Strawberry Picking

Excited to be in the fields.

1 hour later with 20 lbs of berries!

Well, I finally did it. I went berry picking and it was so much fun though I have to say we went a little nuts and purchased way too many strawberries. I know, 20 lbs! What were we thinking? That's exactly it, we weren't. As we were picking, the sun fried every single of one our brain cells and prevented any logical, rational thought from occurring about what we were going to do with our brood. We were deceived because they looked so tiny in our boxes. When we rang up, even the clerk couldn't believe it.

In this area of California there are many variety of strawberries. I'm not sure what variety we were picking but they were the more "homely" type, the kind that don't look amazing but are full of flavor and taste amazing. Once you taste one, you over the look the flaws. Then there is the Watsonville variety which are deceptive because they are large and nicely shaped, and really quite handsome but have poor flavor. The Watsonville variety were not available to pick because we weren't in Watsonville but they were for sale at the stand but a taste test verified that the one's we hand selected were indeed the best.

Anyway, as soon as we got home I was online looking up every single strawberry recipe you could possibly imagine because I could not think of ways to use all the strawberries. There aren't lots of recipes that call for large quantities of strawberries. Eights cup of hulled strawberries, 4.5 cups of sugar, and 3 hours later, I had a pot full of incredible strawberry jam (recipe to come tomorrow). My fingers are stained pink because that's how many strawberries I cut up. Sadly, the fridge is still stuffed with containers of fresh strawberries. What's a girl to do?

If I see another strawberry in the next year, it will have been too soon!