Stupid Free Blueberries

Yesterday I went grocery shopping and I spent so much money that I qualified for the special promotion... free blueberries. A lot of free blueberries.

So I get back to the car and I realize that the blueberry boxes have leaked all over my pants. So I rush home and start a load of laundry. Total cost of blueberries so far: $1.00 to do the wash; 15 minutes of my time.

Now I have to store the blueberries. However, about 2 months ago my cleaning lady “reorganized” my fridge for me when she cleaned it. Since then, I have never been able to find anything and I can’t seem to make anything new fit into it. So I decide this is as good a time as any to resolve this outstanding issue and I re-re-organize my fridge to the way I like it. This leads me to cleaning the fridge. At this point I am committed to organizing my kitchen, so I rearrange all my cupboards (why do I have so many kinds of flour and where did all these stray packets of hot chocolate come from anyway?). Total cost of blueberries so far: $1.00 for the laundry and $50 of unused curious food items thrown away during cleaning spree ; 15 minutes of laundry and 1.5 hours of kitchen reorganizing.

But then I realize that I have so many blueberries, that I should take precautions in storing them since I don’t want them to spoil. The logic of these confuses me for a second BECAUSE THEY WERE FREE SO WHO CARES IF THEY SPOIL! But I am a waste not want not kind of gal, so I crank up the laptop to surf the ‘net to see how best to store blueberries (in a glass bowl with saran cover, do not wash first). But who goes surfing and stops at one thing. So I get side-tracked updating myself on news of the world (and by news of the world I mean what is going on in the Big Brother house), reading some emails, seeing if there are any new sales at J.Crew, looking for blueberry recipes, checking the price of my favourite hotels, and playing sudoku. Total cost of blueberries so far: $51 for the laundry and wasted food; 1.75 hours of laundry and kitchen reorganizing and 2 hours on the ‘net.

Today I woke up and started checking out my collection of cook books and cooking mags to see what I should make with all my “free” blueberries. My collection of books and mags is no joke. I have a lot of them. So browsing them takes an inordinate amount of time. I realize that there should be a better way to organize them. So I implement a new recipe cataloguing system which involves going through each magazine and entering the recipes into a newly created database on my laptop. I get through 2 years (24 issues) of one magazine, before I realize that I have passed the “making something out of blueberries for breakfast” time of day and have entered into the “making something out of blueberries for lunch” time of day. But I have the start of a really good database. Total cost of blueberries so far: $51 for the laundry and old food; 3.75 hours of laundry, kitchen purging, and surfing plus 3 hours of data entry.

Oh crap, the recipes. Right. So I hit the ‘net to go to cooksillustrated.com to find recipes. Then I realize that THEY database their recipes, so I don’t have to. AARGH. But anyway I find a dozen good blueberry recipes. Of course, I don’t have any of the right ingredients (what normal person keeps buttermilk in their fridge in 2009, plus I threw out all my flour yesterday). So I have to go off to the grocery store to buy more stuff. Total cost of blueberries so far: $51 for the laundry and old food plus $40 for the new food; 6.75 hours of cleaning, surfing and useless data entry plus 1 hour to find recipes and go to store.

First recipe... Blueberry Buckle from Cook’s Illustrated. Uses up 4 whole cups of blueberries Fantastic. Delicious. Not quick. Total cost of blueberries so far: $91 for the cleaning and purging and groceries; 9 hours for the cleaning, surfing, stupid data entry, shopping and baking.

Oh, and I have only used up about 1/8th of the blueberries.

More baking tomorrow.

I wish they never gave me the damn things.

But they were FREE.