Over the past couple weeks, Pam and I have been obsessively checking the website for
Remlinger Farms out in Carnation (east of Sammamish), waiting for one announcement: the start of strawberry U-pick!! Finally, this past week, we got our wish, so we headed out to the farm to get our share of the strawberries!
We got there and discovered that the strawberries were going for $1.50/pound, which works out to a little over $1 per pint, which is fantastic considering a pint will cost you $4 at most farmers markets, plus the fresh picked berries are just that much better! So, needless to say, we decided to stock up.
When all was said and done and we weighed in, we had picked nearly 13 pounds of strawberries! BOO-YAH! We had some big plans for these strawberries too, so we headed home to start enacting those plans.
First step was to wash and hull all of the strawberries. That took a while. We immediately froze one big gallon bag of strawberries (to go with another we’d gotten in the freezer the week before), to be used throughout the year for smoothies and waffle toppings and things like that.
The next project was one that we were very excited about; making jam! There’s just nothing quite like homemade strawberry preserves, so we knew we had to make some. In keeping with our local commitment, however, we didn’t want to use things like added pectin or sugar. The sugar was easy to substitute with honey, and after a little more research I found out something pretty cool. The pectin is basically to help the jam set up properly, and it is naturally occurring in some fruits. Strawberries, when ripe, are very low in pectin, which is why people generally add it in. However, thanks to
this blog, I found out that unripe strawberries that have some green left on the tip actually are higher in pectin, and a handful of them in your preserves mixture is enough to help it set up properly! Yay!
Strawberry Preserves
4 cups sliced strawberries (including a handful of unripe berries)
1-1½ cups honey
Mash berries to desired consistency (some people like more berry chunks, some less), add in the honey. Heat on the stove to a boil, stirring constantly, and boil for 10-15 minutes til thickened. Remove from heat, let cool, then can or freeze for future use!
Since freezing is easier than canning, that’s what we opted with, but I’d like to can some in the future, because then you don’t need to use up freezer space. Here are some step-by-step pictures of the process:
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| Sliced strawberries, ready to mash |
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| Mashed up, with the honey mixed in |
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| Boiling away! |
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| Into the fridge to cool |
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| YUMMY!! It turned out super well, way to go us! |
So yeah, the jam turned out really well, and we plan to make more! Not only is it super delicious, but the bottom line is pretty awesome - compared to the cheapest local jam (typically at least $6 for a 16-oz jar) our jam cost only $0.14/ounce, or $2.27 per 16-ounces! About 1/3 of the price we'd pay at the store - Win!
Another fun project was making strawberry vinaigrette, which turned out absolutely delicious. I adapted the recipe from
this website:
1 cup sliced strawberries
⅓ cup olive oil
⅓ cup balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp honey
½ tsp thyme
½ tsp lemongrass
salt and pepper
Finely chop herbs, place all ingredients in blender/food processor and blend until well mixed and smooth.
The thyme and lemongrass came from our herb garden, and the result was a delicious vinaigrette for a salad we took to my aunt and uncles for 4th of July!
Lastly, who could resist making a strawberry rhubarb pie?? Certainly not Pam!! Yummy! We’ve still got a few berries left for munching as well, so all in all, a very successful harvest! I encourage everyone to go pick some strawberries now while they’re in season, you’ll never find them juicier or cheaper!
