Strawberries from Mercier Orchards; Blue Ridge, GA

We took a long weekend this week. Our three year wedding anniversary is coming up, and my sweetie got a long weekend this week, so we went to North Georgia.

Well, on Saturday night, my wife asked if there was anywhere by where we were to go and pick strawberries. We ended up not going a few weeks ago and opted to go later. Well, courtesy of pickyourown.org, I found out that an orchard (that I had heard great things about their products and bakery - Mercier Orchards) had a pick your own strawberry field! Second plus, it would only take 15 minutes to get there from where we were staying. The weather was pretty bad on Sunday (major downpour followed by sunshine, switching every hour), so we opted to go on Monday on our way out of town. Sigh, they only let you pick your own on Saturday and Sunday!!! I feel cheated.

Anyways, they had 1 gallon buckets for $12 or 2 for $20, so we bought two as this was the same price as the ones available with pick your own closer to home. They had a very nice store that has a large selection of souvenirs, jams and jellies, cider available out of season (as they freeze some when it is fresh).

I'm just going to write about some SUGAR FREE* STRAWBERRY JAM that I made tonight.

*You add no sugar to this recipe, but rather use Splenda. Of course, strawberries have naturally occurring sugar in them, but that is a minor technicality.

Needed:

Strawberries

Splenda

The reduced sugar Sure-Jell Pectin (made by Kraft)

Water

Jars, lids, canner, patience

You start by buying strawberries. Obviously, I bought a bunch from Mercier Orchards.

We bought two buckets of strawberries this size. They are delicious.

Cut the tops off of some berries and wash them.

Prepare to can. Get two pots of water. One is smaller, and you use it to boil the jars in order to sanitize them and the lids. The other is your canning pot. While I use a pressure canner for all my canning, pressure isn't necessary for this recipe (and shouldn't be used with strawberries as far as I can tell from all strawberry canning recipes I have found).

Jars and supplies.

Sure-Jell for a low sugar jam/jelly and Ball Fruit Fresh.

I used some Ball Fruit Fresh (3/4 tsp) when I made this recipe. The lack of sugar turned a triple berry jam (strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries) and a sugar free peach jam that I made last year turn a darker color. While the jam still tastes good, it doesn't look as appealing to the eye. This adds a little Vitamin C to the recipe and doesn't affect the flavor.

So, how to make the jam. You need 3 cups of finely chopped berries. I chopped them with a hand chopper from IKEA ($8) which will work for small amounts of chopping. I hate to use a food processor for these, as it pulverizes the fruit more.

Chopper and the chopped berries. Maybe I spilled a little juice on the counter.

You put the berries, 3/4 cup of water, the 3/4 tsp of the Fruit Fresh (if desired), and the Sure-Jell in a sauce pan and bring it to a rolling boil for 1 minute.

Berries warming up before the one minute boil.

Remove from heat. Add Splenda (either 12 packets or 1/2 cup granulated) and stir.

Put jam into hot jars and put two piece lids on. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. When finished, take jars out and allow to cool overnight. I got 3 8-ounce jars and 4 4-ounce jars from this recipe.

Finished product.

I will post more later about other things I do with these strawberries. They are tasty, and I am sure I will be freezing some. I have started some preserves, which are not sugar free, and I may try some other jams/jellies/ice cream toppings soon. Keep checking back.

Note: The recipe was from the Sure-Jell box and can be found here. Only 5 calories per tablespoon. A sugar free and diet friendly jam. Yum.

Strawberries!!!

It is officially strawberry season in Georgia. We haven't gone to pick our own yet, but when we went to the Dekalb Farmer's Market last night - they had Georgia Strawberries for $6 per half flat (that's 5 pounds of berries). I bought a half flat. We ate some last night, they were good.

Today I experimented in the kitchen with 4 different recipes involving strawberries. I felt like an Iron Chef on Food Network, on Battle Strawberry, but I didn't do it all in an hour.

First, I made another fruit rollup. It is in the dehydrator right now, and I mixed some strawberry banana V8 Splash in with it. I hope it comes out a little sweeter than the last. The Motts no-sugar-added Apple White Grape Juice made the last one too tart for my wife's taste.

Secondly, I have made a lot of different kinds of fresh salsa over the years. I can make a great tomato salsa, a good pineapple one, and I have also made good peach and tomatilla varieties. So - I decided to make a strawberry salsa. I incorporated a serrano pepper, a thai green chili (cayenne) pepper, some purple cayenne pepper I ground up myself last year, cilantro and strawberries. I think it is good, although it is (not surprisingly) quite sweet. But a sweet vs. spicy battle in the condiment makes it quite tasty.

Those were the easy ones. I also made two things that are more complicated - preserves and a cake. The cake looks delicious and is trying my self power. I promised my wife that I wouldn't eat it while she was away at her meeting. We'll take it to a house-warming party this evening.

The recipe is from grouprecipes.com:

1 cup butter

1 3/4 cup sugar

5 egg whites

2 teaspoon strawberry extract

2 cups pureed fresh strawberries

1/2 cup sour cream

3 cups cake flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Grease and flour three 9" cake pans.

In a large mixing bowl,beat sugar and butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until fluffy.

Add strawberry extract,pureed strawberries,and sour cream. Beat until combined.

In a medium mixing bowl,sift together flour,baking powder,soda,and salt.

Gradually add to butter mixture,beating until combined.

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold into batter.

Pour batter evenly into prepared pans.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let cool in pans for 10 minutes then turn out onto wire racks.

Cool completely.

I then made a basic glaze (2 tsp warm milk + 1/2 cup of confectioner's sugar whisked together) and mixed it with about 6 finely chopped strawberries. I baked it in a bundt pan and put the glaze over top. (took a double batch of the glaze for the bundt cake and two mini bundt cakes - and I only made about 2/3 of the recipe!)

I also got adventurous and decided to make some 'Strawberry Margarita Preserves' from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. It tastes good. Of course, strawberries and tequila - who could argue with that?

I won't post that recipe, but it was good. Strawberries and Apples, cooked down and then you add tequila at the end (technically it calls for orange liquor, but we didn't have any, so I subbed tequila for that as well).

That tastes good, especially on a fresh loaf of sourdough bread that my wife made last night.

That's it for now - more to come soon!

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!

Big Updates (It's been a while, sorry!)

Update 1:

I caught a varmint in the basement. It was a small female rat who now lives a mile away in a forest-y creek. She no longer eats my plants. My picture did not come out. However, Little Ms Bandit seems to have had a companion. I had the no-kill trap to hopefully catch them, but alas, he (or she) decided that the rat poison looked good, and ate about 6-8 packs of poison. I am sure Little Ms Bandit's partner in crime (the crime being eating my seedlings) is no longer around, but several traps are set to hopefully catch any more critters who eat my pepper plants, flowers, and tomatoes.

While in the pursuit of Bandit, I put clear plastic around the planters of seedlings, making them small greenhouses. Upside: Bandit didn't eat my sprouting tomatoes. Downside: A little bit of white mold growing on the newspaper pots...

Real upside: A lot of baby plants which will hopefully grow quickly so I can put them outside in the garden in a few weeks. I've brought the largest ones inside to get sunlight in the south-side window and stay away from the critters.

Yay, tomatoes growing... it makes me happy.

Update Number 2.

I've began planting things in the garden. I bought a bunch of red onions and sweet onions to plant (a brown lunch bag full) for $2. They are outlining the major perimeter of the garden, in three rows. I have moved the scallions outside to the garden, and planted some more scallion seeds with the row. I've also planted some carrot seed, radish seed, and flax seed. YUM!

The onions, which I planted a few weeks ago are thriving. I saw one that was starting to sprout out of the ground, and so I went to re-plant it this morning (I may have missed it the first time). The roots were over 3 inches long!

Update 3: Berries!

A colleague of mine moved to Chile last year and gave me raspberry and blackberry plants. He told me to keep them outside in pots/ inside with the grow light until spring. I did, and I planted them outside. The raspberries are doing well. The blackberries aren't far behind.

Also, I planted that strawberry pot I blogged about before with those strawberries I got at Lowes or Home Depot. The berries are all doing well, except for one little plant. It should be ok - strawberries spread a lot.

Oh, right - strawberry pots are difficult to maintain because of multiple holes in the side, and it is so deep that it can be hard to water. The solution is to put a PVC pipe, that you drill a lot of holes into the side of, in the middle, and fill it with rocks. The result is a watering tube to keep the center moist.

Update 4 (Random leftover stuff):

I got compost for the whole garden. It is between 1 and two inches thick and at least the onions love it thus far.

The neighbors trimmed their rosemary. I took some trimmings and dried it, and made some of Urbanbreadmachine's Famous Rosemary Bread, and stuck some of the trimmings in some dirt, and they seem to still be alive.

Lastly, the peas sprouted. They are all growing quickly and starting to cling to the trellises. Yay! (And you can also see the blackberries (left) and raspberries (right) in this photo.

That's all for now. I'll try to post a picture of the onions (and my new design for a tomato cage) tomorrow.

Deal of the Day and A Look at the Garden

I had a busy day yesterday.

I found out that Ace Hardware was having a one-day only sale. Anything you can fit into a bag (that you bring) will be 20% off (minus a few things in small print). Anyways, I went over there and looked through the garden section. One of the things I have been wanting to get (cheaply) for over a year has been a strawberry pot. I was at the neighborhood Ace last summer and saw the strawberry pots there (a. not a lot of places have them, b. they are usually $40ish online, and c. if you buy online, you pay more for shipping) but I kept looking either online or at garage sales, but Ace had the best price because... they buy them semi-local from a guy who makes them in northern Georgia. They ranged in price from $25-$40 there depending on the size. Well, they had one today, originally $26, and so I got if for ~$21 with tax. I guess I should add that I really like the look of the garden when you add color with planters and pots placed in it.

Anyways, I found some strawberry plants when I picked up a new weather strip for our door - 20 plants for a little less than $10 at Home Depot. I'll plant the strawberries in about a month, after the risk of frost has left Georgia. I got ever-berrying plants so we should have strawberries for all of late spring through fall!

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon digging up grass and other junk growing in the garden expansion. I found out that Dekalb County gives free composted organic matter (and mulch) to its residents, from all of those yard waste bags that they pick up. The neighbor and I are planning on going and getting some for my garden and his later this week. They got some for their gardening work, it seems great and would provide an excellent base to grow most anything for this summer.

That dirt that looks more brown is actually hard Georgia clay... in drastic need of the compost and some tilling. Luckily, my wife is awesome and got me a hoe for Valentines Day.

I even took some of the old bricks (there are a lot of them) to make a small flower corner. There are already daffodils growing there, and I will plant some stargazer lilies in there too, once I get that compost.