Strawberry "H*E*double hockey sticks"

A friend of mine asked a roadside stand guy for the tomatoes he was gonna throw out. He gave her six boxes, which we canned last Friday.

He called her Monday morning with six flats of strawberries he was going to throw out. (For those unfamiliar with “flats,” they’re 12 pounds apiece.) Her husband decided he was done with her canning project, so she brought them all to our house. The strawberries were not going to make it through the night, so bless his heart, John helped me process all those berries. We threw out at least half of it.

Unfortunately, I happened to run across directions on the internet for making apple cider vinegar from apple scraps. It seems the same process would work for the strawberry scraps. So the plan is to rot roughly 35 pounds of strawberries into vinegar. They had quite a head start.

The kids helped me squeeze out the strawberry goop (They were really, really rotten, long past the point of being “scraps.”) so we could get the liquid. Oh my. They saw me squeeze the goop over a strainer into a bowl, and decided to craft their own set ups instead of helping Mommy. They hauled out pots from their play kitchen and used the berry baskets to strain the goop. Then they got out little muffin pans and scooped the juice… Yeah, you’re getting the picture. Red all over the floor, the stove, the cabinets…

So now we have nearly five gallons of juice with a bit of goop sitting quietly under the slop sink in the laundry room, waiting a few months to become vinegar.

Anyone wanna come visit?

--crp