Blueberry Picking with Kids!

July is the national Blueberry month and we are definitely going to celebrate this fruit. There are approximately 35 states that blueberries grow in so if you are close to one of them, enjoy and have fun with this fruit.

Blueberries are really delicious. There are so many ways to eat them. Appetizers, Breads, Rolls & Muffins, Coffee Cakes, Dessert Cakes, Cookies, Bars & Squares, Doughnuts, Desserts & Puddings, Jams & Jellies, Pancakes & Waffles, One-Crust Pies, Two-Crust Pies, Salads, Punch & Wines, Relishes, Entrees, or just plain blueberries, its endless!

These extremely healthy and delicious berries also offer a fun and creative way to spend a day. Since we live in the north east region of the US we are going to spend a day picking fresh blueberry. There are so many places to go to pick your own fruits and vegetables around our area. Just recently, Wendy and I spent some time traveling to Maine and Canada. During this trip we learned that not only does Hammonton, NJ call itself the Blueberry Capitol of the World, Cherryville, ME shares the same slogan. Maine is well known for its Wild Blueberries.

Since we agree that Blueberries are one of our favorite we have decided to make this another one of our “Fun Day’s”. This is going to be fun. We will find fun and creative ways to serve up these delicious fruits while having a great time.

FOOD:

We made a delicious Blueberry dessert called "Blueberry Crumb Bars".  They surprisingly came out not too bitter and not too sweet, actually perfect!

You can find the recipe HERE and along with the great pictures on how to prepare it. 

CRAFTS:

Why not try blueberry painting, we are going to. You can boil blueberries on the stove top for about five minutes and then have the kids go to town smashing them. Give them paintbrushes or sponges cut in fun shapes and let them go to town. Of course during this activity you should mention some key facts such as the blueberry has a ton of health benefits and is said to prevent cancer and heart disease.

You can always cook up blueberries on the stove with sugar and a small bit of orange or lemon juice then freeze them to made delicious freeze pops. You can do this without the sugar too and it is still delicious.


Martha Stewart has a great idea for fabric painting blueberries, click HERE to see.

TABLESCAPE:

We used a white plastic lace tablecloth with blue round placemats.  White dishes.  We punched out round circles in 2 different color blue and scattered them around the table like blueberry confetti.  We had mini-blueberry pies, Blueberry muffins, a Blueberry Pie, Blueberry Crumb Bars and Blueberry Lemonade.  We found these adorable blue plastic pails and used white stickers to place their names on each of their own bucket.  The bucket was used to carry their hand picked blueberries.  We also used a real blueberry plant on the table.

FESTIVALS:
Click HERE to find a list of blueberry festivals for a few states


FUN FACTS:
For fun facts about blueberries check out this website HERE


HEALTH FACTS:
With just 80 delicious calories per cup and virtually no fat, blueberries offer us many important nutrition and health benefits. For health benefits and information on Blueberries check out these sites below.

http://www.blueberrycouncil.org/nutrition.php

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=8

http://www.state.nj.us/agriculture/news/press/2010/approved/press100617.html

http://sfp.ucdavis.edu/pubs/brochures/blueberries.html

http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/blueberry.html

FREEBIES:

Click HERE to download these adorable Fruit Fonts we found at Font Space, preview below: