the ice cream) is not overly sweet. I served it for Brunch this morning. It is really excellent! You can find her recipe here. I followed it except I didn’t measure the blueberries I just added blueberries to almost come to the top of my casseroles, I added a hand full of slivered almonds to the topping and then didn’t use quite all the topping. Next time I’ll use all the topping because there wasn’t enough of it. It was a perfect crunch. The slivered almonds added great extra crunch and I’ll do that again.
I think I’d like to try this using lemon and the zest from it also. I think this might also work really well with the rhubarb. And yes, I’m sure Ice Cream would be wonderful but that seems uncalled for at Brunch. On second thought, maybe ice cream is always called for and we just didn’t have any.
Enjoy.
Blueberry
Sunday, July 9, 2006
