Arts as Astra

We went strawberry picking Saturday morning. The farm's forecast looked good and we wanted to get in early since it was a holiday weekend.

We came home with 30 lbs of strawberries, 1 lb of spinach, a small tomato plant, and other little odds and ends like canning tools and hunks of cheese.

It was Son the Younger who insisted on both the spinach and the tomato plant, believe it or not. I think he likes the idea of spinach more than actually eating it, but hey, who am I to convince him otherwise. Both boys will eat spinach if it is cooked with enough cheese that you can't taste it anymore.

Over the long weekend, I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie, a gallon of strawberry lemonade, spinach-strawberry salad, strawberry shortcake, 8 half-pints of strawberry jam, and another 2 pints of strawberry preserves are in the works. We've frozen 2 gallon-size ziplock bags of strawberries. And eaten a bunch by themselves. I think we are down to about 5 lbs still unprocessed in the fridge -- I can see the bottom of the flat they are sitting in. They are very tasty and extremely ripe. We'll just have to work a little harder to finish this last bit up.