by Diane Sagers

CORRESPONDENT

I am a Utah girl -- lifelong and homegrown. The homegrown part for the most part applies to what I ate as I grew up. Of course we purchased foods and produce, but we mostly ate what we grew -- and we had room to grow a lot of different vegetables, fruits and berries.

As a result, I grew up with fresh, bottled and frozen strawberries and raspberries. Dad grew them in the backyard. However, I did not grow up eating blueberries or any of their close relatives. They do not grow in Utah unless you are willing to do the type of gardening that qualifies as life support -- and even then I suspect the plant would generally qualify as a coma patient. We didn't garden like that at our house.

Blueberries were a kind of delicacy that came in purchased muffins or in a can or a package from the frozen food section of the grocery store.

I remember hearing about huckleberries but I had no clue what they were or how they tasted. I have learned more about them in the past few years, but on a trip to Oregon last week, I found out firsthand what they are like.

Genetically, they are programmed to grow less than 5 millimeters in diameter and they contain 10 relatively large, hard seeds. Berries can be colored from bright red to purple to blue and they can be tart or sweet. Blueberries have many soft seeds but can also be colored many shades from bright red to purple to blue depending on the variety and they also can be tart or sweet. They are often mistaken for each other.

Native Americans dried blueberries, used them to make pemmican, and ate them raw and in favorite tribal dishes.

Huckleberries grow wild in moist areas on the lower slopes of the mountains in the Pacific Northwest. They often produce thick clusters of berries and they ripen in mid to late summer. In Europe, they are known as bilberries. Bears love them and so do lots of other animals -- and so do people.

They look a lot like blueberries and they come from the same family, but they are a different genus and species. Huckleberries also taste a whole lot like blueberries, but they have bigger seeds. With bigger seeds taking up the space inside, they don't have quite as much juice as blueberries. They also have a thicker skin. They are apparently not raised commercially, so they must be picked in the wild from June through August.

The dish I tasted with huckleberries in it was a huckleberry tart. It was tasty and delightful. It was also appropriate because we ate it at a restaurant up the Columbia River Gorge north of Portland. Perhaps they were picked there.

They fit the same recipes as blueberries because the flavors are so much the same. The huckleberry tart filling is particularly tasty when cooked on a stovetop and placed in a pre-baked shortbread crust.