Tuesday, July 8, 2008

California Strawberries are bountiful!


One of my favorite snacks to make in the summertime is smoothies! They are super simple to make, so very tasty, and so nutritious! They really make it easy to get in all those fruits we need each day, too! Here is what I do to make my smoothie:
1. Put in 1/3 ice cubes into the blender.
2. Put in skim milk enough to cover 1/2 the ice cubes.
3. Add vanilla or plain yogurt (I prefer the vanilla).
4. Add frozen fruits: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc.
5. BLEND together, and pour into the glass to enjoy a refreshing smoothie!
I also like to put in a half to a whole banana. If fruit is on sale, I will use fresh fruit instead of frozen. This is a much tastier treat (in my opinion).
It sounds like we all will be getting a better price on fresh strawberries soon!
California provides 88% of the nation's strawberries, and the region is experiencing an incredibly bountiful harvest this year. With over 35,000 acres of fields across California, the growers will be picking nearly 6 million crates of delicious, ripe strawberries this week to deliver to grocery stores nationwide. That is truly something to celebrate! There are so many great meals, and snacks to make with strawberries, and they are so good for us to eat! There are some other really great recipes found on the California Strawberry Commission (CSC) website. Go see what interesting, and yummy recipe you can find.
Fun strawberry facts to share with your kids:
If you lined up all of the strawberries grown in California in one straight line, they would wrap around the entire Earth 15 times.
Guessing game! There are about 200 seeds on the outside of each strawberry.
California harvests over a billion pounds of strawberries annually.
One acre of land (about the size of one football field) grows about 50,000 pounds of strawberries - that's the same weight as 4 elephants!

Find more fun facts and games at a great site called Strawberryville, that is really fun to look through with the kids...and learn some new things!
Thanks MomCentral for this review!

2 comments:

Gretchen said...

Yummy! My kids would rather eat fruit than candy any day of the week. We can't keep peaches, nectarines, watermelon, etc.. in the house for more than a day. It gets gobbled up immediately.

Alicia @ refinedisaiah648.blogspot.com said...

I am right there with you Sarah!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE strawberries! I just had some for breakfast this morning! So yummy and refreshing! I like all those strawberry facts!! Its amazing that there are 200 seeds on one!!! (The news will be out soon...shh!)