Strawberries!

If you haven’t heard and haven’t noticed the low price, there’s been a bumper crop of strawberries this year. Strawberry season usually comes a little later but right now the fields are filled with berries! We went out to Alvin, TX this afternoon to take the girls strawberry picking at the Froberg Vegetable and Fruit Farm.
It is about a half hour drive from downtown Houston.
It took much longer than that to get everyone out the door. But once we got there I was surprised at how quickly we filled our buckets. We wound up with about thirteen pounds of berries.
Now the question is what to do with them!

    For my first strawberry project I made a sorbet which needed to set a little longer in the freezer.
Then I set aside three pounds to use for a batch of strawberry wine I’ll try to start tomorrow. Then I made some pastry cream and a graham cracker crust to make a quick tart. I decided it needed chocolate (or perhaps I needed chocolate) so I drizzled some chocolate ganache overtop.
Finally, Sam macerated a couple pints with some port, sugar, black pepper and balsamic vinegar. I had a slice of the tart and a small taste of the sorbet and I’m looking forward to trying the macerated strawberries over a little vanilla ice cream.

    We still have several pounds of strawberries to use up so I may make a charlotte or preserves.