When I was a child, vacation meant pie. Key lime pie, strawberry rhubarb pie, but most importantly, blueberry peach pie. In my memory, this was the perfect pie: not too sweet, just tart enough, with a flaky crust. We would pick it up from a pie stand on the side of the road and I would hold it carefully on my lap on the ride home, feeling the heat from the freshly baked pie through the container. That pie stand disappeared some years ago, but since then I’ve been trying to recreate this perfect pie. I’ve spent years trying out different crusts – all butter, with vodka, butter and shortening – but just one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar here makes all the difference. The filling is sweet but still a little tart, with no cornstarch and no frozen berries: just the best pie dough I can imagine with that perfect mix of blueberries and peaches. 

Blueberries are the focus today, since here in the Midwest we are at the height of blueberry season. The US is the world’s largest producer of blueberries, producing an estimated 690 million pounds in 2016. Despite the large domestic production, the US is actually a net importer of blueberries, due to the large imports during the winter months when they don’t grow in the US. In 2017, the US imported 137.8 million pounds of fresh blueberries, over half of which came from Chile.