Lentil Festival and Blueberries

After a cool and rainy week on the Palouse, the weather was perfect for Lentil Festival weekend in Pullman, and for the farmer’s market in Moscow, which didn’t appear to suffer any loss of customers to the Lentil Festival. The huge bowl of lentil chili is always an awesome sight, especially the guy up on top stirring it with a canoe paddle; I love the way they fill up pitchers of the stuff from the faucet at the bottom of the pot and then serve it into paper cups for the hordes.

We went to the farmer’s market this morning with our friends Pat and Kathy who were visiting from Kamiah, and came home with two flats of Oregon blueberries (24 generous pints), 10 ears of corn, and a flat of peaches. Also I got some fresh tomatoes from Kate Jaeckel at Orchard Farm, who was so proud to have harvested some 100 lbs. of them this week, thanks to her crop being protected during the early season by a hoop house. With snow on June 10 and frost in early July, it’s a wonder we can get tomatoes at all. We promptly turned them into BLT’s for lunch, accompanied by the boiled sweet corn that Reed and Pat shucked and silked for us.

I put one pint of berries in the fridge and poured the rest straight into Ziploc bags and stuck them – all 18 pounds of them - into the freezer. At a cost of $53 for the two flats, I got 18 lbs. of fresh blueberries for just under $3/lb. Considering that they cost at least twice that in the freezer section of the grocery store I’m feeling great, and that’s before I even pop any into my mouth, which is simply unadulterated pleasure. And for only $3/lb.!!