Yes its summertime. Fresh local berries are in season. We often stop at local farms who have a table set up outside on their front lawn, but more often than not we end up at Kraus Berry Farm in Aldergrove for our summer berries. Today we stopped at two local stores to buy their berries.
There's a store on 152 Street a few blocks south of Colebrook Road called The Blueberry Store. We've driven by it many times on our travels back and forth from White Rock but never stopped. It only has a short season when its open during the summer when blueberries are ripe. Today we stopped and bought a good sized basket of blueberries for $5.00. The same size basket cost us $8.00 and $9.00 three or four years ago at their competitors. But for the past couple of years there is a glut of blueberries and prices have dropped in half. Look around when driving in the rural areas of Cloverdale, Abbotsford, and Pitt Meadows. Every spare acre has been converted to blueberry plants. Too many people got into the market and dropped the price. Good for us consumers but not the farmers. The blueberries from The Blueberry Store are OK but they're not as sweet as the ones we get from Kraus. We also bought a basket of cherries for $5.00 and they are soooo good.
When we finished at The Blueberry Store we headed to Surrey Farm Markets on the corner of Colebrook and 152. We've noticed a sign out front for the past week advertising raspberries for $9.99 a flat. I've been in here in the past and I find their fruit and veggie prices on the high side compared to the other fresh produce stores in the area. The flat of raspberries consists of 5 baskets per flat. The size of baskets that can be bought at the grocery store anywhere from $2.00 to $5.00 so we bought a flat. The raspberries are so sweet. Very nice.
Dinner tonight consisted of yogurt, blueberries, and raspberries. I searched online for a raspberry/blueberry cake and came up with one that I baked tonight. It was fairly easy. The hard part was making a run to the grocery store for sour cream, the only ingredient I didn't have on hand. Looks good. Its cooling now and I'll be giving it the taste test tomorrow. In my search I also found a recipe of sorts from a woman who experimented with her lemon pound cake and added a cup each of blueberries and raspberries and its delicious. I'm going to give that a try tomorrow too and see how it goes.
That's kind of the sad thing about finding good deals on berries. One must quickly use them before they go bad. I'm not the type of person who does much freezing and I don't make jam, so I'm going with the cakes, and if it goes well, I might freeze the whole cake.
For anyone interested here is the link for the cake I baked tonight.
http://www.chefdecuisine.com/all_fruit/raspberry/RASPBERRY-BLUEBERRY_CAKE.asp
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