Berry-licious

This summer has produced a berry bonanza in our freezer.  So much so that we had to go out and buy an auxiliary appliance for the basement.  It had to happen.  Our little raspberry patch out in the alley was slow but steady all through June.  I would start each morning by picking a pint or so.  We'd eat our fill and then freeze the rest.  And then I hit two pick-your-own strawberry fields and spent a week on an island covered with blueberry bushes.  Pretty soon our little freezer was spitting out random items each time you opened it.  This is fine if it is just a popsicle or a little kid's ice pack.  But when the frozen juice container landed on my barefoot, I knew it was time to act.  So now most of our berry crop sits in the basement in a fancy new little freezer.  We also made an impulse buy of the 'Magic Bullet'.  It's a food processor/blender/smoothie maker all rolled into one little package.  Ok, I know that most often when a product claims to be a clever combination of things, it ends up being dismal in both categories- take the 'stroller/backpack':  A super heavy unwieldy backpack with wheels, or a stroller that only a person under 3 feet tall can comfortably push.  So I was skeptical.  But after 24 hours with my new purchase I have confidently stashed my old crappy blender and food processor into the far back reaches of the cupboards (notice I have not yet confidently thrown them away).  And we have happily made smoothies, pesto, even a so-called cream cheese 'shmear' for a fruit pizza.  On a sidenote, to whomever coined the word shmear, I hate it.  It is so unappetizing and should never sell even one package of overpriced whipped cream cheese. I see it and I picture those old glass slides from 10th grade biology where we took cells from the insides of our cheeks and then watched bacteria grow on them.  Or something.  Don't you?  Shmear. 

Anyway.  Back to the berries.  Love them.  Eat them morning, noon, and night.  Am already mourning the day sometime this winter when I go down to the basement to get one more package of summer bounty and there are none left....oh, on that day, when I am forced to feed my berry habbit by spending my kids' inheritence on hard little ugly things picked in south america and shipped thousands of miles to us in the northland, on that day I will curse myself for not getting out to that berry patch one more time.  But I don't want to think about that right now.  I'm about to go fire up the Magic Bullet and make myself some smoothie.