The Best of Times...the Worst of Times

I was going to call this post "abbondanza part 2," but a visit to my garden tonight dampened my spirits a bit. Saturday we went blueberry picking at a local U Pick. We picked nearly five pounds of blueberries with plans to make more freezer preserves (god bless pectin!) and Zips' favorite kind of pie. We went in the late morning, although I had every intention of getting up early-- on a Saturday morning with a nice cup of coffee, I just couldn't get a move on... We were told that the Easter frost this year made it a smaller crop, and their website said they'l be closed for a bit to let more berries ripen. We'll be there when it opens again, because we found the BEST pie recipe EVER!
Again with the before and after...mmmm. our favorite way of getting our antioxidants...
Okay, so the pie recipe is totally adapted from this great Vegan Photo Blog and one of our favorite veggie blogs, Vegan Lunch Box (hers is linked to a pie contest winner on an episode of Emeril Live). Vegan Photo Blog also links to the Emeril recipe ("Polly's Perfect...") and gives excellent detailed instruction. I nixed the nutmeg, cinnamon, and lemon juice for the berry mixture. Here's what I did:

Excellent (Vegan!) Fresh Blueberry Pie

preheat oven to 375 (the recipe says 350, the electric stove I used runs cold, so I cranked it!)
Crust:

2 c. flour
2 ts. sugar
1 ts. salt
1/2--2/3 c. vegetable oil
3-4 Tb. soy milk (I used unflavored Silk)

mix dry ingredients together
whisk oil and soy milk together
add the wet mixture to the dry mixture

press most of crust dough evenly into 9" pie plate and up the sides. set aside remaining crust crumbs (should be 1/4 to 1/3 of original amount)

Filling:

1 qt. fresh blueberries washed & drained
3 Tb. cornstarch
3/4 c. sugar
4 tsp. margarine

mix cornstarch into sugar, combine well.
gently mix berries into sugar/cornstarch
place berry mixture into pie crust
dot evenly with margarine (1/2 tsp. per dot)
crumble reserved pie crust crumbs over top of berries.

Bake 45-50 minutes

I've never made a blueberry pie before, let alone a vegan one, let alone from scratch, but THIS one takes the cake! I hope to do it again with the tart Michigan cherries I bought at the farmer's market. I've got a recipe for the cherry filling, I'll post it if I have good luck with it!

In other, less satisfying news, the garden has been great, on autopilot and hanging in there for the rain we're expecting on Tuesday. We popped out there on the way home tonight to grab some of our amazing basil, when we noticed that something has totally ravaged our corn stalks. Two or three ears were half-shucked and picked clean, presumably by birds, and the remainder of the ear had been taken over by little black bugs. We picked off seven ears of otherwise beautiful bicolor sweet corn that would have been the pinnacle of our summer gardening experience. Several had been drilled into by those bugs-- just a tiny black hole that buggers spilled out of like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom :( We still have two or three baby ears growing. We'll just have to pay extra close attention to how they're growing and pick them before the birds do.
I'm going to see what I can salvage and work the rest into black bean salsa. I'll take a picture if it works.