As a resident of Idaho, I am familiar with huckleberries. You could call them a bit of a delicacy
here. I had heard people talking about
picking huckleberries but didn’t get the opportunity to try it myself until 7
years ago. We were camping at Priest Lake
in northern Idaho and heard that the huckleberries were ripe. We wanted to join the hunt. Now it’s not easy to get people to tell you
where to look. People do not want to
divulge their favorite spots. Someone
told us a general direction to go, so we grabbed some of our camping pots and
jumped into the car. We drove to a
likely area and spotted cars parked by the road and people scrambling through
bushes. Aha! We went a little further to find our own
spot. Now, we knew nothing about
huckleberries. We weren’t even sure what
the plants looked like. This did not
deter us. Before long we were pulling
small blue-red berries off bushes. These
are little berries so it takes a lot of picking to fill a pot or bucket. This explains why they are so expensive if
you buy them at a fruit stand. We made
huckleberry pancakes while camping and took a lot of them home. I even bought a book of recipes for
huckleberries.
This past week my husband and I stayed at a condo near Glacier National
Park. Huckleberry products were
everywhere. It’s not hard to find
huckleberry ice cream—and it’s delicious!
The second huckleberry delicacy we ate was cobbler, part of a wonderful
brunch. Perhaps the most unusual food I
tried was huckleberry pulled pork. No
cafes were open in the park so we left to find lunch. We found a small restaurant by the
highway. I ordered the huckleberry
pulled pork sandwich which was quite tasty.
The huckleberries added a subtle tangy flavor. During another lunch stop, my husband tried a
huckleberry beer. It was okay but I preferred
my dark beer. One afternoon we stopped
at a shop in Hungry Horse which sold souvenirs and lots of local huckleberry
products. There were plenty of soaps and
lotions but we decided to purchase edible items. We walked out with huckleberry tea, huckleberry
preserves, and huckleberry chocolate.
Our final purchase was huckleberry liqueur. I have been enjoying a small glass of it in
the evenings. The flavor could best be
described as fermented berry juice. I
would buy it again.
Of course, I could find many of these huckleberry items in Idaho. However, it was fun to sample while on
vacation. In fact, I am thinking that
next year we need to visit north Idaho during huckleberry season and do our own
picking again. For now I think I'll just pour myself some of that huckleberry liqueur.
