Sweet Summer Strawberries

This weekend, we drove to Triple B Farms to pick strawberries.  If you live in Southwestern Pennsylvania, it is well worth the trip.  They have a strawberry festival, a raspberry festival, and an awesome fall festival along with u-pick fruits, a playground, animals, and an amazing country market.  While this is the end of the strawberry season, we worked hard and managed to pick enough strawberries to make lots of goodies.

For a little under $35, this is what we picked:

And this is what we made:

Strawberry jam, strawberry vanilla fruit roll-ups, strawberry vanilla syrup, dehydrated strawberries, and lots of frozen strawberries for smoothies.   They taste particularly wonderful in the middle of January!

To dehydrate strawberries, I wash and slice them.

 I pop them in the dehydrator for 4-6 hours at 135 degrees.  These are great for snacking, in trail mix, over cereal and oatmeal, and in granola bars.

 

In the coming days, I will post about how to make super simple jam, fruit leather and strawberry syrup!

Have you ever picked your own fruits? What have you created in your kitchen with them?  Please feel free to share your recipes and links!