Oooo, la, la...Olallieberries!

Every year in the month of June something special grows just over the hill...Olallieberries! Some say oh-la-lee, I say oh-la-la. What is that you say? I can never remember so I typed in my handy dandy google window "What is an Olallieberry?" And our trusty wikipedia said this, "...a cross between a loganberry and a youngberry, each of which is itself a cross between blackberry and another berry (raspberry and dewberry, respectively)". Also defined as scrumptious, delicious, bursting with summery goodness...you get the picture. Growing season is nearly gone, so I enlisted my four helping hands (which would actually be a total of eight hands) to pick some berries.

Lizzy and Tim were busy picking...

(Brennen, Gabe and I were busy too, but sadly, no photos)

and eating!

Here are our four buckets...(it would have been five if Lizzy wouldn't have dumped her pickin's on the ground every time she had any amount in the bucket!).

After rinsing and picking through the berries to weed out the foliage, I scattered some on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet...

...and placed them in the freezer. Once the individual berries are frozen, I will put them in a freezer ziplock bag and store them in the freezer, from which I can pull any amount that I wish.

The rest went straight into ziplock bags in the amounts that I need for specific recipes, i.e. jam, pie, and cobbler.

And the grand total for today was (drumroll please) I can make 2 batches of jam, 2 cobblers, 3 pies, 2 batches of pancakes, and still I have 4 cookie sheets worth left over for any of the above or anything else I can think of!

Olallieberries...yum!!!