Growing and Enjoying Raspberries
Ah Summer. You gotta love all the fresh produce available at the grocery stores and farmers markets. If you are like me and grow some of your own fruits and vegetables, you tend to get way more of a particular crop than you could normally use all at once. It looks like a bumper crop of raspberries for us this year so I have been researching new ways to use this sweet berry. 
After a long day in the garden (or typing away in the office), what’s more refreshing than a sparkling sangria? One of our favorite food bloggers is Damn Delicious. Here is a great recipe for sparkling sangria.
If you are more in the mood for a fruit snack, here is an option for you, frozen yogurt raspberries. This recipe comes from SuperHealthKids.com. You can even add blueberries for a patriotic twist. What a fun idea and I would imagine you could store these for quite a while so you could enjoy your raspberries for a long time.
If your are looking for more of a hearty dessert there is of course our own fruit pizza. This combines all sorts of fruits from the garden and the grocery store. We know this is a winner because it has been repinned thousands of times. Here is the recipe.
Smoothies are always refreshing, especially in the heat of the summer. Here is an easy recipe from Total Body Fitness & Nutrition.
How about a raspberry iced tea martini from the Martini Chronicles.
Here is the recipe.
Of course if you are like my grandkids eating the raspberries right off the vine is probably the best. This is Estella “helping” us pick raspberries last year.
We started our raspberry patch when a friend gave us some plants to transplant. The good news is that they are very hardy. The bad news is that they spread. Ours completely took over an area where we intended to grow raspberries, blueberries and viney vegetables like zucchini. In just a couple of years the raspberries won and it is officially a raspberry patch. We moved the other plants to another garden. If you are considering a raspberry patch we found this short video that we think should be very helpful.
