Sunday, May 16, 2010

Strawberry Madness

I've always loved strawberries. When I was little my dad planted a strawberry patch in our garden just for me.  It is strawberry season around here, so a friend and I went a pickin this week. We headed out to Critzers Family Farm in Afton. It was a great day for picking because it was cool and misty, always better than hot and buggy. When you're picking with a friend the time can really fly because you're picking and talking and next thing you know you've filled two flats of strawberries!
I came right home to start canning. It's a really rewarding process once you've done it a couple of times. I was a bit ambitious and got through three batches. Those three batches only used up one flat of strawberries!
I made regular strawberry jam, strawberry balsamic jam and strawberry sauce. I ended up with 18 jars.
Now what to do with the rest.....
Well I gave some bowls away to neighbors, then I made strawberry ice cream and went looking for some more fresh rhubarb. I made a strawberry rhubard pie last week and the family loved it and wanted another one.

We were so indulgent we had strawberry rhubard pie with strawberry icecream topped with strawberry sauce. I highly reccomend buying up some local rhubarb and making a pie or a crumble. The tart and the sweet together is incredible.
I love the unusual ones. Get pickin!

3 comments:

  1. I have been looking for a good strawberry jam recipe, where did you get yours?

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  2. You can start by trying the recipe that comes in the box of pectin. There are also some nice detailed recipes and instructions on the internet. Just google around. Once I knew I wanted to can a lot I bought a wonderful book, Complete Book of Home Preserving, which has a great variety of recipes. The library has some books on canning too.

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  3. Great, I should get canning before the strawberries are gone. Thank you Scott!

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