I know many of you have moved on to other summer fruits, but I’m still stuck on strawberries. I was away for a week and felt that I needed to eat an extra weeks worth in order to “catch up”. I went out and bought a ton of Quebec strawberries all at once. Unfortunately, eating them all before they went bad turned out to be impossible. That’s ok though, I was planning on preserving some anyway.
Every year I make a few bottles of strawberry jam. Although I like to dream of giving up my job and selling jam, anyone who has seen that episode of Friends where Monica attempts this knows that’s it’s almost impossible to make a living selling jam. My reasons for making it are more ethereal; in the dead of winter, when the ice and cold have me feeling like I couldn’t possibly go on, the smell of homemade strawberry jam revitalizes me. It’s like sunshine in jar.

I still had a few strawberries left after making my jam, so I decided to have a little fun with them. We were kids, Mom would often make strawberry juice. It’s just strawberries pureed with sugar, but the taste is incredibly fresh and rich. Sometimes we’d freeze the strawberry juice and save it for the winter too. It’s a lot of work, but once you scrape up a bowl full you get the fresh summer flavour in the middle of winter. But on this day I didn’t feel like waiting for my frozen treat, so I decided to make myself some ice pops. I added a little lime juice to give them a little extra kick. They’re perfectly refreshing on a hot summers day.

Strawberry Lime Ice Pops

• 4 cups strawberries, hulled and cleaned
• 1/2 cup sugar
• juice of 1 lime

1. Place all ingredients into a blender. Puree until smooth. Pour the mixture into ice pop molds and freeze completely.