One of my daughters nicknames we gave her was strawberry while she was still growing in my tummy. I know strange nickname to have for an unborn child but it will all make sense soon. This picture hangs on her bedroom wall....
The top photograph is an ultrasound of my daughter. When I was pregnant with her my husband and I not yet knowing the gender of our baby got tried of calling her an "it" or hearing family call our child an "it". At the time we were trying to find a name to call "it" I read in my baby book that "it" was about the size of a strawberry. I mentioned that to my husband and the nickname "strawberry" stuck. The bottom photograph is some strawberries in an ice cream bucket my daughter and I picked last year from our very small strawberry patch in the backyard.
So before she was born she was "taught" to like strawberries....after all, that was her nickname! Whenever I find a cute outfit with strawberries on it I can't help but get excited and get it for her.
Last fall I found a cute strawberry dress for her at a consignment sale. I paid only $3 for it and it still had the tags on. Score! Shortly after purchasing the dress Driscoll's had an online contest to win a $1,000 scholarship for taking a photograph with their strawberries.
Here is the picture we submitted!
We made it into the finals and it was used to advertise the contest on their Facebook page but she lost to two cute boys holding up a sign that said "We Love Driscolls"..... smart kids!
So when I saw an eleven pound flat of strawberries on sale in an ad at our grocery store this past weekend I was all over it. We paid $11.88 for 11 pounds of strawberries. That is $1.08 a pound....not bad at all. Especially since the cheapest I've paid lately has been $1.88 a pound.
What did we do with all those eleven pounds of strawberries?
1) We packaged eight pounds of the strawberries in quart size freezer zip-top bags to freeze in our deep freeze and enjoy later in homemade muffins, homemade smoothies, and homemade pancakes and waffles. How did we do it? I had my three-year-old toddler help! It took us about 1 hour to go through them all, cut off the top stems, cut off any spoiled spots (there were not very many!), and cut the strawberries in half. My daughter's job was to find large, then medium, than small strawberries and hand them to me. When I was done cutting the stem off the strawberry she would take it and place it in a large bowl until I cut it in half and then placed it into a zip-top baggie.
Here is my daughter showing off a big juicy strawberry before handing it to me to cut up!
And here she is taking a strawberry from me and placing it into the bowl.
The eight pounds of strawberries fit into nine zip-top baggies!
2) While we were cutting up the strawberries to freeze we consumed about one pound of it! Between my daughter, son, husband and myself we just couldn't resist! After we finished cutting them up (it was after dinner) we enjoyed a yummy ice cream sundae with fresh strawberries, banana slices, chocolate syrup, and whipped topping. Yum!
3) I left two pounds of the strawberries in the refrigerator to enjoy with our meals and as a healthy snack option during the week.
Note: Go early in the morning during these sales to find the best selection. We went on Friday night (the 1st day of the sale) and the one's they had out looked awful. They looked like people had gone through and only left the small, bruised, and over-ripened ones. My husband went back around 8am on Saturday to correct mistake on the receipt and found they had restocked the strawberries with nice big and juicy strawberries!
Do you have any good strawberry recipes you'd like to share? I may just need one or two!
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