The Courtship of Andrew’s Father

The Courtship of Andrew’s Father

Preserving Strawberries- and not by making preserves! ~mimi b.

Nothing dampens the strawberry spirit more than getting those fragrant green baskets home with visions of jams, fresh tarts and strawberry shortcakes, only to discover vague white tips the next morning that rapidly turn into gushy, red, heart shaped blobs attracting fruit flies on your counter.

While honey may attract more bees than vinegar, it is vinegar that will send those fruit flies packing!  Just wash your berries (it's supposed to work for all berries) in a mixture of 1 part vinegar (I used apple cider) to 10 parts water, then drain very well.

Yes, I know, we've always been told NOT to wash our berries until ready to use to prevent from getting soggy.  But just this once, laugh in the face of conventional wisdom and you will be smiling for over a week at the site of your plump, red beauties!

Let us know how this berry good technique worked for you.

Strawberries aka "Heart-seed berries"

Did you pick up a flat of strawberries at the school Renaissance Festival and now you don't know what you'll do with them? Well after I give you some wonderful facts about them, you might wish you'd bought some more. 

Strawberries are a great source of Vitamin C, folic acid and fiber. Just 8 strawberries provide 160% of the vitamin C you need for a whole day!

So what to do with all of those strawberries that you brought home?  

Here are a couple of ideas:
- On your breakfast cereal, yogurt, or oatmeal
- In your salad
- Strawberry shortcake, on your ice cream
- In pancakes, french toast, waffles, etc.

My husband pulled out and dusted off our juicer.  From 2 pints of strawberries he made a delicious 8 oz glass of nectar. 

OK what about those you won't use right away?

Our school principal told me he's making jam.  Yummy!  But if that sounds too ambitious there are so many reasons to cut off the tops and freeze them.  Throw them into your blender for smoothies, add to strong tea for a fruitier quality,  tons of desert ideas but for the grown ups -- summers coming -- margaritas anyone?  Add them to your champagne or white wine.  

As you may know, our children at Wonderland had a From The Ground Up class all about our little red friend the strawberry.  Here are some fun facts they learned.

• The small "seeds" on the outside of a strawberry are the real fruits.   In fact, each strawberry has about 200 “seeds.”  The red, fleshy part of the strawberry--the part that everyone likes to eat so much--is actually the engorged end of the stem that is called the receptacle.   Therefore true botanists don’t consider strawberries a real “berry” as true berries, such as blueberries and cranberries, have seeds inside.  
• California is the only state in the Union that grows strawberries outdoor all year round. In fact, California is responsible for 80% of America’s strawberry crop.
• Native American Indians called strawberries "heart-seed berries" and pounded them into their traditional corn-meal bread. Discovering the great taste of the Native Americans bread, colonists decided to create their own version, which became an American favorite that we all know and love ... Strawberry Shortcake.
• The English and French also found strawberries used the beautiful heart-shaped berries to landscape their gardens. In fourteenth-century France, Charles V ordered twelve hundred strawberry plants to be grown in the Royal Gardens of the Louvre.