This morning, as he put my coffee down on my bedside table, himself said to me:
“you really want to open the fridge door and inhale deeply”.
Nope, not a kink.. but the fact we have far too many strawberries (or would have if that were possible) and the smell of them lurking in the fridge is heavenly.
Its a sort of ritual for us as a family, the strawberry time, and will continue to be so until such time as we have a decent strawberry patch of our own set up. We go to a pick your own, pick lots and lots, then eat them with cream and sugar, then process the rest. Its a seasonal intense strawberry splurge.
Today I made two batches of strawberry jam. I would post the recipe but really.. go and buy a packet of silver spoon pectin and follow the instructions. Yup – I know, powdered pectin is ‘cheating’, but there is nothing nasty in it.. its only apples.. a by-product of the cider industry I think.. and with something as yum as strawberries.. its the way to go.
Himself made two batches of homemade strawberry ice-cream (recipe to follow once we get our act together) and it is fantastic. Seriously though.. made from fresh strawberries, cream and sugar.. how wrong could it go?
I froze some strawberries in preparation for this year’s batch of strawberry liqueur.
And we still had a load left over. What to do with a load of lovely strawberries, when you also find lurking in the fridge, some egg whites from when you recently made creme brulee? pavlova!
I just find making merangues tricky.. I don’t know what I do wrong.. but luckily himself is a dab hand at it, and made a lovely base last night.. and we ate it today, with our barbecue, absolutely wonderful. Luckily strawberries are an excellent source of vitamin C, and cream Vit A, and egg white is pure protein.. so ah.. almost health food eh? …….
Oooooh – Pavlova – an absolute favourite of mine. Now I’ve got a real urge to make one but it’ll have to wait a few days ’til I’m back from England.
The scent of boiling strawberry jam is one of the most evocative for me. I’ve made one batch – with pectin – but I found the flavour oddly too fresh and not quite “preserved” enough.
So I’ll just have to make some more then. And the apricots are in. Jam frenzy!