Last June, I finally took my two kids strawberry picking. I’d been talking about it for years, but something always came up and it was easier to pick up a pint at our local co-op. Don’t get me wrong, our co-op is great, but I wanted my kids to actually see where the berries came from – green plants growing in the dirt, not a plastic container.
I used the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s online directory, MinnesotaGrown.com, to find a farm that worked for us: less than 40 miles from our house, with weekend hours, and family-friendly. Voil! Lorence’s Berry Farm in Northfield.
I called the farm on Friday night for the weekend crop report. They told me the Saturday morning crop looked beautiful, but we should arrive early because they expected a big crowd. I packed up the kids at 7 a.m. Saturday, picked up my parents at 7:30, and was ready for berry picking by 8 a.m. sharp.
The field workers showed us to a row of plants and told the kids to taste as many berries as they could. My kids sat right down in the straw-covered walkways and started eating. We had to have a quick talk about which berries were good (mostly red, no blemishes) which ones they should skip (underripe and rotten ones) and how much stem to leave on the berry. We also talked about the benefits of actually bringing some of the berries home rather than eating all of them in the field. The trade-off talk worked for my 6-year-old, and he started launching berries into the cardboard carrying box. Next lesson: Be gentle and set the berries in the box.
We immediately brought home our haul. Berries cannot be left in a hot car; they need to be kept cool and cleaned as soon as possible. We washed the kitchen sink and filled it with cold water. The kids gently dropped the berries into the water and swirled them around slowly. When dirt, bugs, and straw had sunk to the bottom of the sink, we set the berries on a clean dishtowel to dry.
Last step: hulling. My son likes any opportunity to use kitchen gadgets, so he was an enthusiastic worker. But, if you don’t have a strawberry huller or corer, a paring knife works fine. We put the clean, and hulled berries in a large bowl and sprinkled sugar over them (about 3/4 cup sugar per quart of fruit). We froze some of the berries in large Ziploc freezer bags (fill the bags half full and squeeze the air out). The rest went straight into tasty, healthful smoothies.
Emeril Lagasse’s Yummy Wake-Up Smoothies
Makes 2 cups, 3-4 servings
1 large ripe banana, peeled and sliced
1 cup washed strawberries, stems and hulls removed
1/2 cup raspberries or peeled and sliced kiwis (about 2 kiwis)
1 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons honey (not for kids under 2 years old)
Place all of the ingredients in the blender and process on high speed until smooth, about 30-45 seconds.
Bridget O’Boyle teaches young cooks at Cooks of Crocus Hill.
