Strawberry weekend

Fred's parents came up to Portland last Wednesday and stayed with us through the weekend. We had a great time. It's strawberry season here, and we made the best of it. On Saturday morning we went to the Beaverton farmers market-one of my favorite things to do in the summer. We bought a flat of Hood strawberries, and Sylvia and I made strawberry and strawberry-rhubarb jam while Fred and his dad put together an automatic sprinkler system for the crops on our patio.
We used a different kind of pectin that allows for less sugar since the berries were so sweet on their own. Maybe that's why the jam separated. I'm going to spin it as "fruit on the top" jam. It still tastes great, and I guess that's all that really matters.

Saturday night I finally got to try my hand at pie in a jar. I used the pie crust recipe from this book with all butter instead of butter and shortening. The recipe uses orange juice instead of water for liquid and has turned out nicely every time I've made it. The mini-pies turned out great as well. We filled them with some fresh strawberries, extra jam that didn't get canned, and cornstarch.


On Sunday afternoon we went to the International Rose Test Garden in Portland. It was a beautiful afternoon, and a great time to go see the roses.


On the way home we stopped at another one of my favorite places for another strawberry treat-made even better by buy-one-get-one-free coupons.


Later, we all pitched in and grilled up an excellent dinner--grilled cheeseburgers, grilled veggies, and roasted potatoes. Afterward, Sylvia and I had to try just one more strawberry recipe.


This one turned out to be the best of all. It's the best fruit crisp I've ever made-and quite possibly one of the best desserts. It has a strawberry and rhubarb filling with rosemary and cinnamon and an oatmeal/multigrain cereal topping. The rosemary in the filling isn't overpowering, and it makes the whole dessert taste unbelievably good. If you decide to try this one yourself, we did cut back the butter in the topping from 1/2 to 1/3 cup and it still tasted great.

Fred's parents left this morning, and we're are probably going to spend the rest of the week getting ready for our PDX-LA-St. Louis wedding extravaganza coming up. I think we're both in vacation mode and will be ready to head out of here on Friday.