Blueberries or bust

Over the past few weeks, we've been thwarted in our attempts to obtain a number of items, including a breadmaker, a freezer and the second season of Veronica Mars. There appear to be several factors at play in these situations such as the apparent fact that the period of time when folks considered breadmakers kind of useless but everyone got one for Christmas anyway has ended. The "sandwich maker" (which is what, exactly?) and those shiny new ninety-billion setting ice-cream makers seem to have claimed the place in our hearts that breadmakers once occupied. We saw these items at every store at which we tried (and failed) to find a breadmaker. Finally, while visiting Barbara's parents on a recent Saturday, we hit up the garage sale down the block from their house. What's the first thing I saw? A breadmaker! For $15! Miraculously, I had $15 cash on me and bought the thing on the spot. We took it home and Barbara, Barbara's mom, and I attempted to try the thing out in the kitchen. I am not kidding you, it didn't work. Luckily, I was able to pack it back up, walk it back to the garage sale and get my money back from its rather befuddled and apologetic original owners. Breadmakers abound on the internet but my frugal reluctance to pay the shipping has momentarily ended our search.

The freezer. After decided to buy a new one after all, rather than play craigslist roulette with a major appliance, there was apparently a mad run on small chest freezers at our local Lowe's (which purports to have free delivery of said appliances). So we headed to Sears, but found that they would charge us $60 to deliver. I refused (See above-mentioned frugality re: shipping. Plus, the thing only cost $170 in the first place!). Intimidated by the prospect of bringing a freezer home ourselves, we tried to find another Lowe's. Long story short, we ended up back at Sears, loading a 5 cubic foot chest freezer into the back of my station wagon. Needless to say, while we had originally intended to put the freezer in the basement, an executive decision was made on the sidewalk between the street and our front door that it's final resting place would be in the kitchen.

For a couple of weeks, we also had difficulty finding blueberries in central Ohio. I never thought I liked blueberries very much, but this summer, after finding out how good for us they are, I decided to force myself to accept them. Soon I was buying $7 worth at the Farmers' Market near our house in D.C. every Sunday. As my grandpa would have said, if I ate any more blueberries, I was going to turn into a blueberry. So I looked forward to obtaining mass amounts upon our return to Columbus so that I could enjoy frozen blueberry smoothies and blueberry pies and blueberry crisp and blueberries in my oatmeal all winter long. I searched high and low for blueberries and asked every fruit farmer at the Clintonville Farmers' Market, one of whom told me blueberries were "done and gone" for the year. I refused to believe him. Columbus, OH is at almost the exact same geographic latitude as Washington, D.C. and has similar weather, so how could we have come from the land of blueberry plenty to a blueberry graveyard without changing climates? I turned to the internet. There I found the Blueberry Patch near Mansfield, OH, an hour north of us. They had a U-pick operation and their berries, they claimed, would be in season until early September. Over the course of two different visits, Barbara and I managed to pick almost 10 pounds of blueberries, most of which are now happily washed, frozen and packed into our lovely new freezer. I count my blueberry bounty as the triumph of our struggles these past few weeks.

Now, does anyone have a breadmaker hanging out in the basement that they'd love for me to take off their hands?