Oregon Berries

Kelly here. Excited to post my first Busy Bees blog entry. It's funny tho, because while the rest of you girls are indeed busy bees, with your first days of school and all, I am peacefully un-busy. I just got back to Grants Pass, Oregon, where Claire and I grew up, after a three week road trip, which involved visiting Claire and her new house in LA:

We had a great visit, but my boyfriend Trevor and I were more than ready to get back home. Grants Pass greeted us with hot hot days and a river edged with TONS of blackberries. We went out in the driftboat and filled this container FULL within 20 minutes. Note that it is now almost empty :

First I made a little crisp, with a topping made by crumbling together EarthSmart vegan butter, oats, cinnamon, a handful of oat bran, a handful of flax seeds, and some dark brown sugar. Yum Yum. I do wonder about EarthSmart though, because after eating half of the crisp on my own, I was bloated for like 24 hours. And then again when I ate the other half, haha. Maybe its overeating, but I wonder if the "milk protein" in butter substitutes is as hard to digest as other parts of milk. I'm a bad lactose intolerant.

Then we had a little BBQ and we made drinks with the berries: vodka, lemonade, and mushed black berries. Mmmm.

Then I had some on my oatmeal this morning. But there are STILL more!! Luckily, this morning I happened to check my favorite food blog, ChoosingRaw, and Gena had posted a recipe for a Peach and Blackberry skillet cake! Yes please.

Gena's Peach and Blackberry Skillet Cake

I had picked up some peaches at the Grower's Market yesterday morning, but I didn't want to use them all, so instead of measuring out Gena's proportions of fruit, I threw in a thick layer of berries, and thin slices from one fresh peach. I also sliced up the little wild strawberries my grandma gave me from her neighbor's garden. I didn't have applesauce, so I mashed up a frozen banana instead. Also, instead of all flour, I used mostly flour and a 1/4 cup oats, just because I love oats. And I used a packet of Stevia instead of sugar, though it was almost unnecessary because of how sweet the old banana was.

Phew, that was more tiny alterations than I expected.

What are your favorite summer foods and fruits? Is there anything you look forward to year round, and eat up when it comes? Obviously berries are that thing for us Oregon girls!