Strawberry Season

 Yesterday (Saturday) Vince had gone to a neighborhood garage sale in one of the subdivisions near us. He came home and yelled "Come upstairs. We're going somewhere!" OK. I went upstairs and he said "We're going to pick strawberries!" OK. Over in Carthage there's a new strawberry patch and it was so nice. No mud holes. The wind was blowing a bit so there were no mosquitoes. It was fairly cool.

When you get there, you are given a bucket (which you pay for and bring back with you each time you go). Of course, we got the BIG buckets, picked our berries and went to check out. 

We got up to the checkout area. The lady weighed Vince's bucket - 10.94 pounds. Then she weighed my bucket and had a really funny look on her face. My bucket was also 10.94 pounds - exactly! Because we managed to do that, she gave us a free pound of strawberries.

These were, without a doubt, the best strawberries I've ever had. They were sweet and juicy and big and clean!

There are blueberry farms around here too and when I can get good berries, I always make blueberry and strawberry (separately) syrups. They're so good on ice cream, pancakes, biscuits. I like to put some in our smoothies. I like to make a drink with Matcha tea, a bit of strawberry syrup and milk or cream.

We kept out some strawberries for eating and used the rest to make strawberry syrup. I ended up with 24 pints of syrup.

I'm so happy to have that. We haven't had strawberry syrup on the shelf for about 4 months. We still have a few jars of blueberry syrup left but I will need to make more of that this year too.

I think the strawberry patch is open again Tuesday morning so we're going to go back and get more strawberries to make a double batch of strawberry rhubarb jam. 

Tuesday afternoon we will go back to Nevada, MO with Cooper so I will be rushed to get jam made that day. Wednesday I will be gone all day. Thursday a friend is out of town and I'll be caring for her pets and Cooper goes back to Nevada so I need to get some streamlining done to get the jam made.

My plan is:

• Monday, cut, clean and chop the rhubarb.

• Measure out the sugar for two batches of jam.

• Wash the jars, lids and rings, then just heat them up before filling.

• Add water to the canner. I should be able to can a double batch in the big canner.

• Then, on Monday, get the strawberries picked early (they open at 9 a.m.). Come home, get them stemmed and chopped.

• Depending on how long it takes for the jam to thicken, I may be able to get it all canned.

• If not, we should be home by 6 p.m. and I can get it canned then.

It will get done and I'll be glad when it's finished!

I did take a casserole out of the freezer so I can heat that up and serve it for dinner . . don't have to think about that.