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Choosing and Care of your Fresh Blueberries

<p><span style=";font-family:Trebuchet MS;font-size:85%;" >When buying blueberries, first check to see that the berries aren't hard, purple (as opposed to blue) which will indicate they were picked before they were ripe, and be sure to see that they're not moldy. Fresh, ripe blueberries should not be hard to the touch, but should be firm with just a little bit of give, and a lovely, brushed blue color. This indicates that they are picked at the peak of ripeness.<br />
</span></p><p><span style=";font-family:Trebuchet MS;font-size:85%;" > The wonderful nutrients in blueberries are best sustained by keeping them cool, so purchase from a refrigerated section in the market and put them in your own fridge as soon as you get them home, and keep them there when you're not eating them. (Better yet, pick them ripe, and then put as many in your mouth as you put in a pail.) And never wash a blueberry until you are ready to use them.<br />
</span></p><p><span style=";font-family:Trebuchet MS;font-size:85%;" >You can freeze your own fresh blueberries. Do not wash them, but put them straight on a cookie sheet straight into the freezer. Once frozen, you can put them in a plastic freezer bag. You don't need to defrost blueberries to use them in baking, but if you need to, it's best to thaw slowly in the refrigerator and drain well if you are using them uncooked. </span></p>

How We Control the Quality

Quality is an important part of what we do .
In our packing house we wash, destem, color sort, and pick out all the bad berries, then the good ones go into 30 pound boxes for cold storage.

Who oversees the quality of all this?
Who makes sure that the water levels and all the regulations are being met?

I do, Jenni Wilt. I make sure everything is running smoothly and oversee the maintenance of the facility, meaning that I check our cold room temperatures, that the metal detector is working properly. I also take grades of our berries every 10 minutes, which means I take a pound of berries off the line and sort out all the ones that don't meet our quality standards. If there are too many below grade berries, we correct the machinery. If the berries all are surpassing grade, then we know we can speed the line up (the grades have standards that are regulated by the USDA). Our farm standards exceed USDA standards.

At the end of the day I oversee line clean up and do an in house self audit, along with loading and inspecting the truck that takes our berries from our cold rooms (once in the 30 pound boxes) to a cold storage facility.

Are organic blueberries better for you?

A collaborative project between the US Department of Agriculture and Rutgers University attempted to determine the nutritional difference between organic and conventional blueberries.
By Yun Xie | Last updated July 7, 2008 6:59 AM CT

Blueberries, one of my favorite fruits, have a wonderful combination of tastiness and nutritional benefits. They are low in calories and have high antioxidant content, enabling them to scavenge radicals that might otherwise damage the body. Blueberries in general have health benefits, but are organic blueberries even better than conventionally grown ones? A collaborative project between the US Department of Agriculture and Rutgers University attempted to answer that question, and the results came in the form of a recent publication in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry...

click here to read the full article:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2008/07/are-organic-blueberries-better-for-you.ars