It’s finally strawberry season! I’ve been watching with envy over on social media all the people posting about strawberries and trying to be patient for strawberry season to hit upstate NY. And it finally has! There is a pick-your-own place near me where I also bought all our beef and pork this past spring. Plus I bought most of my veggie plants there too. The weather has been so unpredictable, as usual, and of course I picked the hottest day so far this year to pick strawberries. But we got strawberries nonetheless. 12 quarts of strawberries to be exact! That translated into 2 gallons of strawberries in the freezer plus 1 gallon of strawberry tops for the chickens. I will use the frozen tops as a cool-down treat for them when it gets too hot outside.
I took some pictures of some of the funky strawberries that were growing. I hope to make it back to pick some more. I would like to make some fun jams with these strawberries. I normally freeze them and then use them for smoothies, but frozen organic strawberries are relatively inexpensive at Aldi’s (my new favorite grocery store) so I’ll stock up on those when I need them and use the pick-your-own for fun stuff. Someone told me about strawberry-cranberry jam so that’s on the list. I have a whole list of things to make with cranberries when they go on sale near Thanksgiving! I’ve been reading up on cranberries but that’s a whole different post (we’ll be in Cape Cod close to harvesting time!).
As for fun strawberry preserving, I don’t have to look further than my trusty Preserving by the Pint for two recipes: Strawberry Meyer Lemon Marmalade and Whole Strawberries in Vanilla Syrup. Both of these I will make at a later date when I have a chance. I’ve also looked at Food in Jars and found these fun recipes: Strawberry Syrup and Strawberry Vanilla Jam. All of these sound very yummy and I like that they only produce a couple of jars of each. They’ll be fun to use with different things throughout the year. But if I’m making all these different things, I’m sure to need more than 12 quarts of strawberries! Hopefully the strawberries will last until the end of the week.
If you have any other yummy things you do with strawberries please let me know. I want to stock the pantry with lots of fun, yummy things! Happy picking!