Pie! Pie! Pie!

Me and sister, taken by Michelle Citrin

The other week me, my sister Kim, and our friend Michelle C. went berry picking on Sauvie Island, an island a few miles from Portland that has many farms and beaches (including a nudie section that I've never even accidentally come across). I am not that into berry picking, I must confess. After the first initial "Yum! These berries are so good!" when you first start picking, it gets old fast. My sister loves it only a little more than I do, but she can keep up her excitement with thoughts of baked goods, freezing, jamming and carrying on that goes on at her house when she has fresh fruit. My mom comes every summer and enjoys helping with the berry picking. However, she isn't coming this year and she's very sad to be missing out (I'm sure my sister is also sad to not have as many berries tucked away in the freezer). Michelle C. on the other hand LOVES picking. Like, really LOVES.  Kim and I are on constant roam, looking for the magnificent and Michelle C. is all calm and meditative, sitting by a bush and picking all the ripe ones in front of her. It's the way to go since she picked more than we did....

We did end up with plenty berries, including some raspberries, which weren't quite ready for picking.

I had bought blueberries for mini cupcakes (below) I had made for a July 4th gathering at my friend Corinn's house.

Vanilla w/Buttercream from "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World"

I still had a lot left of those inferior-tasting blueberries and decided to make a pie with them and freeze mine from Sauvie Island for future awesomeness. I didn't have any pie plates, so I went to a store and bought frozen crusts. The brand was Marie Calendar, I believe. I used a recipe for the filling that I found online (it's the one that VeganLunchbox's Jennifer McCann uses) and then used Julie Hasson's crumb recipe since I didn't feel like making the yummy, pretty lattice kind. Crumble topping is just so dang easy!

Of course, I had to have a piece after only letting it cool for about 20 minutes, so the filling was quite runny. It screamed for ice cream and so I put the only kind I had on it: Trader Joe's Cherry Chocolate Chip. It would do better with plain Vanilla, but it still worked and it was tasty! I was worried the pie would stay runny, but my mom assured me that once it cools it would thicken and, you know, moms can be so right sometimes....

I was expecting to make only one pie, but it turns out that that 4 cups of blueberries makes 2 pies. When you're me anyways. Julie Hasson's Blueberry Pie (see crumb recipe link) calls for cooking the berries and I think perhaps that would make it so they would all fit in one pie crust, but my recipe wasn't precooked and they weren't all going to fit. I was happy to have another pie and I got to take one to my brother-in-law's birthday cook-out.

mmmm....pie....

My favorite pie is still cherry, but I'm proud of my delicious blueberry pies...

By the way, I *finally* ended up at Proper Eats in St. John's area! Yum! We three girls split Tempeh Tacos, Tempeh Reuben and a half order of 3 dips w/raw crackers and veggies. Everything was fresh, delicious, and beautiful! Best reuben in town! So many explanation marks!!