50 Pounds Of Strawberries

Hi everyone!  This is Eva, Jennifer’s daughter and the oldest of eight siblings.  I volunteered to write the Fruitful Friday post today partly because I was an active participant in this week’s topic – preparing and freezing strawberries.

We’ve picked our own strawberries for several years, although there have been a few years when we’ve bought them in bulk when they go on sale.  This year was one such year.  My dad brought home fifty pounds of strawberries and my mom and several of my siblings set to work preparing them for storage.

Instead of canning the strawberries, we freeze them (although we did make and can our own strawberry jam a few years ago).  The first thing we did was take the strawberries out of their containers and dump them in the (clean) sink.  We sprayed water over them and then started quartering them.  My sister, Elisabeth did most of the quartering and we all pitched in (taking turns) to cut the tops off for her.  As the strawberries were quartered, she tossed them in our salad spinner.  Since they were still wet, she would spin them when the bowl got full and they would dry off almost perfectly.  When my mom was given the salad spinner years ago, she thought it wouldn’t be much use – since then we have used it for strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and, of course, lettuce.

After the strawberries are dry, we put them on cookie trays, the boys take them down to our big freezer.  The next day, we take the trays out of the freezer and transfer the fruit to large freezer bags (which are then put in the freezer – obviously).  We’ve stored forty pounds of strawberries this way.  Even after enjoying fresh strawberries almost every day, we still have about half a year’s supply.  Over the months we’ll use the berries in hot cereals, muffins, yogurt and many other things besides.

 So what did you do, health-wise, this week?