Summertime in the Finger Lakes is bountiful harvest-magic!
Oh strawberry season, you get me every time - and of all the U-Pick places out there my favorite is Silver Queen Farm. My girlfriend Laura and I scooped the boys and headed out to pick a pint or two of berries.... Despite our efforts to pick moderately we walked away with 10 lbs. of delicious, plump, sweet-smelling, bright-red strawberries!
Which is fine! I hustled home and immediately started to make a quick jam, that happened and was consumed too quickly to document! Next time, I'll slow down and document more.
QUICK JAM -
I merged a few 'quick strawberry jam' recipes, If you're willing to take my word for it:
I squished up the roughly 6lbs. of remaining berries and ALL of their delicious soupy juice on the bottom of the bag, put that in a saucepan over med heat, tossed in less then half of the recommended amount of raw sugar (I like tart jam), and about 4-6 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and keep that moving over the heat. Continuing to move the mixture until it really thickened up - which it does on it's own pretty quickly with just picked fruit! Cut heat, let it rest for a bit, tasted it -- YUM! And poured it into 3, 16 ounce jars! Gobbled and gone!
On our way home from the farm we drove past a pale yellow field, I think it was wheat but I'm not certain as to what the grain was, regardless of the grain type, it was beautiful. It was around 1pm. so we had full-sun directly pouring onto the pale yellow grain and it made the entire field glow this ambient golden yellow. I tried for a moment to not stop -- knowing that it would lure me into what would be the better part of an hour for the rest of my gang sitting in the car, but I couldn't resist! One looked at Laura - and she knew, looked back at my boys - they knew, I swung the car around and as quickly as possible I photographed this perfectly simple yet stunning landscape.
That's all for now,
ciao