We Be Jammin'!

We picked strawberries this past weekend at our local u-pick strawberry farm. Such a highlight of the year! I always make enough strawberry freezer jam to last us all winter and pretty much every time we get out a new jar we have a conversation about how good the jam is and how when it is June, we'll go pick more together. I am part squirrel, I swear, there's a manic little rodent thing in my soul that is mad for storing away goods. I love to pick and dry and can and freeze and all the other things one can do to fruits and nuts and berries and mushrooms. One of the hardest things about our annual strawberry pick for me is stopping. There are so many berries and I could pick for hours...days maybe, I've never tested my resolve.

When I was a little girl, I always rallied all my younger sisters (all four of them) and marched them down the road with baskets in hand to the top of a meadow on a two-track where wild strawberries grew. We'd pick every last wild strawberry we could find, and then I'd come home with my greedy little hoard of tiny berries and I'd make wild berry jam. My siblings were incredibly tolerant of my driving really, that's love. I hope I didn't injure any of their psyches too deeply, I still think gratefully about their faithful support of my obsession every year when we go picking big, abundant domestic berries.

It was important to the little girl me to be out there in the field on my hands and knees every summer, with all my sisters around me, rolling those tiny red bits into our baskets. I looked forward to it every year, it made me feel frugal and special and I felt really loved by my little sisters for their dedicated picking, even though it wasn't their personal dream. I don't think I could have made wild strawberry jam by myself, but many hands made light enough work that we could pull it off. And I felt like I had rubies in my pantry after I'd jarred up a glittering jar or two, all full of our tiny, hard earned prizes.

 Delicious, and mommy-friendly level of work recipe for the strawberry pie I made with the "leftovers," can be found right here!

I was lucky to marry a man who loves fresh fruit and u-picking almost as much as I do. He's absorbed my foraging love and eats my canned goods with gusto. (I love you A!) He marks strawberry season and cherry season and peach picking in his calendar and makes sure that we schedule each picking event. And my little boys have now the joined the team, energetic pickers, even little Nib plucking berries and saying smilingly "Hep! Hep!" ( Baby-speak for "I help, Mommy!") And my squirrel-mommy heart swells. Such a good life.

DIY Convenience Food

Today I made 16 burritos, indy wrapped them and stacked them in log piles in the freezer. I need convenience food and this is the first shred of an answer.

Have been thinking about ways to fairly painlessly nip and tuck our budget and one of the things I kept bumping into in my mind was "convenience eating." I know I don't seem like the Lean Cuisine type but every house has nights when dinner or lunch or a snack needs to be ready, instantly and there's no time for scratch cooking slow food. I tried to just use snack items for these times: granola bars, yogurt drinks, nuts, dried fruit...etc. Frankly, they aren't very satisfying and although I have good intentions I find myself saying, "Can we just run by that Thai place?" instead of picking out a granola bar and palming an apple on the way out the door. I wanted a real dinner, not snacky stuff.

We just had a trip to Michigan and back for the Thanksgiving holiday and we'll be doing it again for Christmas. We made amazing time there and back and for a while there I puzzling over and over about what in the world made the trip shorter than usual, both ways! Then I realized what it was. We never stopped to eat. I had the car fully stocked with food items, the boys had books to occupy them and A and I were discussing and reading a book of our own and so we never stopped except to gas up and we used the gas stops as potty breaks too so that meant even less stopping. Convenience food is my new nemesis.Most of the time the food you get on the run is terribly guilt-inducing because its expensive, and it's also extremely low in nutrition. I have been wracking my brain to solve the problem. I want food to stash in the freezer that is good for us but super quick (as in, a minute or two zap in the microwave and then eatable out-of-hand), stuff that tastes good and feels like a real meal.

There have to be other ideas out there...I have a dry brain lately and so the only thing I've come up with so far are these burritos. I was inspired by this blogger's idea and did something similar with ground turkey, black and pinto beans, frozen roasted corn (Trader Joe's is good!) and shredded cheese in whole wheat tortillas. I'd love more possibilities so that I can avoid the monotony of only one back-up plan when the going gets tough. Anybody got any other ideas?

Freeze The Good Stuff

 The nights are getting pretty chilly now, we're breaking out the footie pajamas on a regular basis. Ru asks every single morning now, "And Mommy, is it going to be cold today?" because he is hopeful that we will have a warm day which means that he can wear short sleeves and sandals, and that there will be snow, which is his fondest dream at the moment. I kinda think this cold weather business is here to stay for a while.

And we have a new family dessert, ice cream is passe, cocoa is in. A has been pioneering a new family tradition of after dinner homemade cocoa...and we're drinking them topped with whipped cream and sprinkles, in little espresso mugs. So much fun! I am hoping the trend continues long enough to extend beyond the classic rendition to: warm eggnoggy white cocoa, minty cocoa, nutmeg dusted mugs, and maybe a white chocolate variation? Its a great way to get a little, warm shot of dairy in at the end of the day. What flavor dreams am I missing?

 The boys are enjoying the leaf fall and the fact that at the moment there are giant piles to jump in, on every single curb. There are detours to be made between the car and any door....wander this direction to kick leaves....wander that direction to jump in a heap....wander over there to throw some in the air like confetti....  Such fun. Strange to see the naked trees reaching up over the horizon now though...

 Been having lots of fun in the kitchen lately. Made the first batch of Christmas cookies and packed them away in the frozen zone. I baked up some simple, no fuss chocolate spice cookies, Midnight Cracklers from Dorie Greenspan's classic baking tome. Pretty dead easy and dark, rich, chocolatey flavor...mmm...I'm not even that wild a fan of the whole chocolate chocolate chocolate thing but, yeah...these are good. They remind me of Mexican hot chocolate with the rich chocolate, hint of spice business. We're off to a good start.

 Oh...and warning. The dough is almost better than the finished cookies. So delicious. Like moist grown-up brownies in a chewy, wad-able, hold-a-chunk-in-your-hand form. Dangerous stuff folks. I bagged those suckers up for the freezer at lightening speed!

 I also baked up this pound cake a while ago and remembered, (per the recipe's instruction) that I'd frozen one for later and we broke one out to celebrate an autumn picnic in our yard after church on Sunday. This pound cake rocks and it freezes astoundingly. Its almost better out of the freezer...I'm not sure how that's possible, but there it is.

 See, aren't the colors an amazing whirl of light? Most of these leaves are down already. That's why we're glad we are lucky enough to own a camera. Nice to freeze more than just cake and cookies for later.

Happy last moments of Autumn everyone!