This is what 28 pounds of Strawberries look Like

These are some of Porkchop's homegrown strawberries:



And these are the 28 pounds of strawberries we picked at Eckert's on Saturday:



We froze a lot of our strawberries:



And made jam out of the rest:



For our first canning venture, we made three varieties: plain old strawberry jam, lemony strawberry jam, and strawberry-balsamic vinegar jam.

Strawberries, strawberries, strawberries! I really don't care to see another one for a few days. (Sad, eh?)

Saturday was a day full of strawberry picking and processing, and going to Porkchop's brother's place for a birthday SingStar party. Unfortunately, I was completely exhausted by 11 pm, so we had to bail out early.

You'd think we would have slept in Sunday morning, but no, we rose bright and early to clean house some before leaving for Porkchop's parents' place outside of Rolla.

Our plan was to camp in her parents' yard (don't laugh, they live in the woods!). The rain cancelled that, so instead we put up our tent on their wraparound porch. Impressive, eh?



So, don't laugh when I say that we didn't even spend the whole night in the tent! That's right, we were too chicken to camp on a porch!

First off, Porkchop's mom's cat scared the crap out of us by sneaking up and clawing the tent. Then there was a seriously scary sound coming from the creek area behind the house. It was either a couple of crazy wild turkeys, or a mountain lion screaming. Finally, critters kept coming up on the porch and making noises. Raccoon or opossum, Porkchop grew tired of waking up to their thumping around. So we went inside for the rest of the night and stole back outside in the early morning. Listening to the rain was so pleasant as it hit the porch instead of the tent rain fly.

Monday went by too quickly, and we didn't find ourselves back in St. Louis until after 8 pm. Once back, we had to deal with more strawberries (didn't have time to finish them on Saturday). And today was exhausting because everyone at work needs something RIGHT NOW. Ugh! I'm having a little drinky-drink at the moment to relax (don't worry - not a habit of mine).

Tonight I harvested lettuce and radishes from the garden, and realized that I have a big slug problem! I would put out beer to drown them, but the rain won't stop long enough for this method to be effective. Yuck.

For dinner, I made this beef curry recipe. Yum! It would have been better had I cooked it for the full two hours, but I didn't read the recipe very closely before starting and didn't plan for a 2+ hour dish! Anyway, 1 hour meant it was still quite tasty (and I don't like beef that much).

All for now!