HUCKLEBERRY FUNFor just about all of my life, I’ve been calling huckleberries blueberries and blueberries huckleberries! I’ll be first to admit that’s ignorant, but it never occurred to me that the two of them might be different. No one ever told me and I never asked.
Recently, I came across a communication from an office located on the ump-teenth floor of the Empire State Building in New York of all which handed me a complete rundown on black and blue berries as well as huckled. I had to know all.
I quickly realized the printed materials were “propaganda”. The “Blueberry Gang” had sent fine recipes and nutrition notes on blueberries but the huckleberry was barely mentioned with six lines of copy on page four.
Blueberries are not only delicious they are unique. They are prob- ably the most widely distributed fruit in the world. Others, such as the banana, will grow only in steaming tropical zones; others – like apples – thrive in Temperate zones, but the blueberry grows where there is mulchy, acid soil.
Blueberries are the only fruit which reaches our table wild or in a “native” state as well as in modern, highly cultivated forms. They are ready with just a quick washing. You have no peelings, no pits, no stems, no tops, no slippery seeds to count, no leavings or “for the birds” portions.
The cultivation of blueberries increased enormously. In the 1920-30' there were widely scattered plantings, but that figure grew to over twenty thousand such farms by the middle of the century. You can still pick wild blueberries in the east from Maine to Alabama, in the Ozarks, the Cascades and the upper regions of the Pacific Northwest. Wild ones are smaller but good. Commercial types are marketed in four sizes. Deluxe means you from 70 to 90 berries per pint.
Now a direct quote from the poop sheet:
"In some parts of the country wild blueberries are called "huckleberries". They are different. They have ten rather hard seeds. They are not as sweet and blackish in color rather than blue."
In spite of that unkind note, I was impressed. On my way home I stopped briefly at the Farmer's Open Market and bought a quart of blueberries from a man who sold "the best lookin' "huckleberries" he'd seen in years!
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 11-8-06 [c400wds]
