Strawberries, strawberries every where....

Well hello again, so nice to see you visiting our page and checking out all of our yummy delicious recipes! I am pretty excited about this one. It is all things strawberries! And strawberries happens to be one of my FAVORITE fruits ever!!

Can you believe that I have never been strawberry picking as an adult?! The unbelievable horror right?! I am about 90% sure we used to go as kids all the time but I just never get around to it during strawberry season! UGH! I definitely thought this year was going to be my year....I had every intention....I planned for it all year...but alas it didn't happy yet again. :-( We had a few things going on this June (when strawberries are in season in New York). I don't know why it would get in the way or anything. What was that little thing that got in the way and kept me from doing what will one day become one of my favorite things to do each spring/summer???

Oh that's right, we decided to move 1100 miles away from home! So we were busy tossing unnecessary items, cleaning, organizing, packing, eating through our fridge so we didn't have to toss out tons of good food! It really put a damper on our time in the kitchen and that made us pretty sad. I think that is why our storage freezer is currently filled to the brim and we haven't even been here a month yet! (Plus it took us almost 2 weeks to find a pan to sit under our freezer to protect the rug in case it decides to suddenly defrost and get water everywhere!)

Okay enough jibber-jabber....let's get to the point of today's post: what to do with yummy, delicious strawberries!

Remember this picture of all our delicious purchases from the huge farmers market?

See all those strawberries?? Well something needed to be done with all of them because I love them and all but I wouldn't be able to sit there and eat all of them one by one. I think I would turn into a strawberry at that point!

So I started off by prepping them. Stems and bad sections were cut off and then they took a bath to get rid of any dirt or other things I don't want to think about.

I knew I wanted to try a recipe from The Frugal Girl called freezer jam. She made a bunch at the height of strawberry picking season and it sounded delicious! You can find the recipe here. It is great and she leads you through step by step. Here is the finished product of my freezer jam:

Doesn't it look delicious?? I bought some bagels the other day (rare occurrence in this household) but have been loving the toasted bagels with freezer jam as a topper. Today I took it to a new level and put peanut butter on first and then jam.....YUM!

Next I used a recipe that the Doctor found in our "Better Homes and Gardens - New Cook Book" called "Fresh Strawberry Pie." Luckily I was able to find the recipe online so I don't have to type it all out!

First they have you make a Baked Pastry Shell which you can find the recipe here. It is a basic recipe where you follow the ingredients to make the dough but then make sure to look for the extra instructions for the Baked Pastry Shell. Pretty simple recipe.

Then you get into the heart of the matter and make the strawberry filling which you can find the recipe here. I definitely thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was but it totally wasn't hard at all. The best idea I had was to blend the strawberries for the glaze in my knock off "magic bullet" since I don't have a food processor. Super easy!

When the pie is all put together, you pop it in the fridge to cool for about an hour or two and Tah Dah:

A beautiful strawberry pie! And make sure to serve with some great tasting whipped cream!

Even after making the freezer jam and the strawberry pie (which, put together, accounted for at least 14 cups of fresh berries) I still had a bunch of strawberries left over!

So I packaged them up in 1/2 cup servings, threw them into snack bags, and tossed them in the freezer for future breakfast shakes!That's right....14 snack bags full of fresh and delicious strawberries!

Have I mentioned that I love strawberries??

Have you also noticed a trend here? Dr. Bob usually posts about the savory while I take care of the sweets?! That's how we roll in this household.

Well thanks for spending some time with me talking all about strawberries. Stay tuned for next time. I went on an adventure on Wednesday which may lead to my next post. Want a hint? Here you go:

Have a great day everyone and try to stay cool in this terribly hot weather!

Reader Questions:

Do you like strawberries?

What kinds of treats do you make with fresh fruit?