Oh, the berries

The unambitious to-do list for the weekend included: get more Oregon strawberries while they're still in season. It's a short season, a short very sweet season. Look at these:
They're small:
And they're red as rubies all the way through, and they are as sweet as a mouthful of jam. They are so good. And in a blink, they'll be gone, which is very sad, but the consolation is that there will be raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and marionberries (which are kind of like blackberries), and those seasons are longer. Soon we'll go out to this island in the Columbia River that's full of you-pick berry farms and we will get obsessive-compulsive and not be able to stop picking. With the raspberries and blackberries, especially it's like that: they're these endless walls of berries, right at eye level, and you just can't stop picking! Oregon is berry-land. Not just berries, but apples and pears in the fall, and grapes of course -- wine grapes, that is. I don't know about table grapes. And cherries! Amazing cherries. I [heart] summer.

Oh, so I was making some banana muffins today -- the third batch in as many weeks because we can't seem to eat the bananas fast enough; with the increased heat, they just turn so fast. Darn it, that means muffins! The first batch I made with coconut and sunflower seeds, the second with blackberries, and this latest batch coincided nicely with the arrival of a flat of strawberries. So:
The strawberries made the batter a little pink, which was so cute I went ahead and added a teeny bit of food coloring. Because, you know: pink! But once baked, the pink is pretty subtle. Also, I overdid it on the bananas on this batch so they're not fluffy, and not really photogenic, but they taste good.


We went to see the movie "Up" last night -- oh my gosh it's soOoOoOoOoOoOo goOoOoOoOoOoOd!!! You have to see it!!! It's the new Pixar animated movie, in 3D, and it's just wonderful, so moving and funny and beautiful. My favorite Pixar yet, and I love them [almost] all. (The car one, not so much.) Jim and I both cried behind our 3D glasses, and we laughed a lot too. If you haven't planned to see it because you think it's for kids, it's really not. I think it's more for adults, though kids can certainly love it too. It's about love and loss, loneliness, putting off your dreams, seizing your dreams, adventure, longing, friendship, and . . . more. And there's an awesome dog in it :-)