Strawberry picking

A few weeks ago I took the kiddos to do some berry picking.  It's strawberry season here so we found one farm that looked perfect, but they were closed when we got there.  Even though I called the day before, but he did give us another place to try.  I am not sure that these strawberries weren't sprayed, but it was our only option that day and my little girl was super excited about picking some berries.

You pay by the pound and we had 11.5 pounds of strawberries.  We went home, washed and froze some and used others to top our morning oatmeal, to snack on, and to make muffins. 

Vegan Strawberry Muffin Recipe

Ingredients

1 flax egg, (1T ground flax, 3T water)

2 cups Bisquick 1/3 cup sugar 1 1/2 Tbsp. vegetable oil 2/3 cup unsweetened almond milk 1 cup strawberries

Directions

Make flax egg and set aside for 5 min.

Mix together all ingredients except the strawberries until JUST blended.

Fold in strawberries and spoon into 12 muffin cups.

Bake at 400*F for 13-18 minutes or until just browned.

Makes 12 muffins.

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 53 g

Amount Per Serving

Calories 116 Calories from Fat 30

% Daily Value*

Total Fat 3.4g 5%

Trans Fat 0.0g

Cholesterol 0mg 0%

Sodium 225mg 9%

Total Carbohydrates 20.3g 7%

Dietary Fiber 0.9g 4%

Sugars 7.6g

Protein 1.8g

Vitamin A 1% • Vitamin C 12% Calcium 9% • Iron 5%

Nutrition Grade

Pumpkin and Apple Picking

So, I am only 3 weeks behind in posts (well at least this one).  A few weeks ago we went up to the north GA and went to the pumpkin patch and then traveled a little farther north and hit the apples.  This is something Adam and I have been doing since before we were even engaged.  It's so much fun.  We love getting to share this with Hope and next year there will be 2 little ones to share it with.  I paired Hope in a nice green top so she would stand out at the pumpkins.  I think the pictures turned out great!



Hope with some big pumpkins

Now, onto the smaller pumpkins, where we eventually found the one to carve. 

Nice family pic

Pointing out the pumpkins she liked.

Hope's way of travel after we paid for all of our pumpkins, gords, butternut squash, etc. 

Now, onto apple picking (should have brought a change of shirt for Hope here).  A nice pink or orange would have been nice since you can barely see her in the leaves. 

So proud that she got the apple all by herself. 

Washing the first batch of apples (I saw something on Dr. Oz about cleaning fruits and veggies that aren't organic).  There are no organic apples farms in GA that I could find.

The other 2 1/2 peps that we bought.

Some strawberry preserves I just couldn't resist.  

 

We had a wonderful time.  I loved the apple farm we found especially.  During our time there, we had a fried apple pie (yep, the pregnant lady picked that one) and an apple cidar slushie (Adam's pick). 

I can't wait to show you all the things I have done with the apples since then. 

More dessert, but a little healthier

Well pregnancy insomnia has plagued me again.  I have been up since 3:15am (to pee of course) and have been up ever since.  Now my alarm goes off in 45 minutes so I doubt I will be sleeping again tonight.  Urgh!

So I figured I would do a quick post on some more desserts I have been eating recently.  We all know it's apple season (yeah).  My grandmother went up to North Georgia a couple of weeks ago and brought back some apples and gave us a few (we just went last weekend and I will post about that when I get those pictures uploaded).  So I decided to introduce Hope to Baked Apples.  This is something my mom introduced me to a long time ago and I doctored it up some since then.  It's pretty easy and very fast.

You start with your apple, chopped up in a bowl.  Here I am using a Mutsu apple, but really anyone you like will work.

Next I added 2 teaspoons of Earth Balance (or butter if you prefer), a handful of raisins and a dash of cinnamon.  Two minutes in the microwave (or until apples become soft) and that's it.  I then added some Kashi GoLean Crunch, because I like a little crunch in everything I eat and a splash of agave nectar and here is my finished product.



Hope was not impressed with the idea of cooked fruit (like her father), but I loved it!  A nice way to finish off the end or would make a great snack.  Yum!

What to do with all those blueberries

Well I knew with almost 16 cups of blueberries that we wouldn't be able to finish them before they turned, so I put about 8 cups in the freezer. I read about freezing berries, and it's very simple. All you have to do is wash them, place them on a cookie sheet on one layer, and then put them in the freezer. Then when they freeze, they won't all be clumped together. Then you can transfer them into a storage bag.


I also made some muffins. I tweaked a couple of different recipes and came up with my own (recipe below). I did double the amount of blueberries though, so I knew they would be yummy! Here is my dough after I mixed in the blueberries.

Going into the oven (350).

My muffins cooling - look at all those blueberries.

Jaime's Blueberry Muffin recipe

Ingredients

1.25 c flour
.75 c ww flour
.5 c sugar
2t baking soda
.25t salt
.5 c light sour cream
.25 c canola oil
.25 c 1% milk
1t vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 c blueberries

Directions

Preheat oven to 350.
Spray muffin tin.
Combine flour through salt in large bowl and whisk.
Make well in middle.
Combine sour cream through eggs in well. Incorporate flour with whisk.
Spoon in blueberries.
Place in tin.
Cook for 20-25 minutes.

Each muffin has:
167 calories
6.5g fat
1.6g saturated fat
30mg chol
239mg sodium
24.4g carbs
1.0g fiber
9.3g sugar
3.2g protein

I did notice that my muffins were not as moist as I like them, so if do this again with another batch of blueberries, I will probably substitute the oil for either 1/3 cup applesauce or 1/3 cup nonfat plain yogurt. That would reduce the calories down to 135 and the fat down to around 2 grams.

Blueberry Picking

I found a U-Pick blueberry farm that has organic blueberries for $7.00/gallon and it's not too far away. They are DJ's U-Pick Blueberries. We had such a good time that we are going back tomorrow. Here are some pictures from our first visit.

They have a few goats too. Hope loved seeing the goats and she even got to feed one. She was so brave!

Hope has our bucket and we are ready to do some picking. Here she is putting more blueberries into our bucket. She was very good at picking the blueberries. Once she showed her which ones to pick, she was an ace!

Look at those cute little hands. She was so excited about it. Of course that only lasted a few minutes and then she wanted to just run around.

More blueberry picking for Hope.

Carrying our gallon bucket and looking for a new bush to pick at.

Me with our gallon of organic blueberries. Yum!!!

Once I got home, I gave them a good wash, but here they are right before. Now that's a lot of blueberries!

Hope did really well on her first trip to the blueberry farm. Of course, she got a little tired, and the owners kept telling us we could eat them off the bush. Unfortunately, once we showed Hope she could eat the blueberries off the bush, she stopped picking and putting in the bucket. She only picked and ate. :)

I will have to get some pictures up so you can see what all I have made with my blueberries.