Last weekend my wife and I packed up the kids and headed to my In-Law’s farm in Carencro.  It’s a lovely piece of land on the Coteau Ridge and your soul exhales as soon as you enter it.  After a round of hugs and kisses my Mother-In-Law invited my sons to go pick blueberries.   I decided to join ‘em because, well, I’d never picked blueberries before.  The only way I’ve known them is in the little plastic cartons from the produce section of the store or in the white bags of the frozen aisle.

Picking blueberries is much easier than picking blackberries.  No stickers to scratch skin. No brambles that copperheads or other snakes might be hiding in.  No barbed wire fences to navigate.  Just bushes with berries ranging from green (just formed) to blue (ripe) with shades of red in between.  All I had to do was walk up and wipe back a little of the powder from the berry’s skin to see if it was ripe!  On top of being easy to pick, blueberries are easy to grow in South Louisiana because they like acidic soil and we’ve got plenty of that.

Just like with everything else that is harvested in the peak of its season, they were delectable.  It was strange having a warm blueberry at first because I’ve only known them out of a refrigerator but it didn’t take long to just enjoy them as they are meant to be enjoyed… like a warm splash of summer on your palate.

The good folks at Blue Moon Saloon have latched onto this mid-summer delight and are putting together the Inaugural BluesBerry Festival to celebrate the blueberry as well as raise money for a local farmers’ network.   They’ve added a cooking competition for restaurants that use local ingredients, too. [As an aside, I'm amazed that we haven't used the blueberry as yet another perfectly good reason/excuse to party before this year!]

When J.P. & Michelle were approached about participating in the BluesBerry Festival they almost immediately said yes because they (1) love music and (2) love supporting local farmers.  It can be a challenge to cook with local, seasonal ingredients but the rewards are really, really high when you do it right… and we look forward to showing anyone who shows up at the Blue Moon Saloon on Saturday, July 16th how good we can rock a blueberry!