Strawberry Season

I think I've mentioned it here before, but the reason why I love photography and preserving food is that they both stop time. And I can't resist the two together. Some say that lifestyle photography is too stock, too fake. In some ways yes: my life isn't always a juicy tableau of strawberries and vintage tablecloths. But you know, some times it is. And that makes me happy.

Strawberries are a big part of my life right now. My own strawberry patch ripened so long ago! It's been finished for two weeks. But we have at least another good week to ten days of a great strawberry season here in the Hudson Valley, if the weather continues to stay cool. Of course, you might not mind saying goodbye because then there's blueberries and stone fruit on the horizon.

So, how to attack all those pounds of strawberries you picked? Well, so much of it is easily eaten out of hand. And then there's some for the freezer for smoothies and cold winter days. But then there's jam. I've been making quite a bit of it. And that means hulling a good deal of strawberries. Kaela from Local Kitchen swears by her strawberry huller: check it out in the top image of her recent excellent canning tips post. You can even see my comment asking about the huller!

So, that compelled me to make a little video today showing how I hull my strawberries. It's this little tool above, that I love so. I talked about it in my quince video. It's very handy. I call it the mini melon baller, cause isn't that sort of ridiculous to say? Melon ballers come in all sorts of sizes, and some of them are sharp! The Kitchn did a piece on melon ballers while ago.  

So, by the way, I wasn't trying to hide my eyes so no one could recognize me hulling these innocent strawberries. Somehow, in exporting my video to YouTube it cropped the top of the frame. Strawberry season will be over by the time I figure this out, so I went with it! How are you hulling your strawberries?