Berries, Berries Everywhere!

Have I mentioned on here before how one of my most favorite things about living in a house is having a freezer in the garage?  Because now I get to buy in bulk and freeze all sort of yummy things.  And right now, my freezer looks like this:

In it are four batches of strawberry and kiwi strawberry freezer jam, 4 gallons of whole strawberries (we've got another one in the house freezer) and 24 cups in two cup increments of sliced strawberries.  There's also some meat and chicken broth on that shelf, in case you're wondering.

That doesn't even include the 9x13 pan in the fridge of fresh strawberries we ate off of for a week, or the tub of mashed berries, or the jar of puree we made with the extra ripe berries we picked.

Yes, we were up to our ears prepping berries a few weeks ago. 

These are the ones David and I picked ourselves two weeks ago.  Then I also got 15lbs of sliced and slightly mashed berries from the Kiwana's fundraiser the following week.  My back appreciated not having to pick everything myself in it's current state of uncomfortableness.

This is what my freezer looked like (and that was just the first batch) to fill up the five gallon-sized bags of whole berries.

Since then we've been enjoying all sorts of yummy desserts.

Strawberry cake and chocolate waffles,

strawberry lemonade and smashed berries over homemade chocolate ice cream,

And Josh 'helped' me make these mini cobblers.  Hey, they were made with whole wheat flour, so not everything we've been eating is purely sugary sweetness.  The berries were so sweet and good that unless it was for baking or jam, there was no need to add sugar.

But you want to know the best part?  I found out that my boys refuse to eat strawberries.

Oh well.  More for me.  And we use them in their sneaky veggie smoothies, so take that, picky eaters.