Fruit picking

Last week, Sean, the kids and I went fruit picking.  The kids weren't too keen but I twisted their arm.  We went to Homestead Farms for strawberries and sour cherries.  With four people, the picking goes fast.

I think we ended up picking close to 20lbs of strawberries and maybe 10 lbs of sour cherries.  The first thing I did was to clean several trays of berries and freeze them - once frozen, pop into bags.  Emma likes them in her smoothies so this will last for the year.  The next task was to make a batch of jam.

My helper

The beanies, picking cherries

Sean can reach the high branches

Cherries

More cherries

Strawberries

Mashing the berries

The jam!

For the rest of the strawberries, I made a mousse with pureed berries and whipped cream.  Then I pureed up the rest of the berries with sugar, water and mint and froze in ice cube trays.  Been having strawberry daiquiris!

For the cherries, I pitted them all and froze them.  My colleague gave me a recipe for a chocolate cherry snack cake that I will try this weekend.