Strawberries!

The other day my husband and I spotted strawberries on sale for $.75/lb. Around here I never see strawberries for less than $3/lb. but $5/lb. is probably typical. Thrilled, my husband loaded up four flats of strawberries that came to 32 lbs.

Our kitchen table à la strawberries.

As my awesome husband did most of the washing, sorting, and leaf-cutting-offing, I bandied about doing random things with strawberries. I sliced and dried as many as would fit in our dehydrator:

Yum. Mr. D loves this.

This resulted in a jar of strawberry candy. It tastes just like strawberry fruit snacks, which brings me to a point about sweet fruits: They are not vegetables. When I say that most fruits are desserts, I am not exaggerating. I mean that they are on a line with my homemade ice cream - somewhat nutritious but with a non-negligible amount of sugar.

Yes, there are vitamins, minerals, enzymes, soluble fiber, and other good things in fruits. There is also a truckload of fructose. Humans have been breeding fruits to be super-sweet for a very long time; paleo fruit was more like crabapples than red delicious apples.

Obviously we still eat fruit, so do not take me as being anti-fruit. It's just that we should moderate our intake of it, not pile on tons of fruit in a vain effort to improve our health. We probably eat about five servings of fruit per week apiece. I typically eat mine in smoothie form.

This 20-quart stockpot was overflowing with berries! 

I got some great ideas from this old post from Simple Bites. I froze four quart jars of strawberries in simple syrup, flavoring one with vanilla beans and another with my homemade lime peel extract.

Most of the rest I flash froze. I had visions of canning pie filling and jam, until I realized that 1) we have a half-eaten, year-old jar of strawberry jam in the refrigerator, so it's not as if we are jam eaters, and 2) we can just make pie with previously frozen berries and then I do not have to decide now how many pies we are likely to eat this year.

Oh, and I used to be confused when I heard talk of flash freezing. It sounded like freezing something really fast but I could never think of how that was accomplished. As it turns out, flash freezing means first freezing the items individually until the outside is frozen enough that they will not stick together. Then it is time to put them all in a container in the freezer to finish freezing. This way your strawberries, for instance, do not freeze into one giant ice brick of strawberries that requires thawing all of them when you want to use a few. Once flash frozen, you should be able to take out as many or as little as you like and leave the rest in the freezer.

Our huge freezer with things like bones, stock, and flour in it.

Finally, one of our two cats found that she likes strawberries for another reason. Cute little Matilda has claimed herself a spot:

Do you have as much fun with incredible deals on food as I do? What are your favorite ways to eat strawberries?

This post is part of Pennywise Platter and Hearth and Soul Blog Hop.