Freezing Strawberries

I love strawberry season! It's a bit early for Michigan Strawberry season (that's in June-ish), but it must be the season somewhere because my local grocery story recently had a huge sale. Whenever I find berries on sale -- strawberries, blackberries, raspberries -- I buy up a whole bunch and freeze them.

Frozen fruit is great for making smoothies by replacing ice cubes with fruit for a rich flavor. You can also freeze banana chunks and yogurt cubes or even leftover fruit salad, pureed and transformed into smoothie starters.

So I bought about 15 quarts of strawberries ($15 investment). Just hull the strawberries, cut them in half and spread out on a baking sheet. Then freeze for a few hours until the fruit is solid and then transfer to gallon size zipper bags.

Once finished I ended up with 3.5 gallon bags of strawberries. When I checked the price of this amount at the store, it would have cost about $35 for that much!