At a recent farmers market in Corvallis, the berries were bountiful. From gigantic loganberries and big fat Spartan blueberries to elegant raspberries and chic-chic Marionberries. I was experiencing the blessing and the curse of seasonal produce. It’s just so darned seasonal. Swooping in and tantalizing, then faster than a falling star disappears from a summer sky, poof! A delectable but fading glow on my mind’s palate.

Evanescence aside, we’re a lucky lot here in Oregon. Our berries are exquisite, plentiful and affordable. Blueberries are almost always the first to arrive. And because there are over 50 varieties, they just keep arriving for weeks and weeks, depending on the variety. But very soon into the blueberry harvest, on come the caneberries. For the uninitiated, caneberries are, quite simply, berries that grow on a cane. They fall into two basic categories, raspberries or blackberries, and if you can get a look at their innards, it’s easy to tell the difference. Blackberries come with their center core still attached. If the berry has a hollow center, indicating the core was left behind on the vine, it’s a raspberry.

Then there are the hybrids, which are berries resulting from the crosses made between the raspberry and blackberry. Not sure which ones you encounter are hybrids? Well, the three most common hybrids (and popular) are the Marionberry, loganberry and boysenberry.

So with berries coming on like gangbusters right now, I found myself going from booth to booth at the market seeing just how many varieties there were, plotting my approach to taking advantage of their abundance. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted chef Brian Parks lugging an armload of fresh greens, presumably back to Bellhop, the new restaurant he and co-chef/business partner Ian Hutchings opened a couple of weeks ago in downtown Corvallis. I asked if I could tag along if I promised I wouldn’t interrupt their lunch prep.

Well, not only did I interrupt meal preparations, I almost got away with one of the gorgeous three-berry pies Parks had just finished filling. These beauties were sitting on the back counter. Below the mountain of fresh and juicy fruit, explained Parks, was a cream cheese-styled filling.

That pie was so inspirational I thought you all would love to have a few similar recipes in order to celebrate our incredible berry bounty before it goes away for another year.

— Jan Roberts-Dominguez is a Corvallis food writer, artist, and author of “Oregon Hazelnut Country, the Food, the Drink, the Spirit,” and four other cookbooks. Readers can contact her by email at janrd@proaxis.com, or obtain additional recipes and food tips on her blog at www.janrd.com