I think I mentioned last Friday that I was planning on going blueberry picking over the weekend. Well we did (all my siblings, my daughter, my brother-in-law, and my mom), and we had a blast.

(My little nephew is the cutest thing ever—he’s the baby you saw in my post last year.)

The farm that we fell in love with last year didn’t have any berries available this season (sad times) so we drove out to a new farm. It was quite the trek, but I have never seen so many enormous and deliciously sweet blueberries in one spot. I had a full bucket in less than 10 minutes. By the way…if you are looking for U-Pick Fruit and Veggie Farms in your area (the US and some International locations too), this site is incredibly helpful (just do your best to ignore the Comic Sans font).

Unfortunately the berries we picked weren’t cheap—especially not compared to last year (I think we determined that they came out to around $5 a pound), but the experience…the fruit we’ll be freezing, and the desserts we’ve been making with them so far are definitely worth it.

Speaking of desserts (see how I did that there…muwahaha), I busted out our favorite Martha Stewart Blueberry Tart recipe from last year and adapted it to suit our now gluten-free lifestyle. The end results were nearly as tasty as I remember them being (you really can’t beat 6 cups of fresh blueberries piled on a buttery crust, can you).

If you want to create this recipe yourself you can find the original (with gluten) version here. To create a gluten-free version I just used our favorite gf flour mix in place of the white flour the recipe called for, along with gluten-free vanilla (the rest of the recipe stays unaltered). I feel like to be fair I should also mention that there is a decent amount of patience need for this recipe. It’s not difficult to create per se, but there are a lot of small steps and stretches of waiting in there that can get kind of frustrating when all you want to do is sink your teeth into a piece of blueberry goodness (not cook it, chill it, then cook and chill it again).

Here’s a scale showing the level of frustration you should be prepared to experience if you decide to create this tasty recipe (don’t you think all recipes should come with one of these charts?).

By the way I found an awesome book all about canning and preserving at my local library the other day that inspired me to create some free printables for use with food storage and food gifts. I’m putting the finishing touches on those today and will have them ready for you all tomorrow. Hope to see you then. xo Ez

All images by Ez Pudewa (me).