Monday, June 20, 2011

A Year of Strawberries

If I buy strawberries in the middle of winter, the berries taste horrible.  So does everything else that travels over 1,000 miles to the local grocery store.  I don't understand how our culture got to the point of transporting food from so far away, when that same food product can be grown in our backyards.

Goal: Eat food when in season.


Purchasing or eating food when it is in season might seem like a difficult task.  But people ate seasonal food for many years and lived without having to eat cardboard strawberries in winter.  How did people eat during winters?  They preserved their food!  I think food preservation is so important nowaday because it is one step closer to self sufficiency and sustainability.

Last year was our first year of canning strawberry jam...our first year of canning anything for that matter.  We just finished off our last jar of jam.  But we aren't too sad because our local U-Pick strawberry farm just opened yesterday!  And now we get to start the whole process over again.  Canning, freezing, and dehydrating- it makes a messy kitchen, but the results are delicious!

-M

3 comments:

  1. Oh, you're so right about the strawberries tasting like cardboard (and some of the grocery store ones are so freakishly huge, I wonder what they are fertilized with?) Nothing can compare to fresh off the vine.

    I enjoyed reading your last few posts, too, the CSA sounds wonderful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I too canned strawberry jam this weekend. In the middle of winter nothing beats something that you have canned or froze yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I won't eat strawberries unless they are fresh picked. The same with tomatoes. I love tomatoes fresh out of the garden. I will even slice them up and sprinkle salt and pepper on them and eat them. I will not eat a tomato from the store. The have no taste to them and are basically green. That is why I can, freeze, and dehydrate from June until October. My pantry is starting to get low too. But by the time it will be empty I will be filling it back up again!!!

    ReplyDelete