July 8th, 2008 - Strawberries and peaches
On Friday, I went to a U-Pick strawberry farm only 15 miles away (as opposed to the 30+ miles I’d previously gone and just couldn’t do again). And they have raspberries, too! Can’t wait for that. I forgot how much time this takes. Oh, picking them took only 2 hours including the drive. But after getting home, I had to process them all right away. That took another 3 hours. I had about 22 pounds. Had some fresh plus about 20 pints put in the freezer. I’m thankful for my slicer this year; it’s intended for slicing hard boiled eggs, but is fantastic for strawberries. Maggie helped–and for once it really was a help! She picked the berries out of the sink and set them on the counter for me. I was a lot faster when I didn’t have to reach down into the sink.
I didn’t expect to get 22 pounds. The guy said that a full flat would be about 10#. And I didn’t fill mine up, as I wanted to be able to easily carry both of them. I figured I might have 8 pounds in there. Imagine my surprise at over 11 pounds each! [Oh! Now I know where my missing cash went! The berries cost about $30!]
Found out earlier in the week that Eric actually does like strawberries, just not plain. He tried them on top of the chocolate gelato ice cream I made and LOVED it. He didn’t care for the bundies, however. Bundies are a family recipe of a slightly sweeter drop biscuit that we always used for strawberry shortcake. Correction–he likes the bundies, but as a plain biscuit, not with berries on top. On Friday, I made a pound cake for him. Oh my goodness is pound cake rich and heavy! He adored the cake, even plain. I found it a bit rich and prefer the bundies (of which I made more Sunday). I also made more ice cream. The fresh berries are almost gone. We’ll probably start eating the ones from the freezer shortly.
Then Monday we picked up peaches from Tree-Ripe. Eric talked me into 3 boxes this time. That’s 75 pounds of peaches! For $99. The nice thing is that they aren’t actually fully ripe, so I didn’t have to spend the rest of the day processing them. I was going to get 2 and then get one or two more when they come back in 2 weeks. But a lady in front of me commented that last time, they ran our of peaches before they got back to Oshkosh. And I didn’t want that to happen. It’s also unfortunate that they aren’t ripe as we all want to each some peaches NOW, especially Maggie as they are her favorite fruit. Maybe I’ll set some on the porch where it gets quite hot.
This is a very expensive grocery month. But oh such a delicious one. And we’ll be eating berries for months to come. And it will get more expensive: blueberries and raspberries will also ripen in the next couple weeks.
By the way, I found out about the berry farm on Craigs List of all places. I was bored and wandering around all the categories. So surprised…and I wasn’t sure it wasn’t going to be much of a place from the rather short ad. I was surprised to learn it’s been in business over a decade (although new owners recently) and they have the raspberries and other items as well.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:29 am EDT
mmm… bundies. I wonder where the word came from. When you grow up with it, you never ask. It’s like “the” — where’d that come from?