5 Ways to Guarantee You Eat Every Last Berry You Buy This Summer
Put the fruit scraps to good use too
Before we get to the berry-consuming strategies, here’s a berry-procuring tip: Bring a container with you to buy loose berries, transfer them to said container and reduce the amount of plastic coming into your home while protecting delicate berries from being transformed into jam inside your shopping bag.
Oh and another tip… If you can, buy organic strawberries. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), strawberries contain the most pesticide contamination of the 46 common types of produce EWG tests. Cherries rank 10th and blueberries, 11th.
Now that you have your berries, the following ideas will ensure you enjoy every single one of them.
Bake a fruit crumble
You can prepare the topping in advance and store it in the refrigerator for a few days. When you crave crumble, chop the fruit and assemble the dessert in minutes. For the fruit crumble pictured below, I chose strawberries and white and yellow peaches.
I bake these in cast iron pans because they clean up so easily. Use a pie dish or square baking dish if you prefer. Just be sure you can spread the fruit in a shallow layer for greater fruit-to-topping contact.
Go here for the adaptable fruit crumble recipe. (The recipe calls for apples but use whatever fruit you have.)
Brew berry soda
This starter-free strawberry soda is like the one-night stand of fermented drinks—no long-term commitment necessary. To make it, you don’t need to search online for your dream kombucha SCOBY or ask friends if they have any leads on one. You don’t take on the responsibility of regular feedings to keep a living culture alive. You make it, you drink it and you enjoy it while it lasts.
The soda recipe contains only four ingredients: strawberries, sugar, lemon juice and water. Cherries, blueberries or peaches—or a combo—all taste amazing. I was delightfully surprised by how deliciously this drink turned out when I brewed a rhubarb version.
Freeze extra berries
If you bought more berries than you can eat, freeze some as soon as you get them home. Wash, trim and cut large berries in half, spread them across a cookie sheet, freeze them and once frozen, transfer those berries to containers (I use jars) and return them to the freezer.
Freezing this way, you’ll render individual frozen berries rather than a giant clump you’ll need to somehow hack apart. And if you usually buy plastic bags of frozen berries, you can use this trick to avoid at least some of them.
Go here for more on freezing fruit.
Save berry scraps for brewing refreshing fruit scrap soda
As you trim those berries before eating or baking or freezing, save all the bits and scraps to make refreshing and essentially free fruit scrap soda.
You’ll combine fruit scraps—strawberry bits, peach skins, even intact cherry pits—in a jar with sugar and water. The bacteria and yeast present on the fruit will eat the sugars, emit acids and gasses and produce a bubbly, tasty, refreshing and practically free drink.
I make this after amassing at least a cup of fruit scraps. I rarely accumulate enough while prepping in a single day so I freeze what I do render. In the freezer, the bacteria and yeast that ferment this bubbly drink don’t die, they merely take a little nap.
Go here for the full fruit scrap soda recipe.
Bake a galette
This galette (like everything on this list) proves that reducing waste does not lead to an ascetic life of perpetual self-denial.
I love galettes because, well, pastry. But also, you don’t need to trim that pastry—less work and less waste potential. You can fill galettes with whatever you have on hand, sweet or savory. I had intended to bake the galette pictured below the day I bought my berries but couldn’t get around to it for a couple of days. By then, the berries, while still perfectly edible, looked much less perky. Perfect for pastry!
Go here for my daughter MK’s recipe for strawberry blueberry galettes made with semolina pastry.
Upcoming events
June 14th, 7pm PT. Sunnyvale Public Library free virtual cook-along: Homemade pasta with a simple, fresh tomato topping. Go here for more information and to register.
June 22nd, 4pm PT. Kombucha for the Climate, an online donate-what-you-feel workshop. Learn how to brew kombucha in this class and raise money for climate action. Go here to learn more.
brilliant! thank you.