Berry Birthday

For Sarah's Sunday celebration of her birthday we invited any remaining Tueller relatives in Utah to join us before the last departures of the summer. One of Sarah's preferred foods is plain pasta so we had a pasta bar with three types of pasta and three types of sauces. For dessert/birthday cake we had another favorite: strawberry shortcake (pound cake).

For her day after birthday party Sarah decided she wanted to go berry picking and make raspberry jam. Marie tracked down a berry picking farm (http://theraspberrypatch.com/) west of Payson Utah. It officially opens later this week, but the nice owner allowed us to come and glean the scattered remains of the summer crop and the beginnings of the big late summer crop.

Most of the fruit was low hanging, which for raspberries does not mean the easiest to pick. 

Some weeds I like.

 
Others I despise (blossoms and tentacles on the well named bind weed--aka morning glory)

Each friend took home two containers of jam from the very berries they picked.

Marie used the leftover berries to make a raspberry sauce to go on the birthday pound cake and brownies.

Sarah comes by her love of raspberry jam naturally. My mom's (Grandma Emmett) homemade freezer raspberry jam was perhaps my favorite food growing up. I put it on homemade rolls, home made bread, toast, french toast, pancakes, aebelskivers and even ice cream. When my family met me at the airport, after my two months in the Language Training Mission (LTM) and just prior to flying to Indonesia for my two year mission, mom brought a container of freezer jam which I enjoyed on an order of French Toast in the airport restaurant. When I came home my request for a first meal was not a steak at Maddox like my two older brothers had selected. I wanted raspberry jam and toast and  a bowl full (or two) of sliced fresh Brigham City peaches with milk.

For one of our first dates, Marie and I went and picked raspberries in Maryland and then returned to her DC apartment where I taught her (who grew up in the tropics where raspberries don't grow) to make freezer jam. Marie now regularly makes raspberry jam for us all to eat. I keep trying to grow enough on our backyard terraces to meet our high demands. I am ever hopeful.