On this beautiful Summer morning, two moms and four kids piled into a van and headed out to pick strawberries in New Jersey’s North West corner.
Between us, we had four boxes, one for each kid to carry and fill, and we set to work finding the most succulent red fruit we could get our hands on.
Slowly but surely we filled up those boxes. It’s harder than it looks, especially near the end of the season, and we started to feel worn out before our containers were filled to capacity.
C found a funny little conjoined triplet strawberry. And I found a new appreciation for buying my strawberries pre-picked at the farmers market 😀
Thanks for having us over, Michelle. Next time, you can all come our way and we can wander around the Great Swamp, or visit the Raptor Trust. Or maybe just dip our feet in the kiddie pool and sip strawberry smoothies. I’m easy.
I haven’t cleaned up my haul yet, but I did weigh them (with my postal scale!) and separate them into one pound batches. I’m going to keep one box out for munching, and the others will be cleaned, cut & frozen, for use in future recipes. All of my favorite strawberry recipes seem to call for one pound of strawberries, so that works out very nicely. I’m looking forward to being able to use farm fresh strawberries well into the fall and winter now. I’m so glad I saved all of these Chinese food containers. I knew eventually I’d use them all. I’m going to have to order a lot more Chinese food, though, if I want to be able to store July’s abundant berry harvest somewhere 😀
