Waiting for it to cool completely

Somewhere along the line I entered a contest and won ten pounds of blueberries. The blueberries arrived last week and, um, do you know what ten pounds of blueberries looks like? Because I really had no idea. Turns out, it's approximately 25 times the number of blueberries that you buy at the grocery store for $4.99 a pint. (Yep. That's what our local grocery store charges for them when they are not on sale.)

The blueberries arrived with about a pound ruined during shipping since one of the containers opened. We froze about six pounds in glass jars. We had delicious blueberry pancakes approximately eighty million times, made a gorgeous blueberry pie, and canned two pints of blueberry jam. You may call me Martha Stewart.

Details on gluten free baking that you probably don't care about unless you came here for gluten free baking help:

We used the gluten free Bisquick mix to make pancakes the first time and they were fabulous. Light, fluffy, and delicious. They did not brown up evenly, but it was still pretty obvious when they were done cooking. We used this mix to bake biscuits also and the mix did an awesome job. I got that box from someone at General Mills before it was available in stores. Now I can't find it in any stores, but the web site says it's coming soon. Every gluten free cook should have a box of this stuff in their cupboards. (We just put 3/4 cup of blueberries in the batter, let the batter sit for 30 minutes, and then cooked them up.)

The other times we used Bob's Red Mill's pancake mix. It was okay. Not nearly as fluffy as the Bisquick, but fine. It cooked evenly and the texture was good. Since it's cheaper and more readily available than the Bisquick, I think we're going to be using it a lot. (We just put 3/4 cup of blueberries in the batter, let the batter sit for 30 minutes, and then cooked them up.)

To make our delicious pie, we followed the recipe in the Joy of Cooking for the pie filling (berries, sugar, lemon) and added some cinnamon. We used a pie crust mix from Breads by Anna and it was really, really good. Flaky and just like regular pie crust. We pinched the bottom pie crust into a pie pan and rolled out the top crust between some wax paper. I was shocked at how quick the process was. Maybe someday I'll attempt a pie crust from scratch, but I thought this was a pretty good start for our first pie.

The jam was easy, but required us to buy a bunch of stuff we didn't already have (pectin, Mason jars, a jarring set including a lid lifter, wide mouthed funnel, and a jar grabber) and also required me to improvise on something I should have had (notably, a wire rack to put on the bottom of our big pot that I used to boil the jars to sanitize them - I had to wrap the jars in dishtowels to prevent them from touching each other or the metal pot). The preparation was a pain in the rear, but the jam is delicious. I used the recipe provided by the foldout in the pectin box.

If I was going to make jam again or start to jar vegetables (which I'm just crunchy enough to think I might do), I'd invest in a steam canner to avoid some of the issues I had with sanitizing my jars. Now that I have all the other equipment, I'd be all set!!