One of my biggest problems with eating seasonally and locally is storage space. Take strawberries, for example. They seem to be in season here and available at my Farmers Market for about 3 weeks. Three weeks is such a short window for a berry lover, and the other 49 weeks of the year are so long!
I suppose I could take my wonderful berries and turn them into jam, can them and stack them in the cupboard, but I hate adding a bunch of sugar to already perfectly sweet berries and then processing all the vitamin C out of them in a canner.
I could dehydrate them, but they do seem to lose a little something in the translation. Still, drying is a great method for not adding sugar and keeping the fruit shelf-stable for a few extra weeks.
But by far my favorite thing to do with strawberries is to make food cubes. I used to make portable baby food for my little ones by pureeing leftovers and freezing them in ice cube trays. No more babies in the house, but my ice cube trays still see leftovers!
When we’ve eaten our fill of the week’s berries and there are just a few too-soft ones left, I’ll run them through the juicer and make ice cubes from the juice. Now they are frozen and ready to blend into a smoothie at my convenience.
I do this with all kinds of food from berries (in the juicer if they have seeds, otherwise in the blender) to shredded zucchini!
I have a teensy bit more room in the freezer than in the fridge, and storing cubes in a plastic bag allows them to “squish” a bit so they fit into spaces where nothing else will. I do not like storing food in plastic, but this is my one exception. There is just no more room for jars in my fridge and freezer!
This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by Food Renegade.
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
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June 16, 2010 at 8:25 am
An Ode to Strawberry Kombucha « Local Nourishment
[...] the bag of strawberry cubes caught my eye. Fruit I’d juiced and frozen in a spare ice cube tray was sitting there, cold [...]
June 16, 2010 at 3:56 pm
motherhen68
I’ve been doing this with all sorts of things. When kale & spinach was in season, I steamed bunches of them, pureed them and put them in ice cube trays. Perfect amount of a green smoothie. When I use only half a can of tomato paste, I take the rest and freeze them into the ice cube tray. I do this with chipolte peppers as well.
I just froze my strawberries whole though on a cookie sheet till solid then put them in gallon ziploc bags.
June 17, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Alyss
I like to freeze berries too but my problem is freezer space. With the chicken stock, meat, frozen veggies and tomato products I have in the freezer (and leftovers, sometimes) I run out of room so quickly. Someday I will have my chest freezer, but until then.. ugh. I dehydrate some fruit – I really like dried plums and pears – and actually can a fair amount of fruit. Have you used Pomona’s Universal Pectin? You don’t need to add any sugar to it to get it to gel so you can sweeten it however you see fit. You can use no sugar, or stevia or honey or ten tons of white sugar or splenda if that’s how you roll
And canning berry jams only takes 10 minutes, so it’s not a bad way to store seasonal fruit at all.
June 18, 2010 at 11:11 am
Melodie
That’s a really good idea. I always freeze mine on a cookie sheet and then bag them and use them throughout the year. I invite you to post this on my Vegetarian Foodie Fridays carnival. It’s a perfect addition.
June 18, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Butterpoweredbike
I had exactly the same thought as Alyss. I love Pomona’s. It’s still heat processed, but you can preserve with low, or even no sugar. But frozen cubes are great, too. I vacuum seal mine to keep the air from turning them icky.