Berry Picking

Saturday night we tried out DaVinci's Italian restaurant, right behind our house. Good food but shady for several reasons:

1. They asked us if we wanted bread and olives. Sure! We were assuming they were complimentary but no, they were not. ($13 alone for that and it was a small serving). 

2. They didn't box up my leftover cannoli!

3. They charged us for a bottle of wine but gave us 3 glasses instead.

4. They didn't bring Ethan's kids meal dessert until we finally asked for it.

Our kids were not exactly the picture of perfect manners:

Ah well, good food and it was nice to eat out. 

Then today we went to the Holme Farm and picked strawberries (slim pickings but we managed to gather a punnet of strawberries) and 4 punnets of raspberries (luckily, these were still plentiful even though we are at the tail of the picking season). I was a little surprised though, when it came to around £25 ($40)! I figured it out and it costs twice as much per pound as the Remlinger Farms U Pick we normally do. Which is fine, it just doesn't seem to be any cheaper to pick them yourself than it is to buy them at the store.

The kids both really love berry picking. They were both good little helpers and were really cute with each other today, laughing and skipping together. And Hailey was humming to herself. 

Hailey sometimes picked the white strawberries but she really was quite the dedicated little picker:

She REALLY wanted to pick these pears too, and was pretending to eat them:

 

This bee was massive, the largest bee I've ever seen! (Which reminds me, I read a really interesting article about bees the other day: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/12/431689745/dont-worry-honey-the-other-bees-have-your-back?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150812 ). Sounds promising.

Then Ethan and I put on our aprons and made 3 dozen lemon raspberry muffins and "Righteous Raspberry Brownies" with Cadbury cocoa. So many raspberries we had to freeze a lot of them (more baking to come)!