Strawberry Picking at Rowe's Produce Farm

Yeah! June is here, and that means Strawberry Picking.  Today my mom and I went Strawberry picking at Rowe's Produce Farm in Ypsilanti , Michigan (we also picked some sugar snap peas that were amazingly good).    Thought I would share some pictures of the day with you, followed by a few pictures that show how I freeze them for use through the rest of the year. 


















Here is how I Prep the Strawberries for the Freezing.

1. Wash the strawberries
2. Hulled the by hand (didn't even need the OXO strawberry huller because they were easy to just twist off).
3. Placed them on a dishtowel that was on top of a cookie sheet, put another dishtowel on top of the strawberries.  
4. Place the cookie sheet in the freezer
5. Once they are frozen, put the strawberries in a plastic bag for use during the year.  

We had a great time.  When I was helping my daughter into bed tonight I said "I had fun with you today my little strawberry picker."  She replied, "Mama, I am not a strawberry picker, I am a strawberry eater." :-)

OXO Strawberry Huller Review

Last week I got the OXO strawberry huller.  Overall, I like it.  It doesn't do a perfect job at removing the hull of the strawberry because sometimes the hull will push inside of the strawberry, but as I use it more and more, I am getting better at efficiently removing the hulls of the strawberries.

As I mention in the video, I got the OXO strawberry huller because I wanted to find a quick way to hull the strawberries while wasting as little of the strawberry flesh as possible.  I have always felt that a knife, while fast, just takes a little too much of the strawberry away.  Maybe my knife skills just need to be a little better?  I don't know, but I do know that I am happy with how the OXO strawberry huller preforms and see myself using it after I go strawberry picking with the kids this summer to quickly remove the hulls and freeze them for use during the rest of the year.

Here are a few more pictures:







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Whole Wheat Pancakes with Strawberries

When I was a kid, whenever my dad wasn't able to join us for dinner, my mom would always make us something special that wasn't typical dinner fare. French toast, mini-pizzas, pancakes, or tuna cassserole (my dad didn't like it). Tonight, inspired by my husband's absence and the strawberries we got in our share, I decided to make pancakes for dinner.

I make pancakes frequently, usually for breakfast, but for sometime I've been wanting to try to make whole wheat pancakes. My non-whole wheat ones are good, but I've been adding whole wheat here and there to all my other recipes and I figured it was time to finaly add it to my pancakes.

This time I sought out a new recipe rather than trying to modify an exsiting recipe of mine. I started with the recipe from the King Arthur Flour Company (my favorite flour), but made some substitutions/changes based on what I actually had in my pantry.

Here is their recipe

Here is my Whole Wheat Pancakes Recipe:

4 cups King Arthur whole wheat flour

1 cup King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

3 1/2 cups oat flour

3 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons baking powder

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 cup vegetable oil

1.) Mix all the dry ingredients together with the paddle on your stand mixer. Then slowly pour the vegetable oil into the dry mixture till it's crumbly. You can do this without a stand mixer, just make sure you don't have any big clumps of oil.

2.) Store the mix you want (1 week room temp in pantry or a very long time in freezer or fridge). My suggestion would also be to write down the remaining steps and ingredients down and tape it to whatever container you store it in, so you don't have to look up the recipe when you are ready to make your pancakes. Something like this:

To finish the pancakes:

1/2 cup Milk

1 6oz. container of plain yogurt

1/2 tsp. orange extract

1 egg

3) Take one cup of the dry mixture and mix it with the wet ingredients. Let it rest for 3o mins.

4.) Pour them by the 1/4 cup onto an hot griddle, flip them, top them, and you are done.

One note: the picture below shows the most bubbles I could get on the top of these pancakes to know when to flip them. If you've ever made non-whole wheat pancakes from scratch you know to look for all the bubbles so you know when to flip them, but I never got the right amount of bubbles on these pancakes.

Here is the kid version of Whole Wheat Pancakes all cut up and ready to go. I always cut them with a pizza cutter because I find it cuts them without tearing them up like a knife can do...plus it is much faster.

Strawberries

Strawberries, originally uploaded by HiMalta.

The strawberries, all cut up and ready to be eaten for dessert tonight..

We got two quarts in our share today, I prepared one for dessert, but we all liked them so much that I cut the next one up too. Not too worried about going through them all at once because we are going to go Strawberry picking on Friday at another farm.

With all of the strawberries that will be making their way into my house, I've got my eye on two kitchen gadgets (an extreme weakness of mine).

This strawberry slicer & Strawberry huller. Necessary? No. Fun? Yes!!!