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Fifty shades of blue

Take your pick from our local blueberry kingdom
food_glenda1

They can improve your eyesight, fix an upset stomach and deliver one of the finest summer treats on the planet.

Blueberries might be one of the most righteous farm products our province produces, and that should make us all very happy — especially if you live in Sea to Sky country and want to eat as locally and tastily as you can. You'd be hard pressed to find a more delicious, more versatile, healthier local summer fruit (I'll arm wrestle the raspberry lovers later over that one).

B.C. is a giant in the blueberry department. We have more than 800 growers pumping out some 55 million kilograms annually — about 50 per cent more than just a few years ago.

The industry primarily relies on high-bush varieties that were originally hybridized in New Jersey, not the local wild varieties of Vaccinium. In fact, B.C has become the No. 1 high-bush blueberry producer in the world, in no small part due to an effective marketing board.

Blueberries are too good and easy. Grab a handful, run them under the tap and pop them into your mouth for a snack. Grab another handful and toss them into your muffin or pancake batter or onto your cereal or yogurt (We'll get to the pies later).

If you're still buying that blueberry-flavored commercial yogurt, forget it! Find a plain brand you like. How about Olympic's organic plain yogurt, which uses milk from those beautiful Holsteins raised up in Pemberton Valley? Throw in a bunch of blueberries and sweeten the whole thing with good honey.

When it comes to honey, blow all your preconceived notions about it out of the water with the fresh — the very fresh — blueberry honey from Jane's Honeybees. You can pick it up at farmers' markets from Whistler to Steveston (www.janeshoneybees.com).

Owner Liz Graham, who named Jane's Honeybees after her mom, rents out her hives to farmers all over the Lower Mainland, from Richmond to Abbotsford. That includes blueberry farmers, so you'll be eating blueberry honey made by bees that pollinated the flowers that made the blueberries you may well be eating with your blueberry honey. Cosmic serendipity!

If you want to blow away everything you ever thought you knew about blueberry juice, try another local product that's out of this world. Bremner juices are made right on the delta of the mighty Fraser River. Next time you drive Highway 99 south to White Rock or the U.S. border, look for the quaint two-storey farmhouse on the right side of the highway as you approach Mud Bay. You'll recognize it instantly because Bremner juice labels sport an image of that old farmhouse.

The Bremner farm was started in the 1950s by Stan Bremner, as a potato farm. Lucky for us, they planted their first blueberries in 1980. But it was son, Terry, who figured out how to make a blueberry juice that puts any other blueberry juice you've ever tasted to utter, despicable shame.

Bremner blueberry juice — in fact, all their juices — are made from "fresh grade" berries, the same grade as the ones we eat. By contract, most juice producers use "juice grade" berries — the berries you wouldn't touch because they're too green or too ripe.

That plus the fact that Bremners don't add water, sugar or preservatives makes these juices ambrosial. You can easily dilute them with water at a three-to-one ratio and still have denser, more flavourful juice than 99 per cent of the juices out there.

Even though most commercial brands add sugar to their blueberry drinks, you certainly don't need to. Blueberries are one of the sweetest fruits going, with 11 per cent sugar content by weight.

They're also super good for you. Blueberries are rich in phenolic antioxidants and they're loaded with anthocyanin pigments, which help reduce eyestrain. The official diet for Royal Air Force pilots in World War II included blueberries to improve their night vision.

Another bonus: blueberries, like cranberries, contain the kind of tannins that help with urinary tract infections. But if you go a little crazy and eat too many, you might find yourself constipated. Blueberries, or bilberries as Europeans call them, also contain compounds called anthocyanosides, which lent them their properties as an old-fashioned cure for diarrhea.

It's peak blueberry season right now so grocery store and market shelves are spilling over with them. But if you fancy a beautiful afternoon out in the motherlode itself, you can find farm gate sales and u-pick ops at www.bcblueberry.com.

After you've picked your blue bounty, use some of it to bake your own fresh blueberry pie with this recipe from the best pie-maker in the world — my mom. It's easy, fun and beautiful — for when you have your berries all spread out in the pie shell, you'll see fifty or more exquisite shades of blue.

How to make the best blueberry pies ever

Pre-heat your oven to 450º. For one 9-inch pie, make your favourite pastry or buy a good frozen one. Place the bottom crust into the pie plate and sprinkle 1-2 tbsp. of flour on it. Dump in your blueberries, or whatever fruit you like. Make a nice big mound, much higher that the lip of the pie plate as the fruit collapses when cooked. Sprinkle 1/3 c. sugar over the fruit. (If you adapt this recipe to other fruit pies, you'll need to adjust your sugar accordingly; for instance, for sour fruit like transparent apples you'll need 2/3 c. of sugar). Sprinkle 1 tbsp. of flour and 2 tsp. of fresh lemon juice over the fruit. Add dabs of butter, evenly spaced, and spices like cinnamon and nutmeg as you like. Place the top crust and brush it with milk to brown the pastry. Sprinkle lightly with sugar. Cut a few slits to let the steam out. Bake for 10 minutes at 450º then lower the oven temperature to 375º and continue baking for another 30 minutes, or until the fruit juices start to bubble up through the steam vents. Enjoy!

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning journalist who stuffs half her freezer with blueberries this time of year.