Sunday, June 12, 2011

U-Pick Strawberries

I can remember the early days of June.. as a child, my grandfather would bring me along to help him pick freshly ripened strawberries at one of our local farms. I looked forward to going each year and since then, I have always enjoyed strawberry picking and have made a habit of it almost every year. For the first few years, I would bring along one of my nephews, who at the time was 3 or 4 years old. He is now 14 and probably too cool to go strawberry picking with his Aunt Megan! Nonetheless, I have a growing supply of young nephews and nieces and continue to bring 1 or 2 kids along with me every year. A few years ago the farm closed and re-opened under Whippoorwill Farm CSA. This meant the U-Pick Strawberries was only open to CSA members so last year I decided to join the CSA, primarily for the strawberry picking!!! The rest of the CSA season was absolutely amazing I had to join for another year! Last week, we received the CSA newsletter letting us know that the strawberry patch would be open on Friday for strawberry picking... so, I bagged the TGIF gathering after work and left work early to get there for the last hour of picking time on Friday afternoon. My 3-1/2 year old niece, Sydney, joined me for the fun this year for a second year in a row. We had fun picking strawberries (and some daisies) and I hope that this tradition is creating memories that will last...

In past years, I've made strawberry pie, strawberry muffins, strawberry lemonade, strawberry margaritas (yum!), strawberry margarita squares, strawberry shortcake...

Yesterday I bought some rhubarb and today I decided to make a strawberry-rhubarb crisp. Found the recipe while I was looking through some cookbooks on this rainy Sunday morning. Heading to my sister's for dinner tonight for Lamb chops and we'll dig into the crisp for dessert!


Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

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