Blueberries

Over the holiday break we did a family outing to Staglands with our visitors. On the way back we stopped at the Blueberry Farm because we had promised some people blueberry ice cream. The shop was closed BUT you could pick - so we got a bucket each and went to work. Blueberries are not too bad to pick. Not back breaking like strawberries and you could slough off handfuls at a time so quite quick really, although some of us definitely collected more than others who never quite got the hang of it. There were 8 of us, and 1/2 an hour and 4 kilos of blueberries later we were done.

While the rest were off at the unicycle champs, Mandy & I got to work. I found a blog called Farmer's Daughter on an environmental website called Grist and I followed her instructions to make a batch each of blueberry jam & chutney. We ended up with about 6 jars of chutney & 8 of jam. One jar of chutney was consumed by a ham enthusiast before the holiday was over and we made quite a dent in the first jar of jam. It was effortless to make and I will be returning to this blog for more ideas. I had actually never made jam before becasue I was too scared but now am a convert.

Before we set off in the morning Mandy had made a pavlova using my mother's recipe. My mother was the queen of pavlova & Mandy inherited the crown. I've never mastered the art myself. This is my mother's recipe.

3 egg whites
9 oz caster sugar (about 1 cup)
2 tsp vinegar
2 tsp boiling water
½ tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp cornflour
½ tsp baking powder
Beat the first 5 ingredients until the egg whites form soft peaks then add the cornflour & BP.
Shape on to a baking tray. I noticed Mandy drew the desired size on the baking paper first and stayed within the lines. I thought this was a good idea. Put in oven at 190 C. Turn off oven and leave till cold. At least 2 hours. This turning off the oven seems to be the trick. I discovered in Mum's recipe book that she had the recipe from a friend but used the method from Aunty Cassie. Mandy also says beware of humidity. Apparently the enemy of pavlova.

We served pavlova decorated with blueberries.

That done we moved on to the promised blueberry ice cream. I used the standard Nigella method for ice cream making which I find failsafe, substituting blueberries for strawberries. This was delicious & I recommend you try it. It was suggested that I needed to break up all the blueberries because if you got a whole one you were biting into a frozen blueberry. I don't mind that but you decide for yourself.