Strawberry Fields Forever

I’m a Poteet Strawberry!

• Image used by permission By Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42704952

I was born near a little rural town in South Texas called Poteet. Every spring there is a Strawberry Festival with floats, bands, and beauty queens. When I was a kid the parade wasn’t so grand, and it didn’t go very far. There were booths around the town square, a fiddle contest, sack races, and many farm wives selling strawberry shortcake. It was the highlight of springtime. Poteet was known as the Strawberry Capital of the World back then. Things have changed, not the least of which is Poteet is now known as the Strawberry Capital of Texas. (which to some is the world!)

I was grocery shopping the other day and I discovered that Costco was selling huge packs of strawberries for $4.00 each. I picked up several and checked the bottom of the packages. (that’s where you can see if any of the berries are overripe) They were beautiful, not a single berry even beginning to go bad.

I put a package in my cart and moved on to the onions, and other produce in the special “chilled” room where Costco stocks their very perishable produce. That place is COLD!

I got home a couple hours later, and after putting away my groceries I still had that package of strawberries sitting on the counter. “Now what will I do with these berries” I wondered to myself.

First thing, first. I pulled out my grapefruit spoon and proceeded to hull the berries.

The grapefruit spoon has a serrated tip, (like the one in the picture) that is perfect for cutting down the segments of grapefruit. It’s also perfect for hulling strawberries. It removes the leaves, the core and the stem, and leaves most of the berry intact. Some folks like to simply cut off the top of the berry, but I think that wastes too much berry flesh, so I just hull them carefully after washing them.

Next I decided to divide the batch in half. One half would be for strawberry shortcake. The other half would be for dehydrating.

The shortcake berries only required rough chopping, a little sugar to sweat the juice, and chilling in the fridge until time to enjoy them. Easy Peasy.

The dehydrating half required more work. First the berries had to be sliced in approximately equal thickness. Then they should be sweated a bit like the other batch. I left both in the fridge overnight.

The next morning I took the sliced berries from the fridge and poured the juice into a measuring cup. There was just over two cups of juice/syrup. Next I placed the slices in the dehydrator.

I set the timer for 5 hours and the temp for 135 degrees fairenheight. I shut the door and started breakfast.

Five hours later the berries were almost half dried. I turned the trays around, slid them back into the dehydrator and reset the timer for another 3 hours.

When I checked on the berries next, they were perfectly dry.

I loaded the berries into a “Food Saver" resealable bag and vacuum packed them. They are now in my pantry, sitting in a box that is labeled “dried fruit” waiting for inspiration to hit me.

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Kate, the Busy Boomer