Vera Cruz Visions

To kick off the unof­fi­cial start of sum­mer, Jana, Daniel, Arni and I headed down to Swan­ton Berry Farm to har­vest our own strawberries.

The fields were located between the Pacific Coast High­way and the ocean cliffs. We got to pick straw­ber­ries to the sooth­ing sound of the waves crash­ing against the shore.

The weather started out a lit­tle wet but the skies cleared and even­tu­ally made for a really beau­ti­ful day.

Jana and Arni vol­un­teered to be our “qual­ity con­trol check­ers.” I admit, there was a lot of taste-testing going on just to make sure we were pick­ing noth­ing but the best.

Among the four of us, we filled a whole box full. 11 pounds of straw­ber­ries made for a really fra­grant car ride home!

The next day, Jana and Daniel came over to our apart­ment and we put the straw­ber­ries to use.

After Jana helped slice all the straw­ber­ries, Arni made some really good jam. Since we had so many straw­ber­ries left over after one batch, he then made even more jam!

We have so much jam, we’ll be hav­ing it for morn­ing, noon and night for the next month or so.

Daniel was really suc­cess­ful mak­ing The Best Straw­berry Bread which in fact, really is the best straw­berry bread, at least that I’ve ever had. I sup­pose I should say, “was” the best as only two days later, it was almost all gone.

I love these cook­ing get-togethers! They are really fun and deli­ciously reward­ing in the end. We might try to make it down the coast again in a cou­ple of months to har­vest Black­ber­ries. Any recipe sug­ges­tions are welcome!