Week Two of Summer, Part One: Strawberries!

Today we went to a U-pick strawberry farm...why do I do it to myself? I took the camera along, but sadly, no-one was up for picture taking until we got home. So here they are several hours later enjoying one of the rewards...homemade strawberry milk. It looks kind of grey in this picture but in real life it was an appealing pink/purple color.

Here's my littlest strawberry picker in her strawberry dress. Of course, this picture was taken after we got home and AFTER I washed and dried the dress so she could wear it in the pictures! That's because she tried to eat strawberries in the field...I thought the dress was a goner. But then I remembered a trick my friend Kendal told me about getting fruit juice out of clothes with boiling water. IT WORKED PERFECTLY!! How have I not heard about this before? Now I've just got to go try it on my shirt. :) While picking I kept thinking "Why didn't I buy those 99 cents/lb strawberries at Aldi??" But after I got home and started cooking with them I remembered why. You can't get berries like these at the store! And when we get these out of the freezer it just smells like summer!!

Here's part of my results for the day: three bags of strawberries in sugar ready for cobbler, 5 containers of strawberry sauce, and 3 containers of strawberry syrup for strawberry milk. I tried a new method of preserving the harvest - I picked out the recipes I wanted to use ahead of time, and prepped the strawberries for those recipes instead of freezing strawberries in bags and then later on wondering what to do with my frozen chunk of strawberries. I substituted honey for a lot of the sugar, and I think honey and strawberries are a great flavor combination! I'm pretty excited about having a more deliberate use for the things taking up space in my freezer!

Afterwards we finally got to working on one of our Father's Day crafts...I'll take pictures tomorrow when Isaac gets to see his gifts!