the great domestic showdown

Went on a berry-picking outing today as part of a family-togetherness thing. Armed with ice cream pails and flat boxes, mom, dad, Grace & boyfriend, and I hopped into the van and headed further into rural suburbia for our little expedition. One the way, we spotted the main street where they film Smallville, which elicited squeals of excitement from both my sister and myself even though neither of us has watched the show since last season's finale.

The day was sunny and warm, but the heat was offset with the occasional cool breeze. The sun ripened berries were deliciuosly sweet, and savouring the juiciness of the fruit while we picked was the perfect way to spend the morning and a bit of the afternoon. After filling two bucketfulls of raspberries, I decided to move to the strawberry patch and see what I could harvest.

Because strawberries grow low to the ground, it proved to be much more back-breaking than picking in the raspberry fields. Discovering the plump crimson berries hiding under the broad leaves while kneeling on the soft earth was much more satisfying though because it made me feel somewhat closer to nature. It reminded me of the scenes from David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars where Katsue spends her summers picking berries while Ishmael looks on, infatuated by her beauty. It also brought back memories of a day trip I took with Lydia last summer to a winery/vineyard/orchard/berry farm in the St. Catherine's/Niagara Wine Region.

Anyway, we got a little carried away and picked probably more than we needed: 27 lbs of raspberries and 29 lbs of strawberries! Sixty-seven dollars and plenty of berry-stained fingers later, we wheeled our pickings back to the van, exhausted but satisfied.

The rest of the afternoon was spent washing the raspberries and blueberries for freezing, hulling the strawberries, and making jam. After everything was sealed in mason jars, I set out to make dinner for the jam-making crew. Turned out to be a more elaborate meal than I had planned, but scrumptious nonetheless. This was the menu:

Breadsticks served with slow roasted garlic cloves

Tossed romaine & jicama salad sprinkled with blueberries, raspberries, pinenuts, and crunchy roasted onion flakes. Sesame vinaigrette

Miso marinated barbecue porkchops with a raspberry & red wine reduction

Garlic & parmesan mashed potatoes

Mission Hill Riesling

Vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries

Go ahead, send Martha to jail. I'll take over while she's busy.


make fire. cook meat.
I had a little bit of difficulty igniting the barbecue because it had been sitting in the shed since we put it away last summer. Being the impatient little bugger that I am, I decided to toss a lit match into the coals to see if I could speed the proccess along. I wasn't prepared for the resulting burst of flame.

Lesson #1: matches + propane = big whoosh of flames.
Lesson #2: Hair is easily singed if placed in close proximity to open flame.

After recovering from the initial shock and picking myself up from falling backwards, i quickly put out the little fire happening on my head, checked to see if my eyebrows were still somewhat in tact, and then went up to take a shower to get rid of the nasty smell of incinerated hair which was still lingering. I later discovered that this was attributed to the burnt hair in my nostrils.

*sigh*

Lessons learned.