Strawberry Picking
Yesterday my mom, another elder's wife from my parents' congregation, and I went strawberry picking at a farm near my parents' house. It was so much fun, and turned out to be free (for me), too, because my mom paid for my strawberries! (Thank you mom!)
All three of us picked a gallon of lovely berries, but now that I've got them home, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with all of them. I started off by making a Bavarian Strawberry Pie, cutting the sugar down to 1/2 cup and making a vanilla wafer crust (from trans fat free vanilla wafers, of course), which is currently setting in our refrigerator. After licking up the filling left in the bowl, I would say I could have cut down on the sugar even more.
I must say that I love my food processor. If I had to slice 4 cups of strawberries by hand, it would have taken me at least an hour. With the slicing attachment, it only took me a few seconds longer than it took to cut off the top and put it in the feeder tube. I used to avoid making apple pie, carrot cake, and other fruit/vegetable confections because it would end up taking me longer to cut or grate the fruit/vegetable than it would for my family to eat the finished product. With a food processor, this is no longer the case -- and there was much rejoicing from my dad and JM, the sweet tooths in my family. ;)
So yay for easy strawberry pie, but that only used a quarter of the berries. Does anyone else have any creative ways that I can use appx 12 cups of strawberries in the next day or two? JM suggested strawberry preserves, but I just made peach preserves last week, and we have an opened jar of strawberry jam in our fridge already. Maybe I'll freeze some for use in the winter?
Our church is having a potluck lunch at the preacher's house this Sunday after morning service, so I'll probably make *something* strawberry for that. Maybe even a repeat of the pie if it sets well.
Categories:
food
Strawberry shortcake is always good. Or a strawberry cake. I make strawberry cake for my hubby's birthday each year, and I finally found THE recipe last year.
Freezing the strawberries is also a great idea. Twelve cups is a lot to try to use up while they're fresh, so freezing is probably the more economical thing to do. Besides, it means you can enjoy them that much longer!
I went blueberry picking with my parents 2 years ago. We had a great time. Unfortunately, I discovered soon after that blueberries are definitely a migraine trigger, so I had 6 pounds of blueberries to farm out to my friends. :-(
Forgot to mention that fresh strawberries are great in a spinach salad.
I love taking our kiddos strawberry picking. I don't know of anywhere near our new house where I can take them, though.
That said, strawberries freeze very well.
Maybe we're strange, but my family could eat that many strawberries fresh in about a day. ;) I picked berries twice last week, and got a gallon each time... and they were gone in 24 hours each time! :) My babies LOVE them, and Joshua would take a huge container of washed/hulled ones in his lunch... if I even had that many to send along. ;)
But, you asked for ideas... someone mentioned strawberry shortcake, and I do love whole wheat strawberry shortcake... very healthy and yummy!! :)
You can also make smoothies with strawberries and bananas.
You can add sliced strawberries to your granola or whatever cereal you like to eat...
Hmn, I guess I don't have that many strawberry recipes, after all! :)
You could always make some preserves to send home with me!
That being said, I bet in a few months you would appreciate it if you made some preserves to freeze. Especially if you sweetened it with healthy sweeteners... it's expensive to buy that kind of preserves from the store, and the "normal" kind is like 90% high fructose corn syrup.
Of course, it sounds like you won't have trouble freezing them even if you leave them alone. I guess you picked (haha, no pun intented) a good kind of fruit to have too much of!