Strawberries

Two years ago we got some strawberry plants from Josh's grandma and transplanted them into our garden. Last year was our first year to get any yield and we got like two or three strawberries a day for a week or so. We expected to maybe get a few more this year and wow did we ever! Every day for at least a week I was bringing in a big bowl full...we had so many we couldn't eat them fast enough. We ended up freezing two bags with some sugar to thaw later and serve over ice cream or pound cake and with the others I made a strawberry pie and two loaves of strawberry bread. I will put the recipes for both of those here. We also have in our garden this year corn, broccoli, cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, squash, lettuce, and white onion. I will post later this summer on how we do with those once they start producing vegetables.

Strawberry Pie

Ingredients:

Filling:

Chopped strawberries

4 tbsp strawberry jelly

4 tbsp cornstarch

Topping:

1 maple and brown sugar oatmeal packet

½ cup sugar

½ cup flour

1 stick butter

1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

Pour filling into 9 inch deep dish pie crust. Top with topping. Bake for 30-45 minutes.

Strawberry Bread

Ingredients

• 2 cups fresh strawberries
• 3 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
• 4 eggs, beaten

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Butter and flour two 9 x 5 inch loaf pans.
2. Slice strawberries, and place in medium-sized bowl. Sprinkle lightly with sugar, and set aside while preparing bread mixture.
3. Combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, salt and baking soda in large bowl: mix well. Blend oil and eggs into strawberries. Add strawberry mixture to flour mixture, blending until dry ingredients are just moistened.  Divide batter into pans.
4. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until tester inserted comes out clean. Let cool in pans on wire rack for 10 minutes. Turn loaves out, and cool completely.