Strawberries here, strawberries there!

My girls were excited to see that the strawberry plant in our garden had a ruby colored fruit. My older one excitedly showed me the ripe berry.

We carefully brought it into the house, rinsed it, and she and her sister took tiny bites together, savoring the sunny sweetness.

The best part?

The next day was an excursion to Golden Earthworm Organic Farm in Jamesport, NY – a farm locally known for their organic CSA offerings in the metro New York area. What were we doing?

Organic Strawberry Picking of course!

Papa zipped through the patch, while Baba carefully filled her basket with perfectly colored, shaped, and sized berries. The little one quickly became distracted, and picked wands of dandelion fluff – and I inwardly laughed – my three year old, spreading dandelion seeds as she blew the balls of fluff into the air. My older one carefully examined each berry, picking those that were beautifully red, but small in size.

It was a beautiful day in the strawberry patch, despite the clouds that had covered the sky, earlier in the day.

We stopped at our favorite restaurant on our forays to the north shore of Long Island – The Lobster Roll

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Papa and the girls enjoyed the clam bake, Baba the fried oyster roll, and I had my once-a-year decadent fried soft shell crab roll.

The strawberries were shared with Nanna, Auntie K, Uncle K and Lala at daycare. We enjoyed them fresh, with a little milk and sugar (Baba’s request) and I took the remaining berries and made a jam, by cooking the berries down with sugar and lemon juice.

What fun we had…

Lingering end of summer bento

Pizza Day is on Tuesday this week, so my schedule is a bit off. 

For Monday, here was my daughter’s bento:

Baked chicken drumstick – seasoned with a little poultry seasoning and soy sauce

Carrot sticks and yellow cherry tomatoes (the garden still producing, but winding down)

Blanched watercress and edamame tossed with soy sauce + rice vinegar + sesame oil + sesame seed + olive oil dressing.

Multi-grain Onigiri with center of okaka (seasonedkatsuobushi), wrapped in nori

 

We spent a whirlwind weekend in Montauk this past weekend – where we zipped out to Sun ‘n’ Sound in Montauk where we tagged along to Papa’s good friend’s fiancée’s family reunion.  Despite the gray and drab day preceding the weekend, we were able to enjoy an absolutely gorgeous sunset in the evening.

Sailboat silhouette against sunset, Sun 'N Sound, Montauk

On the way back home the next day, we stopped at Hank’s Pumpkintown to let the girls run around in the play area, munch on a roasted corn ear, enjoy a ride around the pumpkin patch in the barrel train, and pick pumpkins.

I lamented the fact that my scheduling didn’t allow us to stop at Lobster Roll – a.k.a. Lunch or Clam Bar due to timing – but there’s always next year… (or a random road trip!)

Rogue Matt’s Wild Cherry, beets, quail eggs for lunch

As you may recall, last year, I made the newbie mistake of planting 10 cherry and grape tomato plants.

Needless to say, after being overwhelmed by red, yellow and orange marble-sized tomatoes that proliferated until the first frost, I swore up and down, I would only plant two cherry tomato plants. 

On the other hand, I’d plant countless pole beans this year, as these would probably be a bit more manageable.

A blog of how to avoid the “Jack and the Beanstalk” syndrome will soon follow.

This year, I was poking around the garden with my head-lamp lighting a little conical way through the dusky garden, I discovered I had pockets of tomato breeds I had not planted in the garden THIS year. 

One of them was a random Matt’s Wild Cherry plant that had deliciously red fruit clusters, perfect for picking.  Most likely this plant had regenerated itself from a rogue tomato dropped in a random patch between the herb pots LAST  year.

The issue I had with these adorable tomatoes were their inability to keep fresh for longer than a day.  The sweet and intense fruit have very delicate skin that split once they are picked off of the stem – so they were very difficult to store until I stopped at Makinajian Farm to see they simply clipped the tomatoes, including the stems, and packed them into containers.

For Saturday school, I packed a cluster of these rogue tomatoes (including the stem), and expanded from there:

Boiled quail eggs (conventional)

Roasted beets

Onigiri (1:1 mix of white and multi-grain rice) with okaka filling, the rice pre-seasoned with sesame seeds, and some unseasoned flakes of katsuobushi, wrapped in nori

Sliced Armenian cucumbers

Age-kama with burdock from Miyagi Prefecture – my little attempts to try to support the regional economies devastated by the tsunami caused by the 3/11 Tohoku region earthquake.  Age-kama is surimi or fish that has been pounded and processed into a paste, and then cooked – whether extruded, or molded into shapes and steamed – and then deep-fried.  Many times, MSG is used as an ingredient – fortunately, the age-kama I bought did not include it in their ingredient list.  Is it a healthy item?  I think in small quantities, it’s a nice treat to have as a side in bento on occasion.  These were cut into cat shapes.