Regional Strawberries

Local is great, followed closely by regional. For (Atlanta,) Georgia, regional (instead of local), could mean Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina or Florida. Areas that are somewhat close, but not an hour away.

There was an unusual end to the winter. A late cold snap this year ended up hurting the Florida strawberry crops, delaying them a little while. This was devastating to some Florida farmers, causing the price to harvest the crops to be higher than the resale value! Indeed, one farm opened up for a free pick-your-own day. I wish it was closer.

Publix partnered with some farmers to keep them from tilling the crops over and as a result had a HUGE sale on Florida (regional) strawberries this week. A 32 ounce container was only $2.50. Yes, you read that right. We're planning on going to a strawberry farm (maybe next weekend? - stay tuned) and so we bought a package, with the intention of seeing what we could do with the dehydrator and some strawberries.

Here's my new dehydrator - I bought it on craigslist for $20 about a month ago. Apparently the woman wanted to make freeze dried fruit, and didn't realize this didn't do that... excellent, I win. My old one got fried in an electrical problem at our house last year.

So, here's the two things I did today with my new little toy.

1. You can slice them, keep them in the dehydrator for a while, and once the water is gone, you have a delicious snack. Keep them in a glass jar (they keep better).

Yum - and there's a few more that need a little more time. I'm positive that we'll want more of these after we go strawberry pickin in a week or so.

2. I tried to make fruit rollups! I couldn't get the shapes, like in the ones we had when I was a kid, to work out though. I used a food processor to puree some berries, and then I added some Mott's Apple White Grape Juice (like 3 cap-fulls) to about 15 berries. You pour the mixture on the fruit rollup try (I have 3) and run it for a while...

The mixture peels off and you eat some and put some in a ziploc bag for later...

It's not as pretty as the pre-packaged stuff and it won't last as long. I like it- my wife thinks I need to use the juice that isn't low in sugar next time (maybe it is a little bitter), but it is good. And voila, there's a nice snack for me at work. Yum...

And by the way, not only is strawberry pickin comin up... my strawberry plants in my pot are starting to bloom and look like they will make some fruit, so keep watchin for when I make strawberry jam, freeze some berries, and figure out a good smoothie recipe, and maybe a strawberry pie!