When I was growing up, we always had a whole shelf in our freezer devoted to frozen blueberries. Around early July our family of six would visit the same local blueberry farm to u-pick about a hundred pounds of berries. All of us kids ended up with berry-stained hands and bellies full of fruit as we drove home with the car packed with berry crates.
U-Pick Blueberries
Spending early July u-picking blueberries is a family tradition that goes back as far as I can remember. Growing up, our family of six would all pile into the car and head to the same local family farm to stock up on berries for the year.ย This year, not even theย full pregnant belly of mine could keep me from continuing the tradition. My friend Denise and
First of the Season Berry Picking
I had the pleasure of spending a recent sunny morning at a nearby farm picking berries with my friend Denise and my 3-year old Juniper. It’s been an annual early-June tradition since long before Juniper was born and each year this day marks both the kick-off the u-pick season and also the passage of time. I remember when a decade ago nearby Sauvie’s Island was
Happy Birthday to Me
Another year is behind me and I find myself again feeling a little wiser for it. This year I decided to celebrate my birthday by enjoying all of my favorite things – my lovely family, some gorgeous landscapes and u-pick produce. Here is a photo-heavy recap. The first stop on my birthday celebration was lunch at Double Mountain Brewery in Hood River. This small town
Strawberry Waffles and Funny Eggs
Like a crazy woman, I went back to the local farm to u-pick more strawberries. Our cupboards are stocked with jam and I am getting tired of standing over the stock pot stirring. So this round I decided to just freeze them all – easy and versatile. I lightly rinsed the berries, since they can be little sponges and soak up excess water. I then
Strawberry Lemon Marmalade
Marmalade is similar to jam in texture, but typically they include some amount of fruit peel. In this case, I made a delicious batch of strawberry-lemon marmalade or, as my friend Behak described it, strawberry-lemonade in a jar. It tastes like I canned summer and I can’t wait to pop these suckers open in January when I’ve forgotten what the sun feels like. The original
Holy Strawberries
Most years I completely miss strawberry season. It comes so early for us here in the Pacific Northwest that it is barely, sort-of-consistently-sunny when they are ripe. And after about three weeks, they are all but gone for the year. This year, however, I stayed organized enough to stay on top of the harvest season. I called around to several local farms offering u-pick berries
Holiday Prep
My amazing mother-in-law gets here next week and we have a lot of fun activities planned: wine tasting, a day trip to the Oregon Coast, hiking, brewery visits and plenty of time for long mornings drinking coffee and reading books. I am working on leisurely checking some to-do’s off our holiday preparation list. First up was getting a Christmas tree. We went to a local
Last Canning
Our poor, decrepit car finally went to the big junkyard in the sky, but that didn’t stop me from picking more tomatoes at a local farm this weekend. I was quite determined to make one huge batch of tomato sauce before the end of the canning season. I hopped on my scooter and made it happen. With Halloween just around the corner, the local farms