It’s a lot more fun to pick blueberries than it is to pick blackberries — no scratches from the bushes. Your fingers will still get purple and so will your feet if you step on blueberries, but they are worth all of that. Get a bucket and go the blueberry patch. Pick the round berries; the bigger they are, the sweeter they will be. The white and red berries are not ripe and will be sour, so just leave them on the bushes. If you find a clump of good ripe berries, they can be picked with one hand. The bad ones or those not ripe will stay on the bush.

I do believe my Aunt Johnnie could make blueberry pies with her eyes closed. And naturally, she made her crust from scratch. She and Uncle Judge lived in a little rural area of Coffee Springs, Alabama. Uncle Judge, my daddy’s brother, would let us little ones pick peanuts from the haystacks and eat all the peanuts we wanted. Aunt Johnnie always made us a blueberry pie. There were six of us, which included a set of twins, and five cousins, which also included a set of twins. That made 11 children with only nine years difference in age. When my mother went to be with her Heavenly Father in 1978, Daddy’s house was inundated with food. One of the first things I recognized was a pie placed on the far end of the dessert table. I did not need a closer look, I knew immediately it was a pie from Aunt Johnnie, and I was not a bit surprised she made us a blueberry pie!

Several years after neither of our parents were with us, my twin brother came for a short visit and we decided to take a drive through the countryside and see if we could locate the old homesteads. Naturally, we found Mama and Daddy’s home but had difficulty locating the one for Aunt Johnnie and Uncle Judge. We stopped at a little country store and asked an elderly gentleman if he knew our aunt and uncle and for directions to their old place. He said, “You can’t get to there from here!” Leo and I looked at each other and before we laughed out loud, I said, “Where do we need to go in order to get to where we want to go?” Leo looked at me and I smiled. The elderly gentleman was very kind. He stooped down, drew a map in the sandy road, showing us where we had to start our trip. He said, “To start with, you go to where the airplane is — sitting in the fork in the road.” From that point, it was easy to follow his directions and locate Aunt Johnnie and Uncle Judge’s old homestead. Such fond memories!

Blueberry Cream Cheese Bread

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon lemon zest

2/3 cup buttermilk

2 cups blueberries

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened

Glaze

Ingredients

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon milk

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs together. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and lemon zest in another bowl. Add to creamed mixture along with buttermilk and mix together. Fold in blueberries. Cut cream cheese into small pieces and fold into flour mixture.

Grease and flour a 9x5-inch loaf pan. Pour in bread mixture. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Make Glaze by combining powdered sugar, vanilla and milk. Drizzle over bread. Garnish with additional blueberries. Slice when cool and serve. Enjoy.

From the scriptures

Spiritual food is essential for all of us, as well as physical food. We enjoy two or three meals every day. We should nourish our mind and feed our spirit daily just as we feed our body. Bible verses are fabulous spiritual food. We should look forward to reading our Bible daily; just one or two verses of scripture each day would help feed our spirit.

Our Bible verse for this week is: Leviticus 26:4-5: “Then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely.”