Eat the Blueberries or Pay $90

My sister and brother-in-law had planned a week of camping at Lac-Mégantic, a stunning lake in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. It was an easy four-hour drive from their home in New Hampshire, so they loaded up the SUV with camping gear and a cooler filled with enough food for the week.

They’re both vegetarians, which meant plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Passports in hand, campsite booked, cooler packed. What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently, the blueberries.

When it was finally their turn at the Canadian border checkpoint, the questions started routinely enough.

Where are you going?

Camping at Lac-Mégantic.

What’s in the cooler?

A week’s worth of vegetables, bananas…and blueberries.

“Blueberries?”

Uh-oh.

The border officer explained that they couldn’t bring the blueberries into Canada without proof of their commercial origin because they could potentially carry an invasive pest.

Then came the options:

1. Pay a $90 fine and surrender the blueberries for disposal.

2. Go inside the customs office and eat them. All of them. Right there.

   
   

Now, my sister is many things, but a woman willing to pay a $90 fine over a bag of blueberries is apparently not one of them.

Fortunately—or unfortunately—they were camping, so she’d already washed the berries at home and packed them in a Ziploc.

I can practically see her brain working:

I am NOT paying $90 for blueberries.

Fine. We’ll eat them. ALL OF THEM. Take that.

And that is how my sister and brother-in-law found themselves sitting inside a Canadian customs office, dutifully working their way through a Costco-sized supply of blueberries while border officers watched them eat every last one.

Not exactly how they envisioned beginning their perfectly planned week in the Canadian wilderness.

By the time they were finally allowed to continue to Lac-Mégantic, I suspect neither of them ever wanted to see another blueberry again.

In fact, she may have sworn them off for the rest of the summer.

To this day, she doesn’t know whether the border officers were impressed by their determination—or simply waiting for them to drive away so they could completely lose it.

Either way, lesson learned:

When crossing an international border, check the agricultural rules.

Or arrive hungry.

The Dinner That Never Happened 

There was one more casualty of Blueberrygate. My brother-in-law had saved an Instagram recipe he planned to make over the campfire: blueberries and Brie bubbling away in a cast-iron skillet.

Since the blueberries never made it across the border, neither did dinner.

So, in honor of the blueberries that gave their lives at Canadian customs, here’s my take on the dish they never got to make.

What you'll need: A small 10” cast-iron skillet like this one is perfect for cooking it right over the campfire.