Eating Floyd: Strawberry Feasting Season has Commenced!

The first of the new crop of local strawberries made it's appearance this past week!  It's time to indulge, indulge some more, and preserve the rest for off-season indulging.  I had my first bowl of Strawberry Shortcake after dinner last night.  It tasted like it always does - nostalgic, with memories of Mom making the once a year, terribly bad for us but incredibly yummy dinner of fried potatoes and shortcake, remembering my barely a toddler-aged son sitting between rows of strawberry plants happily stuffing his face while I picked, and my first garnet row of strawberry jam jars gleaming on the counter.

At the same time strawberries are the harbinger of good things to come, a promise that summer's bounty is on its way and the dark days are over.

I  think there's strawberry pie in my future.  Oh! And that looks like ice cream too!

Preservation links after the jump

Preserving Floyd: Strawberries! Part I

High on my Retirement Bucket List is to spend a spring following the strawberry harvest from the moment it begins in Florida until the moment it ends in Maine.  I just love strawberries!

 This week strawberries started showing up at a couple of Floyd's road side stands.  They aren't Floyd county strawberries yet but they are close to home.  Just south of Floyd the Blue Ridge Mountains drop abruptly into North Carolina.  It's a steep escarpment that appears dramatically in sight whether your approach is by air into Roanoke, driving north up Interstate 77, or actually weaving your way up to Floyd from the south on one of the many back roads or Rt 8.  This sudden drop in altitude allows Patrick County, our immediate neighbor just a few miles to the south, to be in a much warmer growing zone.  Thus, they bring many of their fruits to our markets 2-3 weeks ahead of our own Floyd County fruit.

I start preserving (and eating!) strawberries as soon as they show up.  I freeze, dehydrate, jam, and whole preserve in syrup.  This post will cover dehydrating and freezing, the two simplest preservation methods for strawberries.  Strawberry jam, leather, and whole strawberry preserves will have their own posts.