The rainy, stormy summer of 2016 will go down as a banner season for blueberries in Minnesota's North Woods, and those who have been fortunate enough to get in on the picking will attest there's no comparison between wild blueberries and the store-bought variety.
The options for preparing wild blueberries are numerous: blueberry pancakes, fresh blueberries and cream, blueberry syrup, blueberry sauce, blueberry muffins. ...
And, of course, blueberry pie.
Baking isn't one of my fortes, but Gretchen Mehmel, manager of Red Lake Wildlife Management Area at Norris Camp south of Roosevelt, Minn., shared a blueberry pie recipe with me a couple of years ago that's every bit as tasty as it is easy to make.
There's no baking involved.
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Mehmel found the recipe in a cookbook from a church in Skime, Minn., and as it turns out, Alma Heskin, the Roseau, Minn., woman who contributed the recipe, was a neighbor in the rural area where I grew up.
I took a couple of liberties with the recipe, substituting a store-bought graham cracker crust for the baked pie shell and whipped topping instead of whipped cream, but the result was equally tasty.
With a growing inventory of blueberries in my freezer, I'll be trying out the recipe again real soon.
Fresh blueberry pie
1 baked pie shell (or store-bought graham cracker pie shell)
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
¼ cup water
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4 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter
Line cooled pie shell with 2 cups of blueberries. To make sauce, cook remaining blueberries with sugar, cornstarch, salt and water over medium heat until thickened. Remove from heat; add butter and cool. Pour over berries in shell. Chill until serving time. Serve with whipped cream (or whipped topping). Go back for more-you earned it if you pick your own blueberries.
-- Brad Dokken
