My favorite way to mark the beginning of Summer is with Strawberries. The Oregon strawberry season starts a week or two before the kids get out of school. I like to wait for them to go with me. This year, with their help, we picked 22 pounds in 30 minutes.
We did a lot with he strawberries we got this year, but first, here are some pictures of the kids after picking.
Yes, Harrison did wear cowboy boots and cowboy hat to pick in. I'm sure he was hot, but protected.
Bennett did great sitting in the stroller the whole time. Towards the end he got a little fussy so I gave him two berries to hold - one for each hand. He never ate them, just held them and squeezed them and got himself all jucified. It was adorable! He was so happy about it.
Balancing the berries.
Harrison had to copy the older kids. I was TERRIFIED that he would drop the bowl full of berries. He would NOT put the bowl down till I took a picture. I took it as fast as I could so that the berries could return to safety.
Harrison's berries, safe and sound. This is his bowl after I threw out all the little, baby, green berries that he loves to find.
The first thing we did, after cleaning them all, was make jam. We got 10 pints and 10 1/2 pints.
Then, we made our favorite strawberry dessert to take to grandma's house.
With the leftover berries we made LOTS of homemade strawberry ice cream. We used it to go with homemade berry cobbler (made with blackberry's, raspberry's and blueberry's we picked last year) for Glenn's family birthday dinner.
The next day, after Glenn's family birthday dinner, was the 4th of July. Our friends made this DELICIOUS salad for the potluck barbecue. It wasn't made with our strawberries, but it definitely fit in with our strawberry theme for the last week.
