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Posts tagged as “strawberries”

A “new normal” farmer’s market visit & Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

Farmers markets are a sign of springtime, one of my favorite things about the weather getting warmer and not to mention also a wonderful alternative to making a trip the grocery store—especially right now.

As I'm sure you've also experienced, grocery stores and super markets have been extra chaotic. Limited choices are available of produce, meats, dairy and other essentials unless you go to the store at specific times or on specific days. Masks, bandannas or some other kind of facial covering are required to enter the store—speaking for New Jersey, which mandated this at least three weeks ago, but now also Pennsylvania within the last week or two. And sometimes you need to wait your turn to enter the store because of restrictions put in place on the number of people allowed in at once, otherwise choose to come back at another time.

Visiting a farmers market, by contrast, is a nice break from making a now-normal grocery store visit, so this weekend Dave and I stopped at a farmers market we saw in a local strip mall parking lot. It was a very different experience when compared to visiting open air markets in seasons past .

Strawberries & Cream Overnight Oats

Growing up, there was a time where breakfast almost every morning consisted of instant oatmeal and cinnamon-sugar toast, usually prepared with love and care by my dear dad. I didn't hate it, but I think the 7 year-old-me would have just wanted cinnamon toast or, even better, a sugary toaster pastry—the furthest thing from wholesome and, even as an adult with the "freedom" to make and eat anything for breakfast that I please, I wouldn't opt to eat to start the morning. I rediscovered and started to enjoy oatmeal again when I started working after college. It was cheap, easy to make at the office, and filling enough to tide me over until lunchtime. By that time, there were also plenty of options beyond the tiny paper packages with the same old fruit-and-cream, apple cinnamon, and brown sugar flavors that I grew up eating on a daily basis. Enter overnight oats, which I have wanted to try for a while. A few things along my 12-hour journey from making to eating told me it would be a success.

Strawberry Picking and Preserving: Strawberry-Balsamic Jam and Strawberries in Syrup

A few weeks ago, Steve and I went on an impromptu strawberry-picking adventure to Grim's Orchard and Family Farms in Breinigsville, PA. We visited the farm last year for pick-your-own apples and pumpkins, which was a lot of fun, and decided that we would go back for strawberry-picking as soon as the season came around. Steve picked strawberries when he was younger, so he was an ol' pro at it. We ended up hauling home a whopping 10 lbs of strawberries for about $25 -- not bad at all for some of the sweetest, ripest strawberries I think I've ever put in my mouth. Of course, Steve was tasked with the all-important job of carrying our harvest, too. ;) FAKfeatured-strawberrypicking3 I had a total of 10 quarts of berries on-hand after I included the ones that I picked up from the farmer's market earlier in the week before this adventure. Those berries were leftover from the strawberry-rhubarb preserves that I made and have been eating with my morning breakfast ever since because it's that damn delicious. It may sound like a lot, but I assure you: Not a single strawberry went to waste. A small batch of strawberry-balsamic jam was up first followed by strawberries packed in syrup, using up every single berry that didn't otherwise end up in my mouth during the washing and chopping process.