My awesome weekend continued on Saturday with a trip to the Keel & Curley Blueberry Festival!
Since I didn’t have a multi-hour workout planned for Saturday, I took advantage of the free morning to head out to Plant City with Courtney to get our blueberry-picking on!
The blueberry festival took place at the Keel & Curley Winery which is about 40 minutes outside of Tampa. Yes, there are wineries in Florida. The soil in Florida isn’t really ideal for grapes though, so this winery makes their wine out of fruit! The winery was cute, and had a nice covered outdoor seating area which overlooked a small pond just outside the tasting room.
Courtney and I decided to pick our berries first. We walked through some typical fair stalls before seeing the blueberry bushes behind the winery. I stopped to get a lil’ country with this tractor before we started to pick 
We started to pick in the first field we saw, but we were finding that the berries seemed to be few and far between. We saw lots of people walking around with buckets of berries, but where were they coming from? Courtney overheard someone say something about “behind the building,” so we followed the walkway around the side of what looked like a really, really big shed.
Oh. So THIS is where everyone was. Behind the building were rows and rows and rows of blueberry bushes.
Not quite ready for picking:-)
This is where the fun began. I think my strategy was pick 4 berries, eat 1. Thankfully, I didn’t end up like Violet from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. However, this might have been the reason why I only ended up cashing out with 1 pound, while Courtney walked away with 2. Whoops.
The blueberries we were finding over here were huge! Definitely better than the ones you get at the store!!
After paying for our berries ($3/pound), we wandered around some of the stalls. We contemplated doing a wine tasting, but we had plans to swim, stop at the grocery store to get fixins for salsa and guacamole to take over to Mary’s Cinco de Derby Party, and it was after 11 already. We needed to get a move on!
On our way out of Plant City, we stopped at a produce stand to see if we could get everything we needed for our Cinco De Mayo treats. I think we both got just about all of the produce we needed and then some! I stocked up on bananas (2 full bunches plus two stragglers for $1!!!), some fresh summer squash and zucchini, and Florida tomatoes. Oh, and I couldn’t beat the 3 for $2 avocados!
After a successful Cinco Party at Mary’s:
I decided it was time to bake! While Courtney and I were making our Cinco treats, she let me taste some a blueberry scone with lemon glaze that she had made the other day. YUM! So on Sunday I did a quick Google search to find the recipe. I ended up going with this one, to which I added lemon zest to the batter and swapped out the heavy cream for 1% milk. I also halved the icing recipe.
I made them a bit too big, but oh well! They were super moist (especially right out of the oven), and the blueberries were PERFECT! The citrus was a great complement to the berries! MMMM. I heart scones.
Now I’ve got the remainder of my pound of berries to use up. Any suggestions? Link up below!
