Okay, so I am sure some of you are wondering if something happened to me since I've really not posted since Thurs. See that picture up there? I've been looking at LOTS of those!
Friday a friend from church offered me her extra berries if I wanted to come pick them. She and her daughter helped me and we got 3 dish pan fulls and then I still had to do them all. They were small and thanks to the rain many of them were a bit soft or had rotten spots so it took me the rest of the day to do them.
Then today my wonderful mother-in-law and 4 younger brother and sister-in-law's came and helped me do 75 qts. of berries. Remember, I told you that I do a lot of strawberries! We crushed them all and I put them in our freezer and I'm thinking that should easily last us a year and hopefully more.
I'm sure some of you are amazed that we eat that many strawberries. Well, I married a fruit lover and our Logan is his father's son in that regard. They both love strawberries on homemade yogurt, granola, and even cake. And then we eat some in smoothies or mixed with other frozen fruit too, so we do go through a lot of strawberries. However, I'm thinking that maybe we did more than what we'll actually need for this next year. Of course that remains to be seen though!
At any rate, I'm sorry for my absence. This week I just might not be online a lot since we have someone coming a couple of days to work on our kitchen (which is where our computer is) and then my mom and sister are coming for a day as well. So I'll try to keep you updated with the deals but, well, we'll see how that goes!
WOW! You realize that 75 quarts is 300 cups! That's almost insane- but I like it!!! I'm totally jealous!
ReplyDeletePS: I hope you used your FREE Ziplocs from Rite Aid to keep them fresh in the freezer..wink!
Okay, so you ARE the math lover and I'm impressed with your skill! That does sound like an insane amount of strawberries when you convert it to cups. I still can hardly believe that we eat so much. I was joking to my husband that as our family grows we are going to have to ration the fruit around here so we don't go broke! :)
ReplyDeleteAnd actually I use reusable freezer boxes for things like strawberries. I love them because they don't leak like freezer bags can sometimes and you can use them over and over and over. But I do use my freezer bags for things like meat and cheese.
I thought you had to have made a typo! 75 QUART! That is a crazy lot of strawberries! My goal this year was 50 pint. I thought that was a lot but you make it sound like piddling! Do you do that much of other fruits as well or our strawberries your specialty! I'd be running out of freezer space, and freezer containers!
ReplyDeleteIf you all eat that many berries, it is neat how the Lord provided some for you - as well as help to put them all away!
And don't apologize for being away from the computer! We all know there are more important things in life then updating! But it is good to see you here again!
Gina
Gina, I was just looking at how much fruit I put up last year. I definitely did more strawberries than other fruit, although applesauce was close! I don't do much pears, but then can and freeze quite a bit of peaches and blueberries. I wasn't used to eating this much fruit but Vince came from a family that ate lots of fruit all the time. And I've learned to enjoy fruit more often too.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing I don't buy as much in season fruit for fresh eating in the winter as some people. I buy quite a bit of bananas and apples and sometimes grapes but then hardly buy citrus.
As for freezer space, well, this is almost embarrassing, but we actually have 2 chest freezers and right now everything fits in one of them. But by the end of the summer the other one will be quite full too since we prefer frozen peaches and applesauce over canned. Maybe I should mention too that all 3 of us are fairly big eaters.
I enjoy blogging, but yes, there are things that take a higher priority and I do NOT want my family to suffer because of it. That is SO not worth it to me! Thanks for reminding me of that!