March 18, 2012

Slim Pickins’

 

Our adventures yesterday afternoon took us about 45 minutes northwest of Orlando (luckily only about 15 minutes from our house) to Oak Haven Farms in Sorrento, FL. 

It was a beautiful day for strawberry picking!

 

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Oak Haven is an adorable farm that not only offers U-pick strawberries, $2.10 per pound, but also sells local honey and sauces, Oak Haven Wine as well as strawberry shortcake and milkshakes.  They even have free hay rides for the kids on the weekend.  It was so cute.

 

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Once we arrived, we headed out to the field guide.  He gave us our picking box and told us which picking aisles were “ours”.  We were warned that the picking wasn’t that great and there were very few keepers left.  Bummer.

 

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Although many of the strawberries were mush, there were a few that we were able to salvage, thank goodness!

 

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Most of the selection looked like this, we had to work hard to find the good ones.

 

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The sweet lady at the store also told us to “really work the bushes”.  She said to get your hands in there and find the hidden strawberries.  Case in point.

 

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They weren’t huge, but they sure were sweet!

 

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Pretty impressive loot, I thought, based on the slim pickings!

 

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As an after picking treat, we did indulge in their signature strawberry shortcake with whipped cream.  It was super tasty and the whipped cream was the thickest I have ever seen, it was almost custard-like!

 

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I was going to try to duplicate the strawberry shortcake recipe at home with ours, or possibly freeze them for smoothies, but they ended up like this instead. 

 

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Freezer jam!

   Recipe coming soon. 

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