Mmmmm....

Blue huckleberries are in full swing here at the coast!! The camp has vast amounts of huckleberry bushes and many of them are in the right location to get the perfect amount of sun and shade to produce tons of berries. I took Daniel out with me on one of my days off last week and we went picking for a little while. I only picked about 2 cups of berries total, but it was enough to make huckleberry pancakes one night, then use the rest to make some amazing syrup. We had the syrup last night on some French toast (one of our favorites), and then over three scoops of Tillamook Vanilla Bean ice cream (one of our other favorites). If you have never made French toast from stale French bread, I high suggest it. It how it was meant to be. In fact, making French toast from fresh white bread is almost becoming a no-no in my book. Here's the method I use (I hesitate to call it a recipe, because I don't really follow any strict rules).

We often buy French or Italian loaves fresh from the

bakery to go along with spaghetti or whatnot

for dinner, and never eat all of it between the two of us. Since it's bakery bread, it only lasts for

about a day and a half before it's too stale to eat. This is actually why French toast was invented. Slice the bread into healthy sized slices (somewhere around 3/4" thick). Make up an egg-milk mixture (we like to add a splash of vanilla and some cinnamon, but it's good without it too), and soak the stale bread slices for a few minutes. If the bread is super stale (last night I couldn't cut it with our bread knife, I had to use a large chef knife and slice it like cheese) it may not soften up even after a few minutes - that's ok. Then place the soaked slices on a skillet over medium heat - a little lower heat than normal for French toast. Since the bread's so thick, it takes a while to cook all the way through, and you don't want to burn the egg. The heat will push the moisture into the bread and even the stalest of bread will soften up it seems. Top with powered sugar, butter, and your favorite syrup and you've got a great breakfast, or dinner.

I will also give you the huckleberry syrup recipe I used.

1 cup of whole huckleberries

1/2 cup of sugar

Mash the berries real good. Then put them in a

small pan over medium heat until boiling. Reduce to a simmer for 5-10 minutes. Strain the mixture to remove the seeds and skins, return to the pan and add the sugar. Continue to simmer until all sugar is dissolved. The longer you cook the syrup, the thicker it will get as the moisture is removed from the berries. It's up to you how thick y

ou want it.

You could also probably use less sugar than I did. The recipe I looked up actually called for a 1 to 1 ratio of sugar to berries. That would be way too much in my opinion. Know nothing about preserving this, so you'll have to do your own research on that. Since I only made one cup worth, I wasn't worried about keeping it around very long. We had enough syrup for French toast for two, and four bowls of ice cream. Enjoy!