Blueberries and Indian Taters

It's blueberry season which means a trip to the Scales corral. After some volunteer work at Jenny Nichols' race in the early morning, Bonnie and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Crest Zone up on Stone Mt near Grayson Highlands State Park. We arrived about 1pm. Storm clouds were hunkered over the ridge lines in the east with and refreshing breeze from the same direction. I didn't think it would rain for at least a couple of hours. but we set up the tent anyways before threading our 6 empty milk jugs on our belts. Within an hour we had set up camp and walked to our favorite picking area.

The berries were plentiful again this year and large for wild ones. We had no trouble picking about 4-5 gallons before it was time to call it a day and head back in to fix some supper. I found two good sized limbs for firewood less than half a mile from the corral. And dragged them back with us. Last winter's ice and wind brought down more limbs than usual. Firewood is rarely a problem though most people tend to bring there own up the mountain.

I've been on a curry-kick this year, so I decided to go fusion for the evening meal -Cowboy and Indian. I chopped a good sized purple onion, thin sliced a couple of medium white potatoes, some sweet red and green peppers, and a nice sized green hot chili. We let the fire burn to a good bed of coals and melted a half stick of butter in a deep iron skillet. Then we popped, Manjula style, a scant handful of cumin seeds in the bubbling butter and gave the onion a head start. Well before they were soft, the potatoes were added and cooked until over half done. Finally the peppers and chili were thrown in with the usual suspects- turmeric, coriander powder, paprika, and chipolte cayenne with salt to taste. Stirring regularly for a while and then covered and set over low coals.

It was scrumptious.

A little rain did materialize about dusk, but next morning Bonnie had been able to protect some coals overnight and had flames dancing before I returned to camp with some fire wood.
For breakfast we re-heated the leftover Indian Taters, scrambled and hashed in 3 eggs. It was heavenly -even better than the blueberry pancakes for the second course.

We packed up early and headed back for more berries -saw a yellow necked caterpillar, listened to the wood thrushes and picked another 4 gallons. The bears had broken more branches out of the berry bushes than usual this year, but we never saw any bears -never have in thirty plus years.

By early afternoon we were headed down the mountain. Bonnie followed in the Trooper and I ran back down to the pavement in front of her. It's almost 4 miles. I had expected some Iron Mt runners to happen by and sure enough, when we got back to town, Jenny said she and Eric had seen our car at the corral as they had passed through on a trail run.

We stopped at Fox Creek, for a bath and found a few apples on a tree near the parking area. Much refreshed, we stopped for supper in Damascus.

I hope we can make it back for round 2 next weekend.