Strawberry Picking Time

This past weekend, while my wife was at a retreat, the kids and I went strawberry picking. We picked five gallons of strawberries ... well actually we probably picked seven gallons of strawberries and only brought home five. The other two ended up in our mouths. I have provided several pictures of the weekend and what we did with all those strawberries.

IN THE FIELD:


The kids in a rare moment when no one was eating a strawberry. It was a beautiful day, as you can see by the blue sky, where we got to laugh and tease and talk with one another.



ON THE VINE:



I just had to show you how good the strawberries looked. Just the sight of seeing strawberries brings to mind happy times as a kid. I know that the idea of picking strawberries seems odd to many of us. I mean, why both picking them when I can go to the grocery store and buy them? Even if we ignore the cost issue because it would cost twice as much in the grocery store and the freshness issue because I know how fresh the strawberries were ... could you really ignore the time with your kids?

SHORTCAKE FOR EVERYONE!




So what did we do with all those strawberries? We made homemade Strawberry Shortcake. Don't these look good?!?

MY IDEA OF FUN:



Here you can see a few of the jars of Strawberry Jam, some homemade foccia bread, strawberries mixed with raw sugar for the shortcakes, flowers picked by wife before she left, homemade shortcakes and more strawberries. We had a fun day in the kitchen.

PRETTY ONE MINUTE ... GONE THE NEXT:



Here is the second type of strawberry Shorcake we made. After I made the traditional type, Dominic mentioned that he wanted the spnge cake type with strawberries inside and whipped cream on top of the cake. We served that for dinner on Sunday night with another family. Here Kattie T. is putting on the last strawberry for our display. Within five minutes there was only one small piece of that cake left.