Winter Foliage

We've been eating our way through the strawberries from this post. It's been a funny year for strawberries in Central PA, the early hot spell, following by days of rain and cooler weather have caused some farms in our area to not even open for a you-pick seasons, others have opened with a short couple of weeks of picking. We were lucky to get in early, pick our share, and feast on them ever since.

Many berries were sliced and frozen ~ those we're nibbling straight from the freezer and blending in smoothies.

A few handfuls were sprinkled with sugar and frozen with their sweet juice ~ those will be thawed in the heat of summer for strawberry shortcakes.

Then there were the strawberries that were mixed with rhubarb for pie::

Weeks later and I'm still thinking about that pie. It was enjoyed as a dessert on the first evening, and then eaten with yogurt for breakfast the rest of the week! I followed this recipe, but added a bit of flax seed to the crumb crust ~ they add a bit of nutty flavor and a good dose of omega-3s. A healthy breakfast, no?

A whole pile of berries went into Nigella Lawson's strawberry ice cream. You can find the recipe by clicking on that link, and it's published in Forever Summer. I highly recommend the cookbook ~ it's couldn't be more perfect, being full of all sorts of dishes and drinks to inspire your summer eating.





But back to the ice cream, it's make using a custard base that's cooked on the stove top. It takes a bit more time and energy than some of the quicker, more basic ice cream recipes, but when you have strawberries this sweet and fresh, I think they are worthy of your effort!

And finally, we made some mighty fine strawberry sauce. Our intention was to make a small batch of this strawberry vanilla jam, but we didn't cook quite it long enough to reach the jell stage.

Unfortunate? Just for our hips, because we've been eating this sauce at a faster rate than we would have any jar of jam. The sauce has gone into morning cups of yogurt {as pictured}, it's gone on the strawberry ice cream {with some fluff and nutella if you're C}, and it's been added to seltzer water and Rhuby for a fine summer drink.

As strawberry season comes to an end, we're dreaming up recipes for the green huckleberries along our hiking route as we wait for them to ripen.