Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Hello Jello!

So I'm back in Ottawa again. Its hot out, I'm slightly sunburned on one arm from driving around in the car, and once again I'm stuck in the realm of having loads of research to do, and even more entertaining distractions to keep me from doing that work...

like this:
individually frozen strawberries, which I cleaned and froze on cookie sheets earlier today... just perfect for use as ice-cubes, or when you only want a few berries, and not the whole bag of rock-solid strawberry mush. :) (this is what happens when I forget to bring a book to the cottage and end up reading back issues of Martha Stewart Living!)

my other, not-so-fun distraction of the day was the demise of the clothes dryer... which means I've had to hang all my laundry outside on the clothesline, after first scrubbing the darn thing clean (the line hadn't been used in over a year, and the last thing I want are dirty grey marks on my clean white clothes!). Admittedly, this isn't such a bad thing - especially since its almost 30 degrees out - but its just another headache we now have to deal with (I'm just glad we're still renting, so we won't have to pay for this repair!).

blah. i guess I should go hang out another load of laundry... catch ya later!

ETA: I just remembered why outdoor clothes lines aren't really all that popular in Ottawa, despite the great summer weather we get here: hot summer days (like today) frequently end in warm summer thunderstorms in the late afternoons, which means you end up drying your rain-soaked clothes in the damp basement instead of outside! (the storm clouds are building as we speak, so my laundry is now hiding out in the basement. blah).

6 comments:

PURLPOWER said...

I didn't get chance to say 'ta ra' Glenda and 'have a great summer' so sending you much love and also thanks for the strawberry tip because I had always thought it was not possible to freeze them and now I see that it is. Have a great time.

Lucy said...

Glad you got home safely. Same thing happened with my washing on Monday- very annoying.
Have a lovely summer, don't work too hard.
xx

David T. Macknet said...

When you froze the strawberries, did you just put them straight into the freezer? I've seen Alton Brown do it with dry ice after refrigerating them, claiming that the faster you freeze them, the less you break down the berries, so they won't turn to mush if you freeze them that way.

At least you can use a clothesline. We're in California, but the neighborhood association has decreed that clotheslines are unsightly. Bah. Drying indoors on a rack just isn't the same.

Glenda said...

Freezing the strawberries does break them down a bit, so they'll never be as good as fresh ones in terms of consistency, etc. But if you're only going to use them in baking, or smoothies, or daquiris :), etc., slightly mushy strawberries isn't such a big deal.

I just hate it when you only need like 1 cup of berries for muffins or something, but you end up having to thaw out a few pints of strawberries in order to be able to extract the bit you need. This is also a cheaper alternative to those bags of professionally, probably dry frozen berries that you get at the store for $6/300g.

Glenda said...

and yes, I did just put them straight into the freezer, after first hulling them and cutting off the gross bits (the berries were a few days old and had spent that time sitting on the counter at the cottage).

I run them under water when I hull/clean them, so my way is probably not so good for preserving the consistency of the berry... but like I said before, I'm only planning to use these for their flavour, not their texture.

David T. Macknet said...

I was just wondering if you'd gone the obsessive route or the normal person route. I've never been that concerned with their texture either, but was just wondering, since they were so nicely laid out. ;)