It’s early in the summer season yet, so we’ve only gone strawberry picking so far. I’ve been taking the boys for years, and it’s fascinating to watch them change from year to year. The older boys have gotten pretty good at berry picking. When we went Saturday they were very positive and we picked 6 quarts in less than an hour. When we were leaving, TechnoBoy kept stopping to pick just one last berry. He didn’t understand when I laughed and told him my evil plot to turn him into a berry picker was “coming to fruition”.
Today the younger boys came along. I had to do the obligatory berry picking lesson, which took my attention away from the older guys. The Mercenary didn’t like that very much and kept trying to interrupt me to ask a question. I didn’t like THAT very much and insisted he wait until I finished my thought before I transferred my attention to him. At that point he wandered off to pick berries in a separate area and wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as he had been.
We’re planning to take friends to the berry patch next week. I’m betting the chance to show off his berry-picking prowess will result in a happier boy.
My weekly post over at GNMParents (now ForeverParenting) is the second in a series on summer produce. This week I covered several different fresh fruit recipes, including
- fruit cobbler
- pancake topping
- fruit pizza
- and my favorite strawberry pie recipe.
Which reminds me, the boys have eaten up most of the last pie I made. Guess I better make another tomorrow. I’m thinking about making tarts instead of the pie though. What do you think?
Earnest Parenting: help for parents who want their kids to eat fruit.
Image courtesy of Aaron Gustafson via Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.
Amy,
I love the recipes you have been cross posting. I have 2 questions for you. Do you have a really good raspberry jam recipes that you have tried? I looked for granny’s and can’t find it. I really screw up with freezing cherries last year by not pitting them so now I need to figure out something to cook or bake them since just taking them out of the freezer leaves them bitter and very messy. Do the boys eat more strawberries then get put in the basket? Mine tend to eat as quickly as we pick them. Thanks for the great ideas to get more fruit into our regular diet.
Crissy, the best raspberry jam I ever had was a combination of red and black raspberries together. The black berries had fewer seeds, so it was a better balance. Something else I’ve done is to stir my (already made) strawberry jam into the raspberry jam and spread that on the bread. I’m too lazy to pick enough raspberries to strain the seeds out and make jelly, lol. This year I don’t think I’ll do much with raspberries as the boys haven’t been interested in them.
Do you have sour cherries in the freezer or sweet? Assuming sour, can you make pie with them? Or pancake topping? Anything you do to cook them will solve the appearance problem. If you’ve got sweet cherries, pit them and blend with yogurt and banana for a great smoothie. Emphasis on the pit them part. Hubby made smoothies with cherries I hadn’t pitted once, lol. It wasn’t pretty.
The boys nibble on the berries but didn’t eat a ton of them at the field. At least, as far as I know they didn’t. They’re big enough to want to pick in their own spot in the row and then run back and show me their trophies. Where they eat them the most is after we’ve gotten back home. They went through a quart before I could even get to washing and prepping for jam the other day! Fortunately I planned for that. 🙂