The Best Recovery Drinks and Pie

When it comes to recovery drinks I have an all time favorite which is chocolate milk. There’s just not much better than finishing a tough ride and downing a tall glass of chocolate milk. It’s like being a kid again and for some reason it’s also good for you. I’m all for both of those things. The only thing that is even in the same league with chocolate milk is a blackberry smoothie. Personally, I don’t like making them but if beg and bargain hard enough either Jenny or my youngest daughter will make the best blackberry smoothie known to man. That is except for when they try to sneak spinach in on me under the illusion that it's good for you but that’s a subject for another post. Honestly, these blackberry smoothies will replace your glycogen reserves and have you running around the house like a candy crazed hyper kid in no time flat.

There are three things that grow uncontrollably in the Pacific Northwest without any help from anyone. Trees, moss, and blackberries. I like the trees, the moss I’ve learned to tolerate but I absolutely love the blackberries. Lucky for us there is a park across the street from our house that has tons of blackberry bushes just waiting for us to pick them.

Last year we made multiple trips to the park and filled up ~10 large zip lock bags with blackberries which we ended up freezing so we could have smoothies all year long. Last year was a great smoothie year. I plan on freezing more this year so we can have another smoothie filled year.

Today we started our daily ventures over to the park for blackberries but the inaugural blackberry trip was for the purpose of making a pie. Here are some shots of the process from beginning to end. By the way, the pie rocked! This week I plan on doing less riding a more picking. I’m thinking 2010 will be a great smoothie year.


No matter how hot it is you have to wear a long sleeve shirt because blackberries have outrageous thorns.

In the words of Homer Simpson "mmmmmmmmmm Pie"