T Stands for Strawberries

 Hi everyone. 

The weeks go by so fast. Hope everyone has had a nice past week. 

Happy T Day again.  Stop over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog and share your drink related post, as well as whatever else you want to share.

I didn't realize that strawberries were  ready to pick strawberries here in New Hampshire until I was driving down the road a couple of weeks ago and saw some for sale on the side of the road. June definitely means strawberries in my area.

Even though last week was a busy week for me, I knew I had to squeeze in some strawberry picking because the season doesn't last that long.

While  my daughter was home visiting,  I suggested we should go pick some strawberries at a local farm first thing the morning. She rolled her eyes at me, but she did get up to go. In the car she told me that she was only going because I told her she had to. 

Knowing my daughter, she isn't always quickly receptive to new things. I think in her mind picking strawberries reminded her of being dragged out by me to go picking when she was a kid.

At the farm I grabbed a big box container for my pickings, and she took a quart container as you can see in the above photo.

The picking was really excellent, even though I seemed to photograph more unripe ones than red juicy ones in this above picture.  My daughter  filled her quart container about 4 times and then dumped them into my box. It didn't take long before she was into strawberry picking. She even told me she can see why I wanted to go. She said it was addicting, and they tasted so good.

I thought to myself that's the difference between being 29 and 9, but I certainly wasn't going to say that to her.

It's a lot more fun to pick with someone who is enjoying themselves than someone who is only going because you dragged them there. Smile.

The farm even makes their own homemade cider donuts. We could smell them in the parking lot and around the barn where you pay.  You could buy a bag of either 2, 4 or 6 donuts, and I got a bag of 6 to bring home so each of us (my daughter, husband and myself) could each have a couple. They were bigger than I thought they would be, still warm when we got home, and were very tasty. One would have been enough, but they were only going to be warm and fresh for a short time. 

The donuts were a nice way to finish off what turned out to be a really good morning. Even for my daughter.

I also did a bit of making with my strawberries. I forgot to take pictures of my strawberry cake, but here's the photo from Once Upon a Chef blog where I got my recipe. (You can click on the link for it if you are interested in the recipe.)

This cake was very delicious with some whipped cream and really easy to make. I've added this recipe to my remake pile because I think it would taste great with other fruit too.

I also made some strawberry jam/sauce.

I call it jam/sauce as I don't like really thick jams, and this one is good as a jam but also good as a slightly thicker sauce on ice cream, waffles or whatever else you'd chose to put it on. Plus I left in chunks of strawberries.

And I have 2 drinks for T this week. 

My first drink was from the farm where we picked our strawberries. They also make their own hard cider, and for strawberry season they made a strawberry and apple red cider. I liked the idea of strawberry cider and decided to try a half growler.

(If you're wondering about the water in the background, that's because the hubby and I had it while we were out on the boat.)

We used our boat cups (washable plastic so they don't break) to drink out cider from, and they really show the red cider against the white inside of the cup.

I really liked this cider as it wasn't sweet. I don't really like sweet cider.

My second photo was a hard seltzer my niece gave me to try at my mother-in-laws one afternoon when we were both there.  It was a really tasty hard seltzer with just the right amount of strawberry to make it not too sweet.

Hope every has a wonderful T day and week ahead. Thanks for visiting my blog.