Strawberry Preserves

In the last 10 days I have purchased 68 pounds of strawberries.

No, that isn't a typo, I didn't mean to say six to eight, but sixty-eight pounds of strawberries.

They were on sale at WalMart for $1/lb (or pint- it seems that those are rather interchangeable with strawberries). I called my friend with whom I spent all last summer gardening and preserving, and asked if she was interested in getting in on putting some of these goodies up for later.

We spent two days slicing and cooking and I spent a third afternoon, and out of those 68 pounds we got:

7 quart-sized bags of dried strawberries
13 pints of jam
3 fruit roll-up sheets (about 15 inches in diameter)


Our first jar of jam is nearly gone. It was SOOOO yummy. I'm not sure how the ones I made today will work out because I used a different pectin & recipe than the one I used with my friend. The dried strawberries are super yummy, and our daughters have devoured bags of them. Well, they would if we let them! We've ended up hiding the bags so they can't get into them. The fruit leather is really good; sweet but not too much so.

I wanted to freeze some strawberries, but not only is my freezer out of space, but I let the last flat of strawberries sit a little too long and ended up dumping out 1/2 of them. I salvaged as much as I could, but moldy strawberries are just not much good for anything. Sad, but I really did run out of time!

In addition to preserving nearly 70 lbs of strawberries, I also decorated a baby shower cake (which took up all of my Thursday), sewed some diaper change kits for friends who just had babies, killed myself doing a P90-X workout, and wrote and administered an end-of-quarter exam for Seminary (yeah, I know, I'm mean) and a myriad of other activities. It's no wonder I'm tired!

I still have a lot of things on my list to do, one of which is to get ready to go to North Caroline for spring break, and I want to sew a picnic backpack (our old one only had settings for 4, and it has fallen apart!). I still have a few items to purchase and a few bags to seam-rip apart, but I'm excited to have a better and bigger backpack for our many outings I'm planning this summer (beach, bike rides, fruit picking, zoo trips, etc.)

The weather hasn't been too cooperative. It's been C-O-L-D. I'm so ready for Spring to really set in, and I'm hoping it arrives soon. I'm really done with 30-degree weather and snow, even if there is sunshine.

Pictures of the cake coming soon...