Strawberry season is over in these here parts, but I’m still going to talk about them. See, I took pictures and jotted notes for a post on the little lovelies but then time turned tail and ran and when I finally caught up to it, strawberries were done.

But these days I’m kind of frittered in my head, not sure what/how/why to write, so I’m going to toss out this little bit of old news any-old-how, in hopes that it gets my brainy (ha!) juices a-flowin’. Once I get this strawberry load off my chest, I hope I’ll feel freed up to talk about other things, like, um, all my deep dark secrets (shh), or maybe just peas. (Which I picked this morning, after a spat with Mr. Handsome and before my coffee, and after all that I was rewarded with only a few pathetic handfuls of shelled green goodness. I’m feeling dubious about the whole pea-growing endeavor, so tell me, is it crazy to grow peas? Discuss, please.)

In the strawberry patch

Jam
My favorite recipe for strawberry jam is the basic freezer jam recipe, the one that comes in the pectin box.

I, however, buy my Dutch gel (same as sure-jell) in bulk and use ½ cup for each recipe.

This year I kept up my relationship with traditional jam and flirted with danger. My mother gave me two packs of low-sugar stuff to make freezer jam: the recipe called for four cups of mashed berries to 1 ½ cups sugar. The resulting jam was more preserve-like and less sweet (duh), but very delicious. Because it’s softer, it’s a great addition to plain yogurt, stirring in like a dream. (I forget the official name for The Stuff, thus the reason for my weird, hush-hush behavior.)

Freezer jam

Freezing
I employ three methods. All good, all different. Thus the reason there are three of them. See?

1. Crushed: mash up the berries, stir in a bit of sugar (one or two tablespoons per cup), spoon into containers (leaving room for expansion), label, and freeze.

2. Whole: spread topped berries on a rimmed cookie sheet that has been lined with wax paper, freeze for an hour, then dump all the berries into a big bag and return to the freezer. The berries don’t taste that great thawed but are excellent tossed into fruit smoothies in place of ice cubes.

3. Sliced: my favorite way to freeze berries is to top and slice them, pack them into plastic quart-sized containers, and sprinkle a scant quarter cup of sugar over top.

I label the lid “fresa” (Spanish for “strawberry”) because it’s faster to write and because I’m in no mood for making extra strokes by the time I’m packaging up the food.

And that’s it for strawberries. One year I canned some (the resulting berries are gross-looking, only good enough for smoothies, but the juice is spectacular, dark red and clean-tasting), and I usually dry some—a full dehydrator load yields 2 1/2 quarts of dried strawberry slivers, delicious on granola or in baked goodies.

About one year ago: Swiss Chard Rolls.

First off, I apologize to those of you who can’t stand cilantro. This has got to be so hard for you, post after obsessive post touting the glories of such a controversial herb. If you feel like screaming, I understand (not really, but I’ll pretend) and give you permission to move on. I will not hold it against you (though I do feel a little sorry for you since cilantro is so obviously one of God’s more brilliant gifts to the human race).

Anyway, I think I discovered a fine and dandy way to preserve cilantro. Commenter Kris left me a simple recipe involving some of my favorite things (cilantro! lime! olive oil! garlic!), so with nary a hesitation, I set to, quadrupling the recipe (and not even hardly putting a dent in my cilantro crop).

The resulting green sauce was so deliciously tasty that I fought down an urge to guzzle the stuff. (I suppose I could have, but I was on a mission to preserve, preserve, preserve, and once on a mission, I get tunnel vision.) Instead, I blobbed some of the sauce on our suppertime nachos (and then scarfed my serving and snuck bites off my kids’ plates when they weren’t looking) and froze the rest. I thawed one of the cubes to see how well it endured the temperature drop, and while the cilantro was a little more mild, it was still plenty good, bolstered as it was by the lime and garlic.

I’m not sure what to call this mixture. It’s not exactly a pesto since there are no nuts or cheese. It could be a pistou, which is mostly is the same thing as pesto but minus the nuts (and with the cheese being optional), but I’m not French and don’t know how to pronounce pistou, nor do I care to look it up and figure it out. I want an easy, no-fuss name. Paste? Pulp? Spread? Concentrate? Shucks, nothing is jumping out at me, so I’ll be boring and just call it…

Saucy Cilantro

Kris suggests using this sauce more as a condiment than as an ingredient in hot dishes. Use it to top quesadillas, enchiladas, chicken, fish, etc. Mix it with some sour cream to dollop atop bean soups. I highly recommend using it to anoint nachos (and then, if you’re in theme mode, eat them while watching Nacho Libre). Add it to salad dressings: I mixed a thawed cube into the dressing for an Asian salad, and it added a gentle zip.

4 cups cilantro leaves and small stems, rinsed
5 cloves garlic, sliced
½ serrano pepper, seeded and sliced
½ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
3-4 tablespoons lime juice

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor and pulse until well-blended. Spoon the sauce into ice cube trays and freeze. Pop the frozen cubes of cilantro out of the trays and transfer them to glass jars. Label the jars and return to the freezer.

Yield: an ample pint of cubes.

About one year ago: Buttered Peas and Brown Buttered Noodles with Ham

I have a very large crop of cilantro this year and am trying to figure out the best way to preserve it. Will you help me, please?

I’ve already tried one method: blending the cilantro with olive oil and freezing it in ice cube trays, like this:

1. Remove the tough stems and rinse the leaves.

2. Stuff the cilantro in the blender.

3. Drizzle olive oil on top.

4. Blend, adding more oil as needed.

5. Divide the cilantro pulp in an ice cube tray.

6. Freeze.

7. Dump out the cubes, pack them into a glass jar, and store them in the freezer.

The only problem with this method is that the resulting cilantro tastes so mild. I added one cube to a small pot of black beans for supper last night (and who showed up at my door but my parents—oh, the irony!) but the taste was so inconsequential that I (or my parents) hardly even knew it was in there.

My sister-in-law says she just freezes the uncooked cilantro on a tray and then transfers it to a jar, pulling out a few sprigs when she needs a little, but she said that while it preserves nicely, it looses a lot of its potency.

So, do any of you have any cilantro preserving tricks? Is there a way to keep cilantro and its flavor?

In the meantime, I’m searching for more cilantro-heavy recipes. In my repertoire so far:

Peanut Noodles
Fresh Tomatillo Salsa
Curried Lentils

It’s a pretty pathetic list. Any other suggestions?

About one year ago: Stirring the pot, a homeschooling mother’s (that would be me!) tirade.