U-Pick Strawberries

It's strawberry picking time again! Yay!!! The strawberries were pretty picked over by the time we got to Featherstone at about noon yesterday, but there were still lots of juicy, sweet berries to be picked with some extra effort. With a perfect day weatherwise, we were able to pick about 10 lbs to bring home. I had a lot more help picking from the boys this year--especially from R who was quite possessive about his little bucket that he carried with him around the field. R mainly stuffed his face last year, although, I'm sure we all gobbled up a few pounds on the field this year too.

My First Rhubarb Pie

During the first year we moved into the house (which was six years ago), I bought some strawberry rhubarb root divisions from Van Dusen Gardens' Seedy Saturday to plant in our garden. The first couple of years I couldn't understand why I didn't get any growth out of these plants. These were supposed to be easy, low maintenance plants to grow, I thought. We eventually just concluded that the rhubarb plants were probably unhappy in its location, so M dug them up and moved them next to the fig tree. That was about three years ago, and finally, we now have some healthy big strawberry rhubarb with great big leaves growing in my garden from which I made my first rhubarb pie this past Sunday. I'm happy to say that it turned out delicious--tart, but not too lip-puckering tart. I used this recipe. And I used the standard pastry recipe from my mom's old Five Roses cookbook with my own addition of some freshly grated orange rind.