Ode to Huckleberries

I cracked open the last bag of frozen huckleberries this weekend, when my mom was here.

Every year when we go to Montana we get them. Sometimes my father-in-law goes up to the Ross Creek area and spends hours and hours picking the tiny, sweet purple spheres. Sometimes we buy them from another enterprising soul who has done the picking for us. But we always get scads of them, and we always are careful to freeze several ziplocs full of them. That way, when we go to the house over New Year's, there are plenty for pancakes, waffles and muffins.

During the summer of 2003, the whole state was so arid it was pretty much all up in flames when we got there in July. Huckleberries were AWOL. We searched and searched and could only find a few pathetic, withered specimens on the vines. Back at the house I scoured the deep freeze for anything remaining from the winter, but found only a couple of frozen trout, and no berries.

And yet, that weekend my father-in-law managed to bake a huckleberry pie, and scare up a full pound for me on top of that, and I still don't know where he got them. He's cagey that way.

This weekend was sufficiently close to huckleberry season that I felt it was safe to stop hoarding my stash and indulge. Since my mom was here, I decided to make the huckleberry lemonade I have spent many summers perfecting.

It goes something like this:

Take a quart-sized ziploc of hucks and let them defrost. Meanwhile, slice up 6-8 big lemons about a quarter inch thick. Get a big bowl. Line the bottom with lemon slices. Sprinkle enough sugar on them to coat. Add another layer of lemons and sugar, and so on until you've used up all your lemons. Get about 4-6 cups of boiling water -- or really however much covers the lemons by a couple inches -- and pour over the slices. Wait a few minutes, and then get a potato masher and start smushing. When you get tired of doing that, let the whole mess sit for awhile and go do something else. Actually, this is a good time to make some simple syrup. Put about 2 cups of water in the microwave and nuke it till it's just boiling. Then dump about a cup of sugar in there. Stir till it dissolves, and stick it in the frig.

Now go back to your lemon mixture. Drain it all, preferably through a colander or some cheesecloth or something, into a pitcher. Go back to your defrosted bag of hucks. There should be a lot of huckleberry juice. Pour off all the huck juice into the lemonade, and stick it into the frig with the simple syrup. Save a couple of the thicker lemon slices to put on the glasses. When everything's chilled a bit, fill glasses with ice and throw about a tablespoon of whole hucks in each glass. Then fill the glass half full with the now purple-ish lemonade. Add simple syrup to taste.

Labor intensive, yes. But fun and tasteeeeee. Tonight I made iced tea. Same process, except I used loose tea instead of lemons. Yum. Tomorrow will be muffins.

Fortunately, Oregon is almost as huck-crazy as Montana. But Montana's obsessed with those little purple balls. If Bubba from Forrest Gump had been from Montana instead of Louisiana, he wouldn't have been babbling about shrimp, it would have been huckleberries. "Huckleberry coffee, huckleberry waffles, huckleberry shakes, huckleberry jam, huckleberry butter..."

All hail the huckleberry.