Strawberries

Last Saturday, we visited the Strawberry Festival here in Plant City. These folks around here are really proud of their strawberries! Not that it's a bad thing, because they certainly are delicious! As we were leaving the Festival I bought us a flat of the prettiest strawberries you ever have seen. Once I got them home and realized just how many strawberries are in a flat, the wheels started turning trying to figure out what I was going to do with all of them before they started going bad.

I found this idea on Pinterest for dried strawberries in the oven. The directions say to dry halved or quartered strawberries for 3 hours at 100C/210F. Well, I had a blonde moment and tried to set the oven at 100 degrees. My oven would only let me turn it down to 170, so I dried them at that temperature for around 3 hours. My dried strawberries didn't turn out as vibrant and plump as the picture from the website makes them look. They were kind of mushy, but still tasted pretty good. Maybe if I try baking them at the right temperature, they might not be so mushy.

Their strawberries...

My strawberries.

I also attempted to make some strawberry jelly. I found Martha Stewart's recipe for Quick Strawberry Jam. It sounded easy enough and I had all the ingredients. I was a little skeptical that it didn't use any pectin or gelling agent, but I thought if Martha Stewart approved then it was good enough for me!


My jelly/jam turned out a little thin. It's more like syrup than jam. Grandma and I had it on some pancakes this morning and it is delicious! It did thicken up some in the refrigerator, but still not quite as thick as jam.

Strawberry jam/syrup on pancakes. Yum, yum!

We have been eating a fair amount of strawberries for breakfast and snacks. I also froze some to use in smoothies after the season is over.