Large fruit: I hate it. I’m not sure what evil agri-genius thought a single apple should be able to feed a family of four, but his perverted ideas about proportion have wrecked havoc on fruit aisles across the country. Spots on my apples, fine; apples as big as the Big Apple, no thank you. Here in Florida you hear a lot of buzz about Plant City strawberries. And it is exciting to experience strawberries as a Christmas/winter fruit. But I’m here to report that Plant City’s strawberries reflect national trends: fully two-thirds are overweight. And tasteless (not that I think two-thirds of us have bad taste too, mind you…). It’s easy to forget this—the occasional tart/sweet behemoth in a box making you think you’ve got real-deal berries because you’ve lost a point of reference. But then I was in Washington, DC a couple of weekends ago and had some organic, local, freshly picked berries each one no bigger than a quarter, the whole pile threatening to deliquesce into impromptu jam. Plant City, your berries are just as industrial as your name.

And don’t even get me started on blueberries. I’m a self-professed blueberry snob. If they’re not from Maine and they grow more than two inches off the ground, they’re not blueberries. They are, as my mother would disparagingly call them, “bush berries” or “those New Jersey berries” (seriously, if you live in Baltimore like I did growing up most of your “blueberries” come from the Garden Sate). Maine blueberries are delicate, petite, and vaguely floral. They taste like blueberries, not like the bloated, overly fleshy, citrusy berries we get down south. It may not sound like it, but I’m trying to have a more open mind to southern blueberries since they are in abundance down here right now. So we went to pick blueberries last weekend.

In Maine, if you want blueberries in any number you don’t pick them, you rake them. I’ve actually never done this, but driving around in early August you’ll see “rakers” working in the fields and signs advertising for more people to help rake in the harvest. We usually go to a wild patch on a nearby hill and pick just enough for a few batches of pancakes or muffins then buy the rest; because they’re so low to the ground, picking Maine blueberries is tough on the back.

Our Florida berry picking was unexpectedly terrific. We started with brioche, sticky buns and local color at Tupelo’s in Monticello, then headed to Green Meadows Farm, coming away with one bee sting (me, thankfully, not the kids) and six pounds of surprisingly tasty organic blueberries. They still lack the subtleties of the Maine variety, but they did make a mighty fine pie. And I have a bunch more frozen for future uses. Julia Child’s pie crust recipe yielded its usual flawless results, and Alton Brown’s formula for the filling (minus the freezing) was perfection.  It was really a terrific pie—the filling tasted just sweet enough and it actually set! A first for me.

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