Now wait just a berry pickin' minute

A friend invited me to go pick strawberries on Monday. The morning was overcast and cool, perfect weather for picking berries inside polyethylene tunnels. I picked up my friend at her house and drove to the farm. It's about 35 kilometers away. There weren't many people there (Monday was a holiday) and we had a whole tunnel to ourselves. We picked berries for about 45 minutes.

Fresh berries for shortcake and "fraises au vin rouge" (strawberries in red wine).

After picking, we had our berries weighed and paid for them. I had picked eight kilograms (about 17 lbs.) of berries! It didn't seem like so much when I was picking. And the price was right at €1.50/kg. We're eating fresh berries, of course, but there were so many that I had to process and preserve most of them.

Whole berries frozen on a tray. I didn't take a photo of the coulis.

The first thing I did was to wash and trim the berries. I then picked out some nice berries and froze them whole on a cookie sheet. We'll use them to make jam or something at some point. I also just froze some whole berries in freezer bags. Those, too, will probably end up as jam later. Most of the berries got made into a coulis de fraises, a puree of strawberries, that we'll use later to make frozen yogurt and other desserts. I ended up with five 750 ml containers of coulis, about four quarts worth.