Well, the berries didn't do anything overnight. There was no juice leakage - nothing!! They still are the consistency of leather, so I decided to make strawberry rhubarb jam out of those we didn't freeze. The jam turned out nicely, but thick because of the lack of juice. I've decided to mix the strawberries with other fruits to make jams and other things out of, to hide the lack of taste and juiciness of these pathetic berries. Sigh... I feel like I wasted a lot of time and money with these. There's no good homemade flavor to the strawberry jam - heck it rivals the store stuff. The Strawberry Rhubarb Jam at least has a nice rhubarb flavor to it, so all is not lost, and we really stretched the rhubarb as well.
I hope to find another place with better berries before the season ends.
Showing posts with label strawberries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strawberries. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Strawberry Picking Time!
It has been so very hot and humid here over the last few days, that it was difficult to want to get up this morning and go out to pick strawberries. We decided to leave here at 5:30am to beat the heat. We traveled over 30 miles to get to the berry farm, and we were so looking forward to getting done quickly and back home.
It took us over 2 hours for the three of us to pick 24 quarts of strawberries!! They were already well picked over, and those that were nice and ripe were bug eaten. With three of us picking, it should have been no time to get out of there. When we got home, I started to make jam, but found the berries were unusually hard and not juicy at all. They didn't have the flavor and even after sitting, we ended up with no juice spots. I cut up some berries for tonight's dessert - strawberry shortcake. I sprinkled the berries with sugar to draw the juice and they sat all afternoon. When we pulled them out for dessert, there was NO JUICE!! What is wrong with these berries?!! I've picked and put up berries for years and have never seen anything like these things.
I'll be letting the rest sit until tomorrow. Hopefully they will ripen more and get a bit softer. Right now, they have the feeling of a store bought peach - just plain hard!
It took us over 2 hours for the three of us to pick 24 quarts of strawberries!! They were already well picked over, and those that were nice and ripe were bug eaten. With three of us picking, it should have been no time to get out of there. When we got home, I started to make jam, but found the berries were unusually hard and not juicy at all. They didn't have the flavor and even after sitting, we ended up with no juice spots. I cut up some berries for tonight's dessert - strawberry shortcake. I sprinkled the berries with sugar to draw the juice and they sat all afternoon. When we pulled them out for dessert, there was NO JUICE!! What is wrong with these berries?!! I've picked and put up berries for years and have never seen anything like these things.
I'll be letting the rest sit until tomorrow. Hopefully they will ripen more and get a bit softer. Right now, they have the feeling of a store bought peach - just plain hard!
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