The fruit-and-vegetable store I patronize often has incredible sales on overstocked items—although I’m not sure how one gets a glut of something like strawberries. Yesterday I made a Big Score: I bought 8 pounds of those delectable berries—all in excellent condition—for a pittance. See below.
These cost all of $1.98 (1.46 Euro). That’s right: less than two bucks for all 8 boxes.
Naturally I can’t eat them all at once, so I’ve hulled them and frozen most of them whole with a light dusting of sugar. It’s the last gasp of summer.
Wow what a deal. Smoothies for 6months. Strawberry shortcake, strawberry sundae, preserves. Yum.
Incredible deal!! We had very disappointing strawberries this year, but fantastic peaches, so did a big freezeroo of them last week.
Strawberries freeze well too! I think of all the fruits, it’s peaches I’ll miss the most as we head into the deep, dark winger months. I wish I lived where fruit was froh and abundant all year!
Make that “winter” not “winger”
Not quite as good a catch, ratio-wise, but I just picked up a pair of these exquisite B&W 601 Se speakers for $75! Here’s a representative picture:
http://www.audioconsultants.com/ProductImages/BW601S3naked.jpg
Wow. That is a steal. B&W speakers are, in my opinion, the best. I have a pair of DM640s that I bought about 20 years or so ago, along with a pair of B&K monoblocs and a B&K preamp to feed them. I really wanted a pair of 801 series but couldn’t quite convinve myself to spring for them.
They sound as good as ever and still amaze people who hear them for the first time. I’d have to rank them as one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
Maybe they’re hot.
Okay, so could your produce store be persuaded to open a branch in northern NJ, pretty please?
My strawberry plants are still producing, and I’m about as far north as you can get in NJ.
Get yourself a pyramid planter and you can get a ridiculous number of them into a small area. They laugh at frost.
Hmmm, I may do this next season. There are lots of tiny wild strawberries here that I mostly leave for the animals.
That could make a lot of strawberry shortcake.Hate when my store has them buy 1 get one free,but the price is 4.99 for one.I go somewhere where else or get peaches.
Gee, and I was happy to find big, ripe peaches for $0.89/lb yesterday. And a couple of days ago watermelon for 0.25/lb. Oh, well I still got decent deals on excellent fruit.
Some middleman lost money on Jerry’s purchase, I’m thinking. Can’t have been otherwise.
Fresh strawberry pie!
I used to go just crazy over it when I was a kid. If I was lucky I would get to eat a piece when we went to visit relatives in Tennessee, where they would serve it at the Shony’s Big Boy. My mom would also make it once in a while.
But this summer as you note there has been a glut of strawberries, and I saw they sell the glazing for a couple bucks right next to the berries, and also you can get frozen pie crusts, and so it takes all of about 15 minutes to have a fresh strawberry pie completed. You can get the berries ready to go in the crust and whip some cream while the crust is cooking, and then you just pile in the berries and glazing.
Next year I’m going to try to make my own glazing so I can reduce the sugar to minimum.
Bring agave nectar and a nice Riesling to a gentle simmer with a whole vanilla bean (split, scraped). Reduce until you reach the consistancy you want. Remove the bean husk, cool, then mix with the strawberries.
Works good for poaching fruit also, then reducing for use as a glaze or sauce.
Strawberry Rhubarb pie. Rhubarb is very easy to grow into gigantic plants, but they need to be mixed with another fruit; they are too bitter to go it alone in my opinion. But they add a wonderful consistency to a pie and go well with strawberries.
Strawberries have more insecticide than fruit. Wash ’em good.
I heard once that strawberries don’t freeze well, they come out still perfectly tasty and edible but the skin is wrecked by surface water freezing and then re-thawing. Anyone know if this is right?
Anyway, nice catch. Strawberries are just wonderful. I like them whole the best, not made into anything.
Frozen ones are fine if you’re going to cook or puree them, or anything else that doesn’t require fresh-looking fruit. Freezing does make them soft.
It’s been years since I’ve found strawberries in the store that were small, tender, and ripe enough to eat fresh. The ones I’ve had are inexpensive but large, tough, and inclined to be either underripe or rotting. They’re fine when cooked but require more sugar than I’m used to eating, so I don’t get them very often.
I prefer blackberries. A gigantic cultivated variety, developed in Oregon but grown in Mexico, has recently become available here, and they’re very good.
You bought them late on a Sunday, right?
Fresh strawberries are probably an item that will move shortly before the weekend + Saturday, but after that they’ll take 10cts on the dollar or else wind up dumping them since they have such a short shelf life.
I’m surprised they’re from the US at this time of year, tho.
They look so good!
Australian strawberries tend to be tasteless and sour (like most of its fruit produce – dead soil out here) and can generally cost anything up to $4 or so for a 250g punnet (including the ‘hairy’ ones)…unless there’s been a glut of them, then the major supermarkets go into price wars (and still include the ‘hairy’ ones).
I only buy organic strawberries. Two reasons:
1. I do not like chemical poisons in my food.
2. By supporting organic foods and farms, I am growing the organic food supply system.
Strawberries that are not grown by organic methods contain a large number of pesticides that are hazardous to humans and to land. Do not give strawberries and other berries to children and infants, unless they are organic!
Best approach is to grow your own or else support a local organic farm and farmers.
Poland stories and pictures were very fine.
Keep up the good work!
Best,
John
Not everyone is lucky enough to live near local organic farmers. I’d much rather buy local conventional than imported organic (and the organic we do have access to around here is typically imported from large corporate farms).
Whether you’re right or not, it seems kind of funny to comment on a post from a man excited about the great deal he just got on some great strawberries by telling him his strawberries are full of pesticides and you wouldn’t buy them.
Being as we are on a science website, I have to ask; Do you have a source for your assertion?
Spoil them with sugar?! Actually I find modern strawberries too big & often tasteless. I prefer raspberries.
Come try the Norwegian ones in June. They are slowly ripened conferring a much deeper red color and sweeter flavor. The trick is in low levels of light for an extended period of time.
Strawberries & summer sounds like such a strange combination to me. Way down here in southern Louisiana, our Ponchatoula strawberries start appearing at the farmer’s market in early February!
Who gives a flying %$#*! What does this tell us about evolution!
Indeed, you’re right, but this website isn’t just about evolution. Or hadn’t you noticed.
I invite you (indeed, mandate) that you go to other websites if you want to read only about evolution.
Bye, Darling…