I like strawberries. They’re not my favorite fruit of all time (that would be a battle between mangoes and pineapples), but I do enjoy them and love that I can go to a local farm and pick my own.

But that leaves me with a must-pick-one-more-strawberry complex and I can’t walk out of the strawberry field without a flat of them. Normal folks go and pick a cute little pint or two to take home and enjoy over their oatmeal, or whatever it is that normal folks do with their strawberries. Anybody know?

Perhaps offended, or enticed, by our greedy little strawberry stained hands the Guineas decided it was appropriate tobeg for strawberries as we left the field.

Bless their little feathers they LOVED the strawberries and followed us for some ways down the path before realizing we had a strict 3-strawberries-for-the-guineas rule.

I chuckled when my friend asked, “What are you going to do with that many strawberries?” Heh. Errr. Umm. “Definitely some kind of jam,” was all I could come up with.

After dinner last night I pulled up Under the Tuscan Gun’s recipe for Italian shortcake and impatiently waited for the puff pastry to defrost on the kitchen counter. I didn’t bother rolling it out or carefully cutting it into rounds, instead I used a pizza cutter and sliced it into thirds per fold and tossed them in the oven. The assembled shortcakes were glorious – stacked tall and so pretty with the red berries and green basil. Alas I was in such a hurry to taste them I didn’t snap a picture. You can imagine them can’t you? Tall as a Scooby Doo sandwich, smartly standing there with the chocolate shavings and the berry juices drizzled on the plate. I’ll try next time!

Then I made jam while working from home on this rainy, cold Saturday. I was inspired by the simplicity of the strawberry jam I did last year that involved zero pectin and no chopping. Glorious! This year I used Canning for a New Generation’s recipe and it was perfect. The skimmed foam made it’s way onto an English muffin and was the perfect companion to a rainy day tea.

Then I chopped some strawberries into bite sized pieces, tossed them into a half pint jar I sterilized “just in case” from the jam I put up earlier, and slogged some bourbon over it to the top off the jar. I will make Strawberry-Mint Juleps with it next weekend.

Still unsatisfied with how many berries I had leftover I turned to making Strawberry Cake. Somehow I will not eat this cake before 2pm tomorrow when I take it over to a girlfriend’s to bottle wine. How on earth am I going to stay away from this gorgeous cake until tomorrow?? Maybe I’ll make shortcakes again tonight…