Mom's turn: Seeing Red

My HH and I went to the farmer’s market this morning and purchased a million strawberries; I’m not sure what we were thinking except that the smell of the ripe berries must have over taken our senses! Once home I realized I had nothing I needed to do anything with them except freeze them - so my HH ran back to the store to pick up a list of supplies needed for my culinary venture. I started washing & cutting the berries that I wanted to freeze to clear up some space in the kitchen and prepare my area and jars for the jam I wanted to make.I even pulled out my HH prized cutting thing to try and use it…hmmm, not as easy as it looked!After he returned, I got overwhelmed with the processes all culminating at once, so my DD helped.Doesn’t she look excited to be pulled away from her computer to cook on a Saturday afternoon?!?!?!?!

I sent him for ingredients to jam (which didn’t gel…so now I have several jars of some sort of strawberry syrup), strawberry pie (which he picked up a cherry flavored something…so we ended up with strerry or cherberry pie),and strawberry pizza (which I have not attempted yet).

The recipe for the jam said to use vodka and fire…uh, that sounded scary and didn’t work! Next time I will simply stick with the standard heat method to seal the jars. The recipe for the pie said not to cut the berries…so I didn’t. They, however, did not realize we grow FIST SIZED berries (and NO, I am not exaggerating) in Louisiana

MEDIUM sized berry

…so the pie was impossible to cut, hard to eat, and the flavor was not consistent when you bit into the berries! I suppose if I had been a better domestic engineer I would have realized the need to cut the berries anyway.

With all of that said and done – sugar is sugar, so the strawberry syrup and monster-berry pie are edible and I have a freezer full of berries to try something else with when I feel brave enough.