Strawberry Season!

strawberries arranged in shape of canadian flag

Like most seasons, strawberry season happens once a year.  (Thank you, Jon, for pointing out the obvious).  Because of that around our house we feel the need to really cram the strawberries in.  We have them at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  We have them pretty much any time we pass through the kitchen.  At breakfast they are usually on top of whatever we are eating, at lunch as a side, and at dinner they’re often part of a salad.  I even attempted making a naturally carbonated strawberry pop, but rather failed—oh it carbonated all right, but the ale yeast that I used imparted a pretty beery flavor and nobody liked it, not even me.  I’m not deterred, I’ll shall try again, but either with a truly natural fermentation source, like a ginger bug, or with a less flavorful yeast source, like a champagne yeast.

strawberry collage, various pictures of what we've done with the strawberries

We made strawberry rhubarb jam and canned 4 quarts of it (yes, that’s a gallon).  Madame made strawberry sticky buns.  I made strawberry ice cream. We also froze 2 large gallon-size bags of them.  Then we ate some more of them.  And later I think we ate more.  I will probably go eat some after I type this too.

And I guess that just like asparagus season, when this season ends we will feel satisfied as opposed to sad.  Later we will miss the abundance but for the time being we have so stuffed ourselves that we will be happy to move onto the next special, once-a-year fruit or vegetable!

My other favorite food season so far…. Beets!

beet gnocchi IMG_3899 IMG_4532b